This week on Blocked and Reported, Jesse has a calm, productive conversation with the illustrious hosts of the scientastic YouTube show The Majority Report. It goes so well they all went out for blinis and mimosas after.
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Jesse: “Conservatives Are Lying About What My Atlantic Article On Gender Dysphoria Says”
Full Singal-Seder correspondence showing the issue was very clearly laid out to Seder
They keep talking shit and keep repeating the claim
Jesse: “On Rashida Tlaib And Chase Strangio’s Ridiculous, Bad-Faith Attack On The New York Times”
NYT: “How a Small Gender Clinic Landed in a Political Storm”
I identify as an attack mushroom
I really hated reliving the majority report episode. Seder and Vigeland demonstrated such bad faith and it’s depressing that accuracy or truth don’t matter as long as you’re on “the right side” on any topic. I wish Jesse would avoid these lunatics, or at least meet them on level playing fields (not call-in shows with bad audio, being cut off etc). They didn’t even make An attempt to make contact with Jesse’s own writing.
Sam doesn't need to engage with Jesse's writing because he knows he's toxic based on ~*vibes*~.
So true. Sam just knows. Jesse is just a toxic person and extremely unhelpful because he literally supports torture. Why is he so fervently pointing out minutia per Sam? Sam will NOT discuss Jesse’s writing. He will only discuss issues that are irrelevant to Jesse’s work but are also somehow damning of Jesse’s very soul. I hate to sound inarticulate, but sam is a huge piece of shit.
Sam's feelings don't care about Jesse's facts.
Hearing Sam is torture.
I had to fast forward through some of this for the first time listening to BARpod. What f*cking bad faith from sanctimonious ******.
Word.
Other Greg is absolutely right. That call-in was positively distressing. Not just because of how awfully Sam behaved (a bit surprising) or how Emma/Matt behaved (zero surprising), but because Jesse navigated their mine field inexpertly. He walked into the M.O. time and time again.
For all the carping done in this ep about the MANIFEST unfamiliarity TMR's personalities have with Jesse's work, Jesse likewise lacked familiarity with their tactics before he called in and it showed. And even setting that aside, Other Greg's point about the basic disadvantage of a call-in approach should have led Jesse away from this stunt.
I will personally suicide-stinky-butter-bomb the Kickstarter headquarters if Jesse goes through with this plan to Tony Soprano her into another horrible conversation (or pay a generic activist to do so as I'm a bit slow and too pretty to fare well in a paddy wagon).
TMR is fully submerged in personality politics, not issues. He should just let them slide into historical ignominy slowly and without his assistance.
I was in awe of how Jesse kept trying to bring the conversation back to relevant stuff, rather thank calling out their stupid tactics, which only would have degenerated into a slanging match. Yes, he never got them back to the relevant stuff, but he did give them enough rope to hang themselves (or at least come out looking like unhinged idiots)
I think that's valid, but it ceases to comfort me as soon as this question occurs to me: to whom did they look like unhinged idiots?
Does anyone know whether this is pretty much the usual quality of their programming?
They have 1.35 million subscribers to their Youtube channel.
I am one of the actual subscribers who unsubscribed because of this. I've been following Sam for a long time. I'm pretty sure he wasn't like this. I have never liked Matt, his haughty tone is borne a confidence in his natural superiority to others. I used to like Emma. I never thought she was particularly smart, but I also used to like Joe Rogan. She started to bother me a couple of years ago and it came to a head when she refused to defend Ana Kasparian a few months back.
As I said elsewhere, they may have a larger subscriber base but who cares. Who would rather be, PBS or FOX?
We followed the exact same path lol. I enjoyed the Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dore dunking but I can't listen to them now, this was too pathetic.
I've listened to the show sporadically over the last few months and their discussion with Jesse is indicative of the overall intellectual depth of the show.
At this point Sam can't even make a coherent point about the torture debate from the mid 2000s, which I assume he was around for (his `analogy' was about a Sam Harris piece, either later included or excerpted from his book against religion, that had close to zero impact on the very, very widespread debate on whether we should torture, what constituted torture, when we should torture, etc).
Emma seemed taken aback at a couple of points in the discussion (watched the video), which indicates to me that she's somewhat knowledgeable, believes she's being righteous, and has a modicum of intellectual honesty. She's clearly the more intelligent and interesting part of the duo; hope she finds a new gig soon.
She might be more knowledgeable on this issue, she’s certainly not more intelligent than Seder. She’s barely capable of thinking on her own, she has one mode; virtue signalling, zero intellectual honesty. Seder is much better than that in theory, though he’s lost his way, but he’s genuinely intelligent.
She said in a video at one point some time ago that her stepsister works--or worked at this point--at a youth gender clinic in Tennessee. So presumably that's where her zeal and knowledge come from.
thank you....
Eh. But what if they did?
High sub count and low views is the telltale sign of a dying channel -- many people don't bother unsubscribing on YouTube, they just stop clicking on the videos.
So, I just went back about a year looking at a few to see views.....And generally, they get 25K-32K views or so.
Including this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KnQF0k_0nw
There are guys who review 1980s tape decks they buy off ebay that get significantly more views than that.
Please, tell me more :) this is relevant to my interests
My man techmoan
https://youtube.com/@Techmoan?si=s3MKuEWsBdsOeRHm
Thank you for the URL :)
Oh I see what you're saying. I thought your point was just that very view people will see this part of the show. Whether they do or they don't, though, Jesse comes off poorly.
This was so hard to listen to.
Jesse did just fine.
Temperamentally or strategically he decided not to descend to their level, be respectful, and they came off as unhinged, unknowledgeable, and juvenile. Worse yet, their juvenilia wasn't even funny: they talked about Jesse for 30 minutes the previous week and they still act like they don't know how to pronounce his name. Boorish.
He could have been more forceful in staking out some of his positions but he clearly stated them and now his detractors have to continue to say he's a transphobic when he believes:
1. we shouldn't ban medical care for transgender adolescents, though we need to be sure we're adhering to current guidelines that include 1--2 years of therapy, etc.
2. adults benefit from gender transition
3. the current guidelines may be overly conservative for some adolescents (i.e., making them wait one to two years could unnecessarily prolong their gender dysphoria)
4. Republicans are misrepresenting his work
Sam and Emma had the opportunity to challenge him on his positions. The worst they could say is that Jesse shouldn't report on science because it's politically inconvenient (apparently they do not believe that the science is strong enough to stand on its own) or he's garbage because he believes that transition for adolescents should be used to help alleviate gender dysphoria (a concept the hosts seemed unfamiliar with but is the justification given for trans adolescent medical care).
From my perspective (trans woman) Jesse (and Katie) are much better allies than these clowns.
Absolutely. Allies who actually represent the nuance of a complicated topic are better at informing the world than religious zealots who lie.
Also, let's not forget that Sam began the segment with "Okay, Jesse, what's on your mind?" Like, way to help set the table on your own show, dude. Totally abdicated his hosting duties and just left Jesse to try and make the segment somewhat coherent.
Clowntown: population Sam and Emma.
Agree, it was so hard to listen to. "Bad faith" was the ready descriptor to my mind as well.
Although I think I share Katie's opinion that there's an argument for Jesse trying to clarify his position if these media live on. I really think he's going to find himself on the right side of history at some point.
"Bad Faith" has become of cudgel of convenience that knows no affiliation. Everybody does it! Kinda like the rise of "problematic". Both instantly dumb-down the argument to which they are deployed, imparting the appearance of rhetorical derring-do while absolving the speaker of the burden of sufficient detail. Drives me crazy.
I don't think vindication comes for Jesse types. I think they'll take up the same clear reasoning once it's acceptable to do so and memory-hole their old opinions, and for Jesse, they'll use a broken clock analogy.
I support the clockwork orange style forced watch party.
I agree on life being easier without having to be a critical thinker. I still don’t know if they’re just putting on a show or totally believe what they are saying. I lean towards putting on a show but I am also around people like this - genuinely angry, indignant people who don’t listen at all.
Tomorrow, I am going to an event where people have very different opinions than mine. I’m not gunning to fight - I am hoping to learn something new that may change my mind.
Ok honestly I’m not really hoping to change my mind - i think I’m in the right and I’m curious.
Why not just have a convo Emma (and Sammy)? You’re not fighting for your life here.
Sam is lost to us. It's pointless now.
At least you acknowledge your bigotry! DO! THE! WORK!
Also, that part of NC looks lovely. I spend a lot of time down in South Carolina and my bro in law’s sister lives up in Asheville.
Nobody joins a cult because things are going too Well in their life.
You put it perfectly. And this is exactly what I think of the current situation at my workplace - an academic institution. Don’t you want to discuss and learn and be friends with other people (even -gasp- conservatives)? It could be a nerd’s paradise! I’m not even joking!
I suspect there is also a financial motive - "richness" of the more banal sort.
That show was so chaotic and so belligerent, it gave me anxiety like no other fracas on the internet. Seder and Vigeland were a total mess, railroading Jesse the whole time. They clearly do not understand the science at all. Jesse does and they were not about to let him get a word in edgewise because of this vast disparity in knowledge.
And they end up sounding really dumb too.
I might be a shape rotator, but you're a good writer and I'm glad we still have reporters like you who focus on the facts.
Hi Ben,
Your twitter threads are fantastic. Thank you for them.....and Im sorry about the hatred, yes hatred, thrown at you.
You know that the Majority Report has about 1.4 million subs to its YOutube channel. So, my question to you is: Do you know if all their shows are at that level of quality or close to it?
Fortunately for my sanity that was the only time I’d ever listened to more than 20 seconds of their show! And thanks very much for your kind words.
You consistently commit journalism, including on Twitter, which is saying rather a lot. I follow you there and it’s lovely to see you here!
Thanks. I try just to stick with the facts. I'm not here to editorialize. But I do push back against people who either say things that aren't backed by science or who try to silence science communications. People can be extraordinarily vicious and vindictive. You should see my DMs. The funny thing is, I get people from both the left and the right who each accuse me of the opposite thought crime. Sometimes people will do this in the same Twitter thread. It's amazing how much people will pretend they can read your mind when you make a neutral statement like, "Megyn Kelly will not back down; she insists that there is no such thing as being transgender." From a statement like that, I get accused of conspiring against women and being a misogynist. I'm like, where are these people getting this?
Leor Sapir is writing a thread...and will later write a full critique...on recent JAMA paper..
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2809058
So many papers about this issue seem to have low populations, weak results, and so on....but they end up supporting almost extravagant claims. Has anyone else seen the same thing?
(Benjamin...I am a stage 4 kidney cancer...renal cell carcinoma...patient. Things are stable and there are drugs, good ones to help combat it....Keytruda and Lenvima. There are side effects, for me, not horrendous ones but can be very uncomfortable and a bit more.)
Gosh, I hope things go well for you. Even Keytruda can have off-target effects, so I hope you're feeling okay.
Your monkeypox coverage was so good!
Thanks!
When you said something like ‘this is how Megyn Kelly talks about transpeople‘, in respect to Rachel Levine, didn’t this clearly imply she was wrong to speak like that in your opinion?
For anyone considering listening to the entire interview but dreading the experience, I would say that all the most important moments were covered in the BARpod episode. You’re welcome.
I have to agree. I decided to listen to the whole thing and boy, nothing important was left out of the podcast.
I wouldn't normally take other people's word on what is/isn't worth listening to, but I'm making an exception today; they sound that bonkers. Thanks Zach :) Appreciate your sacrifice.
As far as what teachers should be disclosing to parents, I think the outing of a gay kid to their parents is not their job because 1) that kid can come out to their parents on their terms and on their own schedule and 2) being gay isn't necessarily going to impact their school performance or interfere with anyone else's.
The trans thing feels different for a number of reasons, specifically, because you don't really have to take any action when a kid comes out to you as gay. When a kid comes out as trans, there's a torrent of changes that teachers, the administration and fellow classmates end up making: pronouns, name changes, deciding which locker room they change in for PE, etc. I don't think anyone should be doing that without getting the parents involved.
Also, homosexuality isn't a mental disorder (or heavily linked to mental disorders or behavioral problems). There seems to be a much larger correlation with mental health problems and gender identity issues.
Having fellow students, teachers, counselors call a student a different name, allowing the kid to enter opposite sex bathrooms and lockerrooms, while keeping that from family is basically requiring a whole group of people to lie to the kid's parents. It is totally insane.
Yeah, at that point it is active lying to the parents.
The "T" are well aware that their situation is radically different from the "LGB", especially in a K-12 setting. They deliberately pretend there's no difference.
And they’re lying to the kid.
"you don't really have to take any action when a kid comes out to you as gay" - This is such a key difference. The people who equate sexual orientation with gender identity either are not thinking clearly or are deliberately ignoring this obvious distinction. Sadly I'm afraid it's more often the former.
It’s just another civil rights thing for many. I have relatives that truly cannot understand the difference. They just automatically condemn everything the Republicans want.
And if they are nice liberals they are tolerant of all “weirdos”. No I’ll feeling just put gays, trans, and NBs all in one basket of “other” they don’t judge
How sustainable is it? The change involves so many people. Unlike coming out as gay privately to a teacher, this involves pretty much all the staff and student body at a school but NOT the parents. It seems unsustainable, like someone will find out and notify the parent.
I was a HS teacher in California and I did not deal with the same number of restrictions as the NY listener who's letter Katie read. I taught in the '90s though and a whole lot has changed since then.
This comment is just looking worse and worse at this point with the number of commenters who have explicitly come out (so to speak) in favor of outing gay kids to their parents.
It’s possible there could be a variety of viewpoints here, ranging from this very centrist view towards much more conservative “gay is gross” type of views that many of us disagree with. The existence of the right wing does not make the center view “look worse and worse”. If anything the opposite is true - makes the center look more reasonable.
... the fact that conservatives are very, very obviously and publicly coming for the gays should make the gays SOMEWHAT less willing to throw the trans under the bus and devalue the concept of children's privacy for a little temporary expediency.
Somewhat.
What does the one have to do with the other? What on earth do you mean by gays 'throwing the trans under the bus'?
I suspect most people do not consider informing parents of their child's entire *identity* to be 'throwing them under the bus.'
"Devaluing the concept of children's privacy" - just stop right there. This has to do with actions the student wants to engage in *publicly*, including public name and facility use changes, while at school. This has nothing to do with 'privacy' but rather deliberately lying to parents about the child's and the school employees' PUBLIC actions while at school. It's untenable.
If there is any suspicion whatsoever that the kid is subject to potential or actual abuse, the appropriate response is a report to state authorities.
What does policy on outing trans kids have to do with policy on outing gay kids? Hmm, let me think about that one. Some might think that being gay is a key issue of "identity," but we all know that's different, because reasons. Gee, a real poser there, innit?
What do I mean by gays throwing the trans under the bus? Well, it seems to me that quite a number of people on this thread have expressed views like "gays should support outing trans kids so as to distinguish themselves from the eeeeeeevil transes" (okay that last bit is my editorial commentary), which is very explicitly a call to abandon solidarity in the hope that appeasement of anti-LGBT forces will permit them to retain a privileged position in society. That will not work even slightly, but it will destroy the unity of the movement.
You've identified some reasons why (some) attempts to preserve (some) trans kids' privacy may not be entirely effective. That does not make this not a privacy issue. Here's a close analogy: as a supervisor at my job, I am legally forbidden to tell employees about another employee's reasonable accommodations, because that would be a violation of the accommodated employee's medical privacy. It DOES NOT MATTER if the employee's disability is visible or invisible, whether the accommodation is "public," or whether other employees will find out anyway.
As for the last sentence, somehow I do not think that the "concerned parents" here would be okay with it if state authorities were contacted based on mere suspicion of potential abuse. They would say, not without some reason, that you have no evidence-- just speculation. And even if a report was made, the authorities can't do anything until a child is actually abused, at which point it may well be too late to prevent permanent harm.
"Some might think that being gay is a key issue of "identity," but we all know that's different, because reasons."
It's different because being gay at no point requires medical intervention to facilitate being gay, whereas trans identity is usually accompanied by gender dysphoria, commonly requires lifelong medical interventions, is associated with enormous MH comorbidities and risks, and - most importantly here - requires affirmative behavior on the part of the teachers and administration (eg name and facility changes).
Of course, you know all this.
"very explicitly a call to abandon solidarity" Why do gay people owe trans people 'solidarity'? Being gay has nothing to do with being trans - they are entirely different things. People are merely pointing out these obvious differences.
And that's not a close analogy, since coworkers are in no way analogous to the relationship between a parent and minor child.
I find this gay/trans distinction to be inconsistent, as Katie is beginning to consider.
And I found Jessie's response that gay kids should, of course, not be "outed" to their parents because they shouldn't be outed to be a classic example of question begging.
If a child being gay is relevant to problems at school, then it's relevant and parents are entitled to know. Likewise if a straight child's BF, GF, BFF is contributing to problems, then the parents have a right to know.
I am also disturbed by this guiding principle that the vast majority of parents are unenlightened abusers. Not to mention the idea that teachers are all knowing saints.
Everybody who has attended school had a few great teachers, a few terrible ones and a whole lot of mediocre ones, who had no insights whatsoever into their students.
Teachers are not more qualified than parents to intervene in a child's life.
“Teachers are not more qualified than parents to intervene in a child's life.”
Not only are they not more qualified, they are significantly less qualified.
Yes there are some shitty parents. But most parents aren’t shitty.
Parents know and love their kids in a way a teacher, no matter how good and how nice and how well intentioned, could.
Agreed — even mediocre parents love their kids and are trying to do right by them. Teachers should be a support, not a hinderance in family life.
I forget that not everyone binges on the topic of gender and it still surprises me when people still genuinely believe that affirmation is the best way to go for gender dysphoric people. Does nobody pay attention to what’s going on in Scandinavia? Does everyone truly believe that all the states banning youth medical transitions are just led by crazy right wingers who hate trans people? Maybe, some are, but to not even question that there could be nothing more to see there? I’ve felt something was off about the way gender transition was discussed for years, before even reading much about it. How can these people be so ill-informed?
Yeah, I think people love to think of themselves as some revolutionary with all the odds against them. We don’t really live in societies like this anymore, but people still keep coming up with stuff to make themselves feel special.
"Does everyone truly believe that all the states banning youth medical transitions are just led by crazy right wingers who hate trans people?"
This is literally, one hundred percent true. No blue or purple state has banned youth medical transitions. I'm actually unaware of any Democratic legislator who's even voted for such a bill, though I suppose there probably are one or two. There are far more Republican legislators who've voted against them.
If your position requires you to assume the bona fides of a group of people who have repeatedly demonstrated in a million different ways over the past ten years that they have none, your position might suck.
You don't think there's any possibility at all that states are banning youth medical transition in an attempt to protect kids, rather than because they hate trans people? What about restrictions in European countries, is that due to hatred as well?
I think it’s certain that *some* R legislators (and regular people, including some GC people who lean left) feel moral disgust toward transgender people. There was the legislator (in Florida?) who called trans people imps and demons. There are still plenty of people who act as though they feel threatened by gender nonconformity. Some religious people believe that gnc is contrary to God’s will.
There are surely R politicians who see that the issues they are now highlighting (NOT the bathroom bans of a few years ago) are effective wedge issues.
And there are definitely R politicians and many voters - including lots of Dems like me - who bear no animus but have grave, principled, and compassionate reservations about youth transition, males in female sports, and the erasure of women’s distinctive needs and embodied experiences across the lifespan.
This is an effective wedge issue because of the size of the third group. Polling data very clearly shows that the majority of Americans believe the trans people deserve protections against discrimination in housing, education, and the like. A majority also opposes policies that require us to ignore everything we know about sexed bodies. The Dems see that trans women in women’s sports is a loser with voters, but they are dithering about how to respond. They count on few voters being attuned to the issues in prisons and shelters. And they have dug in so hard on the trans activist position on youth gender medicine that it’s hard to imagine how they can row back from it.
"The Dems see that trans women in women’s sports is a loser with voters, but they are dithering about how to respond. They count on few voters being attuned to the issues in prisons and shelters. And they have dug in so hard on the trans activist position on youth gender medicine that it’s hard to imagine how they can row back from it."
Yep. It's going to bite them in the ass very hard.
Democratic strategy on the women's sports issue is to imply or just directly claim that the GOP wants young girls subjected to gender testing to play Middle School no-cut Basketball, repeat mantras and then change the subject as fast as they can. I've seen them deploy this tactic in interviews (most notably on Bill Maher's show) and I've seen it repeated by many Democrats in my circle. Given that most of my circle are people who either are Democrats or are too left wing to be Democrats, that's not a small number of people.
On the larger issue, they just want to deploy the tactic of calling anyone who has any questions, dissent or concerns a right wing bigot. For good measure, they then paint dissenters as white nationalists (even when the dissenters aren't white).
I am still very much on their call, email and mailing lists, both the public facing ones and locally the internal pleas for getting the party faithful to turn up (time and money and endorsements) for the primaries early. I have considered unsubscribing but I rather like to be able to peek. And it was such a commitment of mine for so long it was hard admit that I wasn't onboard with the Democratic party anymore.
I've walked a lot of precincts, knocked on a lot of doors, hosted and attended events, convened caucuses, dutifully attended conventions at the local level on up. All for Democrats and almost always for the left wing of the Democratic party. I can't convey how big of a change it is that I don't think I can vote for Biden next year. This week, I signed up to get campaign updates from the moderate GOP candidate for Governor. I won't vote for Trump but I might be able to vote for some Republicans. My mother is rolling over in her proverbial grave right now.
If the Democrats wanted to design a way to lose support from their party faithful, they really could not have done any better than cook up this nonsense.
Like you, TessK, I feel I have no political party home. And political parties have no real positional core (ie re Dems -children are not fully responsible for their actions until their brains are fully developed except for gender related issues).
I will be voting for the least crazy candidates. Fortunately, I live in a BIG BLUE state so my presidential vote does not count anyway.
Thank you! Same on my 2024 voting plan. I'm in a blue state and I don't feel obliged to vote against anyone. If there are no qualified or non-crazy options, then I will just not vote in that race. In a Biden-Trump rematch, I just don't see the point of voting. If I lived in a state that matter to the outcome, I would likely reach a different conclusion.
It's fascinating that you are so invested in this DemExit narrative (despite, as I pointed out elsewhere on this thread, just being a straightforward conservative in most respects, i.e. someone who I would typically expect to vote Republican ex ante); I suppose you see it as an effective means of converting more people to the transphobic cause you have now espoused. Conversion narratives are always effective yarns.
That being said, there's zero evidence that transphobia is an electorally effective strategy, and lots of evidence that it is not:
https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-continuing-electoral-history
The fact is that outside of a very small number of, basically, obsessive busybodies, most people vote in elections based on tribal loyalties, vibes, or, to the extent they think about policy at all, economic or mixed economic/social issues like healthcare and abortion rights, not weirdo obsessions with a tiny minority of people. Abortion, in particular, absolutely dwarfs trans policies in political importance, which I know will upset you given your anti-abortion views, but it's true.
When Roe was overturned, I said it was the single best thing that could possibly have happened for the Democrats’ political chances.
My moral issues with abortion are rooted in deeply personal experiences but as I have stated here, I am actually not comfortable with fully banning abortion. I think it’s incumbent on pro-life people to help make a world where women have better options than abortion at all stages of the process.
I am eternally grateful that I didn’t fall for the pro-abortion pressure I faced as a pregnant 22 year old college student. I’m driving that child to college this week and it’s a happiness like no other to have the privilege to be his mom. I am grateful for the generations that my mother created when she made a powerful choice to have my brother in the bleakest of circumstances.
Again, my actual thoughts are complicated and seemingly not something that you are able to compute.
Parental rights, education and pushing gender ideology are absolutely issues that make the Democrats more vulnerable than they need to be. And they know it.
"fully banning"
Just leaving that phrase out there, no particular reason.
`There are surely R politicians who see that the issues they are now highlighting (NOT the bathroom bans of a few years ago) are effective wedge issues.'
This has not stopped Republicans in Iowa and Florida from re-instituting those bans.
It's certainly true that one can be pro-trans and anti-affirmation but the people who are tend to use the same arguments as the anti-trans, anti-affirmation types, and they both want the same: an end to gender affirming medical care for adolescents. Not improved medical care but no medical care.
For example, when Megyn Kelly says, as Benjamin noted above, `there is no such thing as being transgender' her purported desire to protect children is irrelevant because she's being openly anti-trans (as she's denying the existence of a medical condition and its treatment).
It does not seem to me that partisanship/anti-trans animus was behind the halting of affirming care in the EU. Treatments are still available but must now be given under a research umbrella (at least in the UK). On the other hand, many if not most of the bans put forward by Republican legislatures, and passed by them, are based on a legal template from Women's Declaration USA, an openly anti-trans radical feminist group so out there that even Republicans had to change some of their terminology.
https://womensdeclarationusa.com/wdi-usa-introduces-safe-act-model-bill/
https://womensdeclarationusa.com/wdi-usa-credited-for-state-bills-banning-child-medicalization-to-disguise-sex/
You've now rephrased the question to be not one about the motivations of Republican Party leadership but one of the motivation of "states," which is an unanswerable (indeed, ill-posed) question about the legislative intent of a collective of people that doesn't have a single intent. I reiterate my response to the original question.
I also reject the false dichotomy you posit between "protect kids" and "hate trans people." I think many Republican legislators are, in their own minds, attempting to "protect kids" BECAUSE they hate trans people and believe them to be "groomers" who want to sexually assault children. An attempt to "protect" children from a hated other follows naturally from that hatred; these are not somehow clashing motivations.
Could it be, there are many different nuanced perspectives on the issue of trans identifying kids and most people just want to be able to talk about them without being shut down?
There are many different nuanced perspectives about the inherent inferiority of black people. There are many different nuanced perspectives about the nature of Jewish media control. There are many different nuanced perspectives about the criminal punishment that should be handed out to Christian apostates.
Apparently you believe we should be discussing all of these. I do not.
OMG, why is every one of your comments trolling? Are you trying to emulate the bad faith tactics of Sam and Emma?
I am once again compelled to observe that the operational definition of "trolling" being used here is "making arguments I don't like." In no sense is it "trolling" to point out that someone's argument, if applied neutrally to a broad range of subjects, has absurd implications. There's even a fancy Latin term for that.
There are many different nuanced perspectives about policing and incarceration. I will refrain from any discussion regarding this subject pending Zagarna's permission.
In your world is Scandinavia full of right wingers? Are the Netherlands a place known for conservative extremists? The people who established the Dutch protocol have found issues with it. And the protocol is not being followed in the US where gender youth medicine has exploded. The US and the left in the US is very much not following the science on this issue.
Dr. Laura Edwards Leeper founded a pediatric gender clinic and she, along with transwoman Dr. Erica Anderson, have raised red flags and alarm bells. I'm linking an article for the benefit of other readers as I am confident you can't grasp it.
When it comes to this issue, you are an ignoramus with your head very far up your ass. You don't know what you don't know and you aren't capable of learning it either, which is sad for you but not my problem.
GNC kids deserve better. The politicization of this issue in the US is a grave disservice kids living with gender distress. I will say that I have significant issues with the way the right uses this issue. While I may have found some allies that are conservatives, I don't support the approach the the GOP is taking to this issue either.
As mentioned, the article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/24/trans-kids-therapy-psychologist/
Since exactly none of this is even remotely responsive to anything I've said, I decline to defend the straw man you've attributed to me. I note that you pointedly say nothing whatsoever about the motivations of your Republican allies, which was the subject of my comment (only that you nonspecifically "don't support the approach the GOP is taking to this issue," which for all I know could mean that you think that they aren't cracking down hard enough).
Also, it's kind of comical that about two paragraphs into that WaPo article, the authors make clear that they (like me, and unlike your Republican friends) reject legislation "trying to ban" the "appropriate gender-affirming medical care for trans youth." Oops.
+1
Jesse does a good job of mentioning that true transition involves gender dysphoria, which is technically a mental disorder according to the DSM.
And last I checked, being gay did not require surgery. 🤷🏻♀️
Or puberty blocking. Quite the opposite in fact - sexual awareness and orientation come out of puberty, so blocking puberty is an interference.
Yeah, there’s a weird subset of medicine to interfere with things that are going correctly with your body — it’s a bit disturbing how ubiquitous it is.
Haven't studies shown that many people know they're homosexual well before puberty?
Cf. Greg the Flamboyant Kid again. Like so many Curb episodes, that one is just a gift that keeps on giving.
This is a red herring. Trans people, especially trans women, cannot win this argument, by design, because:
1. if we don't get surgery we are told that we just want to revel in the joy of using/flaunting our `girl dick' and abusing others with it
2. if we get surgery we do so because we think that being a woman is just about having a `hole to fuck'
Several posters here hold both views.
Now, what are trans people with diagnosed gender dysphoria supposed to do after they've been to therapy for years and the dysphoria is having a measurable negative impact on their lives?
I think it's fair to bring up the double bind some trans people find themselves in (I know there are some trans people who don't want to go to the extremities of having surgery but rather, opt for just presenting as the opposite sex however else they can.) But I think the main concern I have here is how much the "affirmation" approach has taken hold of the conversation.
I think what a lot of trans-identifying kids, their parents and their schools are facing is the overwhelming pressure to socially and medically "affirm" a kid with gender dysphoria. It's particularly disconcerting when schools seem to egg it on without any reasonable contact with the parents. Someone mentioned this on another thread.
Neither does being trans!
Hello Zagarna, have a wonderful day!
There is a transphobic sentiment that people just shouldn’t live as the gender different than their sex, period. It is an obvious continuity that in different times and places a small group of people have chosen to do so. That’s fine--who cares if it is biological disposition rooted in identity formation or socialized and sexually driven--it is a person’s right to choose their gender expression. But the transphobia especially comes out when public spaces are in question, and a person’s fixation on their disgust response to the behavior doesn’t mean there are not valid concerns about many minors experiencing something transitory that is being messaged as a permanent condition with a medical solution based on incomplete and faulty evidence, and it doesn’t mean there are not valid arguments that sex-specific spaces should be protected even while not exposing trans people to harassment and acknowledging they need to be protected too.
Anyway, I just don’t think the transphobia frequently interwoven in the critique of gender medicine for minors delegitimizes all the arguments, and Jesse also doesn’t have a problem with adults who are transgender nor does he believe in counterproductive paternalistic state bans. Some people here do, and some dislike and have disdain for trans people, but that doesn’t make all criticism invalid and many here are concerned parents who feel their child is experiencing something transitory and are afraid they will make decisions that will be harmful for them long-term because of the messages they are getting from other kids and adults. I am sympathetic to that position.
I think it is okay to call out transphobia where you see it, but not sure how much it changes a person’s perspective or how helpful it is to wield the term like a blunt instrument. What do you think? What is being accomplished with this approach?
What I think is that the observation that someone is transphobic is not dispositive that they are wrong-- a stopped clock is right twice a day-- but it is obviously severely damaging to their credibility on those issues-- you should not be using a stopped clock to tell time, because it is probably wrong. I don't rely on KKK pamphlets to get racial crime statistics or Der Sturmer editions to learn about Jewish pedophiles, either. It's obvious that the bigotry delegitimizes the arguments, and to the extent you contend otherwise, I seriously question your inductive reasoning abilities.
I'm more than willing to have reasoned discussions of particular policies around sex and gender. But having those discussions with committed bigots is a pointless waste of time (as you can see evidenced on this very thread where my careful readings of a Washington statute's actual text have been repeatedly responded to with hysterical, text-free allegations that it says something it plainly doesn't say). Better to simply note the bigotry, call it out, and move on.
And the "concerned parents" schtick is, frankly, getting pretty tiresome at this point. If you think your child is not trans and is somehow being misled, whatever, feel how you feel, but the argument that schools and society at large have some kind of duty to repress trans people's expression and discussions of trans experiences (a.k.a. the "messages" that being trans is okay and not a bad thing) in order to stop kids from "experiencing something transitory" is ridiculous (and impossible). The line between "I want the bigots to win because I hate trans people" and "I want the bigots to win because even though I personally think trans people are fine, honest, scout's honor, I just really want MY child not to transition" is... let's say, thin, bordering on invisible. For the most part I think those people are just liars.
“Concerned parents schtick”? I see. I’m guessing you are not a parent. I thought my parents were a bit ridiculous and out of touch as well, when I was a teenager and young adult. Then I grew up into a fully functioning adult, with the ability to understand a lot of different perspectives without needing to label them as bigoted. It’s a damn shame not everyone gets to experience that.
You think having discussions with bigots is a waste of time yet you seem to think many members here are bigots and spend a lot time arguing on this Substack. Why? What do you get out of it?
I've never argued that my personal time management skills are a model to be emulated. As I've said before, yes, I am that guy in the xkcd cartoon.
That said, I do try to clearly terminate conversations when it's clear that the person I'm responding to is not reciprocating with good faith.
Interesting points about KKK pamphlets and statistics. I have more to think about on this issue.
Whenever a TRA tries to throw "homosexuality used to be considered a mental disorder too!" at you, the obvious response is that gay rights activists never fought for any medical treatment to make their homosexuality go away (quite the opposite), and have been shown to be capable of living healthy lives without any medical intervention. Trans people don't WANT to live with gender dysphoria (and according to activists, they can't). They're fighting FOR medical intervention.
The simple fact is that being trans is a mental disorder requiring medical attention and decisions.
Being gay is not.
Schools should notify parents if they become aware of medical disorders because it is the parents who must facilitate the care and make medical care decisions.
That’s it. Full stop.
In some states, parents who are skeptical of the care or wish to take a watchful waiting approach to the situation are being relieved of their parental rights. A recently passed law in my state gives parents of trans identified children who have run away less legal recourse than those who are creditably accused of abuse or neglect. It is WA State SB 5599. California is doing similar. Oregon doesn’t require parental consent or notification for gender care for kids ages 15-17.
These laws are extreme and they put kids who do have loving and supportive parents at risk of genuine harm.
It’s like the people who wrote these bills have literally never met a child. Kids say and do stupid stuff to push back against their parents allllll the time, and a law like this could be easily abused as a loophole.
I... what? This is a bill about reporting requirements for shelters for runaway youth that requires them to engage with the state as an intermediary rather than directly with parents in situations where a runaway is accessing protected health services that may be interfered with or stopped by said parents. The law is explicit that the ultimate goal is family reunification. I cannot fathom what problem anyone would have with this legislation.
I don't even understand what you think the "abuse" here would entail. You think someone is going to run away from home and start gender transition not out of gender dysphoria, but just to spite their parents? Most people (especially teenagers, who are not known for their extreme adherence to rigorous medical-social regimens) are really not that committed to the bit.
Did you pay for a membership just to comment on all of this?
Is this of some deep concern to you? That I might be wasting my money? How very thoughtful of you. Let me reassure you that I am more than satisfied with my various purchases. Glad we've cleared that up.
I've read the bill in question, and as I expected, I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
In fact, section 2(2)(c) appears to put children who are receiving protected health services (NOT all "trans identified children," not that I suppose you care about the details of this) on precisely the SAME playing field as children who may be subjected to abuse or neglect-- which, considering that we're talking about runaways here (most of whom rather obviously do not have "loving and supportive parents"), seems entirely fine to me.
Protected health services ARE gender affirming care and abortion services. Abusive parents are required to be given notice and a court date. It is unclear that the same provision exists for the parents of minors receiving protected health care services and you had best believe that if my son were at a shelter, it would be violation of my rights to not immediately let me know where he is. There is well defined constitutional case law on this, which is why, as I understand it, the law is being challenged in court.
Note, this would be minors receiving protected health services that you have claimed approximately 47K times are NeVeR EveR DoNe WitHOut parental consent, both on this podcast comments and many others.
I am intimately familiar with the RCWs that this bill amends, having lobbied on the issue as a student lobbyist more than 2 decades ago. Runaway notification was passed here in the 90s as the Becca Bill.
I believe that an out of state ideologically driven person such as yourself has both less skin in the game and less familiarity with the legal framework of the laws of the state I have lived in for 40 years.
You have proven yourself, time and time again, either unable or unwilling to process information that doesn’t confirm your basic beliefs.
Go get on with your masturbatory facile delusions of legal grandeur and superior intellect elsewhere, mKay?
I see we've moved on to the "outside agitators gettin' in here and messin' up our relations with our Negroes" phase of conservative argumentation. I half expect to be labeled a communist sympathizer next.
I am well aware that there is a judicial-bypass procedure for protected health services (which I presume you, as an anti-abortion conservative, oppose). It's unclear to me why you think I should be opposing it, though. As a general rule, I think children should have access to necessary healthcare that their parents want to prevent. I am, for example, vehemently opposed to coddling the insane anti-blood-transfusion views of Jehovah's Witness parents.
Some runaways have loving parents but run away because of misunderstandings, family tensions or the teens are engaged with high risk activities such as drug use or involved with dangerous people. Presuming that all runaways have abusive parents is just a false assumption on your part.
Literally this girl who ran away two doors down has amazing parents and siblings, she just liked hanging out with drug addicts at 14 and her parents didn’t approve and forbid it so she ran away (to a crack house). Hardly abusive.
Now she is 20 and is still a wild child but says running away was the dumbest thing she ever did.
My older brother ran away at 15. It was complicated but his insistence that he do lots of drugs and not actually go to school was the biggest part of it. I have a complex relationship with my brother but I love him and his kids deeply. Fortunately, he’s hit the stage where he has, like a lot of people with drug and criminal histories, mellow out and we can occasionally have breakfast or catch a baseball game together. This is a markedly different situation than the years that everything from my engagement ring to credit to my son’s piggy bank was stolen by him or his wife to feed their habits. Drugs take a big toll.
Ah. And your solution to this problem is to... deter those runaways involved with high risk activities from going to official shelters (where they will know that they will be sent home) and instead incentivize them to hit the streets.
Makes sense, assuming you view them as subhuman cockroaches whom society would be better off without.
You struggle with Theory of Mind. You don’t know what people might actually be thinking so you ascribe your own opinion of what they must think to them and then double down even when very, very wrong.
I volunteer at shelters and transitional housing for adults and kids. Due to my limited time, most of this volunteer work is shopping for and cooking meals, which I can do alongside my own Costco runs and cooking. One is a shelter for teens specifically, the others are shelter and transitional housing for families with kids. These are issues I care deeply about, having grown up very poor myself. I absolutely treasure human life, which is a value I live out in my life. I don’t even think you are a subhuman cockroach. #trollsarepeopletoo
This is actually true to some degree-- as I've alluded to elsewhere, I have autism, part of which is definitionally that I have more challenges than your average bear with cognitive empathy-- but I regret to inform you that in this case the second paragraph of my immediately preceding comment was sarcasm.
The first, regarding the perverse incentives your preferred policies would create, was not, and I note that you have not responded to it.
The fact that a perverse incentive may exist to the “I left the left” narrative doesn’t mean that it is applicable to me. Its existence doesn’t make it the case for me.
I’ve posted numerous times in the 3 years I’ve been listening to this podcast that it would be easier for me to be a team switcher than politically homeless. Since I am politically homeless I have largely forfeited the community that my Democratic activism afforded me. I could certainly saunter over and join a GOP Women’s group and gain a lot from my “I used to be on the other side” reality. I’ve had opportunities to do just that. Yet, I haven’t done it and I won’t because it’s not an authentic expression of my life experience or the values that I truly try, however imperfectly, to live every day of my unlikely but very true life.
I have two autistic sons and in our family it’s certainly genetic. Like most girls born in the early 1980s who might have otherwise been diagnosed with ASD or ADHD, I was dx with a speech disorder and received some ancillary SLP and OT services in public schools but was mostly on my own to adapt and figure out a way to be in the world.
I’ve worked very hard for a long time to have the flexibility and perspective taking that allows me to be a boring but reliable mother, auntie and wife. Coincidentally, it is partially my sons and 1 niece being autistic that partially informs my views about abortion and gender nonconformity. I don’t want to see neurodivergent kids aborted and I don’t want to see GNC autistic kids pushed to make changes to their bodies that they may well come to regret. I was very pro choice from my teen years until the last 5 years.
If you’ve never had deeply held beliefs evolve or change, it can be hard to understand how much it can rock someone’s world. My world has been rocked. You can dismiss me, call me a liar, attack my ability to love and care for my children but if you aren’t getting the authenticity and earnestness I bring to my life and share here, that’s a you thing and not a me thing.
I thought it was a beautiful response :)
Thank you Allie Cat. I really appreciate you saying that.
Absolutely bizarre response. The perverse incentive I have described is created for RUNAWAY TEENAGERS, who are disincentivized to take shelter in official locations and encouraged to hit the streets if their protected healthcare will be put under threat by going to shelters which are then required to dime them out to their parents.
As for this nonresponsive personal filibustering, it is of absolutely no interest to me, in part because, as I've pointed out before, I have no way of verifying any of it. For all I know, you are in fact a Republican operative cosplaying as the "politically homeless." (It certainly would make arguments aimed at disaffecting Democrats more credible than if people knew they were coming from a Republican operative.)
But, more importantly, the plural of anecdote is not data. Even if I credit everything you claim to be true, it would have zero impact on my policy views.
You jump around topics at will in an attempt to manufacture what you fancy to be argument winning gotchas. We were talking about my changing political views then you claim my response to that is bizarre because you pick up some other thread. This is something you do quite often. The winning points you think you are making are anything but. You denying my life experiences is as silly as it would be for me to insist that you aren’t pretty much who you present yourself to be. If I wanted to campaign for the right, I’d be knocking on doors and engaging in the sort of face to face political activities that I used to do for the Democrats.
I thought you were a troll, now I’m thinking you are something else. I’m sorry that you are stuck in this black and white political binary where there is only good (you) and evil (people who disagree with you). It’s not a paradigm that tends to work well for the long haul so the last thing I will say to you is: good luck with that man.
Are you saying if a kid runs away that means their parents aren’t loving and supportive? That seems a reach.
Especially in a state where the kid knows they can get specific medical treatments that they want but only if they run away.
If a kid runs away, that is a strong piece of evidence suggesting that their parents aren't loving and supportive that should greatly shift your Bayesian priors in that direction. It's not dispositive.
The second paragraph is getting into "false proposition implies any proposition" territory again. SB 5599 does not authorize funding for specific medical treatments that children want, but only if they run away. (Maybe some other law does-- again, I have not canvassed the entire Washington state code-- but that one doesn't.) What it does is say that IF A CHILD IS ALREADY RECEIVING THOSE TREATMENTS, shelters have to attempt reunification through intermediaries rather than through direct contact with potentially-abusive parents. I agree with that state policy.
I believe the CA law does just that but not 100% sure. OR appears to require no parental consent at all for hormones after age 15.
In WA State, AppleCare (expanded Medicaid and SCHIP funding) covers gender related medicine. I believe that OR and CA have equivalent approaches to their state health insurance.
You are again conflating consent with funding. I freely consent to having LASIK done on me (seriously, I keep wanting to do it but never seem to find the time), but nobody is going to do it for me unless I show up with several thousand dollars in hand.
I can’t recall the details but I do remember something from one of the PNW states about how GAC is covered by state funds for trans teens in the foster system. Also remember something about how teens can get GAC coverage under their parents plan but it would be kept private (this may have been for 18-25 yo).
So in some states I think if the teen knows the policies they could know that running away could get them the care they want. These kids are online - if it’s possible to do they are gonna know how.
Also many kids do indeed work and make money. So if they can’t use their parents insurance, Maybe not enough cash for surgeries while they are still minors, but for HRT? That is pretty damn cheap.
If your argument is that states should not provide funding for gender medicine in some or all circumstances, then make that argument (though it would, as always, really help if people actually linked the specific legislation you're complaining about-- in this case, TessK actually did that and it allowed me to immediately determine that she's lying about it). But do not tie it into an unrelated discussion about laws covering how the state will go about trying to reconcile broken homes. That just confuses the conversation.
I’m actually not sure how I feel about the extent to which transition care should be covered, but my post had nothing to do with that.
I understood you to be arguing that it didn’t matter if runaway kids could get transition care without parental consent if they couldn’t pay for it. I was pointing out that by my understanding it could be covered by the state for such kids and/or at least hrt would be within reach for kids without insurance.
So then for states with laws like this, the issue is that kids in the know who really want to transition but their parents aren’t allowing medical transition could indeed be incentivized to run away. I think that’s the main concern I have with these laws.
`The simple fact is that being trans is a mental disorder requiring medical attention and decisions.
Being gay is not.'
Being gay was a mental disorder until 1974 (DSM-II, 7th printing); it wasn't until DSM-III-R (1987) that homosexuality was completely removed from the DSM with the excising of `ego-dystonic homosexuality'. And before 1974 medical attention was certainly recommended.
Thus far medical interventions are the best way we know how to treat gender dysphoria, and its cause seems to be similar to that of homosexuality.
> and its cause seems to be similar to that of homosexuality.
I suppose this is technically correct. While there seems to be a genetic component, the genes involved, to what extent, etc. are not known or understood.
Similarly, the exact cause of homosexuality (or more generally, sexual orientation) is not known.
So they are similar in that it's not really fully understood.
However, gender dysphoria is in the DSM for completely different reasons and motivations than homosexuality. Homosexuality was deemed pathological since it deviated, but also because a whole slew of bad pathological traits were supposed to go along with it. There were also disease theories for homosexuality. There was a strong bigotry component to advocates who were quite forward in stating that homosexuals were evil or immoral.
Over time research mounted showing quite conclusively that none of these comorbidities were true. It wasn't a disease. It wasn't correlated with any social pathologies or immoral behaviors. Further, being homosexual in itself does not cause any distress. And no action or treatment is necessary to lead a happy, fulfilled, and content life.
None of this is true about gender dysphoria. The reason it's considered a mental disorder is because it is the condition itself that causes intense anxiety in the patient. If you do nothing and it persists, it doesn't get better. It can get worse. To the point where the patient cannot lead a happy, fulfilled, and content life.
So, you can remove gender dysphoria from the DSM. But unlike homosexuality, this wouldn't help anyone with gender dysphoria. . . they _require_ treatment to improve their condition. Its presence in the DSM is because of that core attribute....
That's a pretty good explanation of it (that and the fact that homosexuality doesn't appear to interfere with peoples' abilities to lead functional lives — all other things being equal), whereas people experiencing extreme gender dysphoria might have a bigger reason to consider a medical intervention.
I think it's also fair to steelman TwKaR's point — a lot of DSM definitions have had cultural components over the years that aren't entirely easy to untangle from everything else.
> have had cultural components over the years that aren't entirely easy to untangle from everything else.
For sure. Though it's not unique in this.
The DSM is a living document and constantly updated. Later iterations added criteria specifically designed to minimize these kinds of biases. For example, at some point
> mental disorders are associated with distress, disability, or a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom.
So you can have the exact same symptoms in two people and one has a disorder and the other does not. If one copes with it fine and is not distressed by the symptoms.
If you think you should have been the other sex, but then you're like "oh well, whatevs. Thems the breaks" and move on with life...then you don't have gender dysphoria.
The trans thing is totally different. We weren't asking for all the pronoun stuff nor for people to make the fundamentalist statement that we were women, even though male and vice versa and on and on.
As I've said to friends, and has not always been well received...."gender affirming care" is the gay conversion therapy from hell.
It’s what they do in Iran.
Indeed it is.....but try saying that. It's amazing the level of ignorance among the reputedly well-educated among this group. And the categorical certainty which they hang on to that ignorance!
This is what partisanship produces.
Don't try, just say it.
You’ll be torn limb from limb. 🤦🏻♀️
Say it all you want, but it's a non-sequitur because, aside from the use of similar medical techniques, one is a state-driven policy meant to stop immoral behavior and the other is voluntarily sought medical care to mitigate personal pain.
Quite frankly, it also diminishes the horror and pain gay men in Iran experience to equate their suffering with a change of clothing/pronouns. Also not sure that they would appreciate their pain being used to deny relief to suffering adolescents, either.
"being used to deny relief to suffering adolescents, either."
This is question begging.
How is that situation remotely comparable to affirming care? No one is forcing adolescents to transition by threat of execution.
`gender affirming care...'
Are you speaking about such care for adults or adolescents? If for the latter, do you believe that trans adolescents can't/aren't suffering from gender dysphoria?
What if they have one of the other problems mentioned in the episode, like they spend all their time making out in the classroom instead of focusing on their work?
I don’t think teachers should have boundaries on disclosing any truths about children. How proactive they want to be should be their discretion. If they suspect abuse, they can and should report it.
Yeah, the assumption that all parents should be treated as suspected abusers as a matter of policy is very troubling.
Completely agree. There are parents who would act abusively towards their child if they came home with a bad grade. Teachers shouldn't stop handing out report cards, they should use their responsibility as mandated reporters to report those instances where it does seem like a child is being abused. Most parents are not abusive, and that should be considered the default, not the exception.
Most people do not blab unnecessary details about medical records, therefore HIPAA is a bad law and medical privacy should be unregulated because people aren't proven blabbers.
Most gun owners are law abiding, therefore we should have zero gun controls of any kind.
This argument seems unimpeachable to me. Prophylaxis? Never heard of it.
That's a false equivalency. Parents are legally responsible for their children's health and wellbeing. HIPAA doesn't exist to prevent parents from finding out what's going on with little Timmy health-wise, it exists to ensure that little Timmy's intimate medical information is not publicly accessible. Total strangers don't need to know how often little Timmy is having diarrhea, but his doctor and parents should know. Similarly, it is important for parents to know if little Timmy is having trouble with reading or is acting out in school. Parents have a duty to help their children and support them in overcoming issues.
As you mentioned, prophylaxis is an important part of this. If little Timmy is having problems reading in first grade and the parents are aware, they can take interventions to remedy his reading performance and ensure that he doesn't fall behind in the future, make sure he isn't having trouble with his eyesight, or get him tested for learning disabilities. If little Timmy has an allergic reaction and his parents know about it, they can get him tested, get him an epi-pen, eliminate allergens from his environment.
The point that I am making is that parents need information about their kids in order to be there for them when it matters. Unfortunately there are some people who will not take kindly to that information, but we have mechanisms in place to identify and report situations where that is happening.
Hospitals are legally responsible for their patients' health and wellbeing. Nonetheless, we have legally instituted privacy requirements to prevent them from the uninhibited sharing of private information, because we have adjudged that privacy is more important.
If you think kids' privacy is unimportant, then own that, but don't make out like that's anything other than a policy choice to subordinate said privacy to your personal view that parents always know best.
Parents are responsible for their children’s well-being. You keep trying to skip over that.
It's like you didn't even read what I wrote. Being "responsible for well-being" does not entitle anyone-- not a parent, not a hospital, not the state, no one-- to override the rights of the person in question to privacy and bodily autonomy. We do not simply presume that the "'responsible" party knows best and wash our hands of the issue.
Now, I'm well aware that the level of generality at which you define those rights has a huge impact on what you end up permitting or prohibiting-- as I said, your position involves a policy choice to subordinate children's privacy to parents' interests. But you cannot avoid the need to make hard policy choices by handwaving it away with airy platitudes about parental responsibility.
If parents have ultimate responsibility for a child’s well-being, you can’t handwave it off by creating exceptions where mental health issues that campaigners specifically connect with suicide ideation are deliberately kept from parents. Kids who are trans need their parents more than ever, not less than ever.
And if 2 plus 2 equals 5, then I am Dracula.
(Really. That's a true statement!)
Here in the United States of America circa 2023, parents do not have "ultimate responsibility for a child's well-being"-- they cannot, for example, be prosecuted just because a child dies of illness-- so the latter half of this if-then statement is basically of no utility because the premise is false.
Is there some reason you think this is responding to something I've said? I can see how it's sort of vaguely in the same topical ballpark, but I don't get what it is that I've said that you take issue with or what proposition this anecdote is meant to support.
That’s what upsets me — yes, abuse happens, but unless there is some ACTUAL evidence of abuse, they should just be treating a situation like the above like any other behavioral issue. Tell the parents the relevant information and let them know it’s affecting their behavior in school.
It works well for Kim Jong Un!
They are legally required to report abuse. Personal discretion doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Yes, but the rub with that is defining what is abusive. I’ve seen schools look the other way when there was clearly abuse going on and I’ve seen schools report parents for things that aren’t abusive or use the threat of reporting abuse as retaliation for the parents complaining about issues at the school. Most of the time I think schools do try to do the right thing but unfortunately, it’s simply not the case 100% of the time.
We’re a big country and nothing with human behavior is 100%.
Ignoring obvious abuse though, is absolutely illegal. And if anyone said (like a concerned parent) “hey, I think that kid is abused” they’re legally required to forward that concern.
I’m dealing with reality here. Our child protective system has so many holes. It’s sad and it’s tragic, but it’s true. When I say it’s not 100%, it’s not 99.9%. At least 1/2 the time, I’ve observed major issues
1. Not everyone is a mandated reporter.
2. Sometimes reporting abuse can make it worse for the vulnerable people being abused, which any kid whose has been abused knows. This is why most mandated reporters I know try to have a narrow range of times they considered it required to report.
3. Defining a parent who doesn’t rush to affirm a trans identity in a kid as being abusive isn’t reasonable and it’s a waste of social work resources.
4. Social work is a system that brings a lot of classism and other biases into play. One reason I was skeptical of Defund the Police was that I know full well that social workers are not well regarded or received in poor families.
I’ve mentioned on here that I have helped to raise my nieces and nephew, which is why I have spent most of my adult life raising a gaggle of kids. There’s a reason for that.
Two of them have parents with a long history in and out of family and criminal court, the other two parents went through a nasty divorce and one tried time and time again to use CPS as a weapon, to some success. I also have other exposure to these processes via work and my community and volunteering. I’ve seen CPS do good work and be a net improvement to the family. I’ve also seen CPS so far more harm than good.
I’ve called CPS four times in my life-
Once for work when physical abuse of manifestly obvious.
Once on a neighbor who was leaving her small son locked outside while she was inside on drugs with whatever man was around at the moment.
Once on my brother and his wife (there was no other option and believe me, we weren’t the first or last call)
Once recently for a case of extreme neglect that my husband and I became aware of. Before we decided to call, we spoke with two friends who are social workers…both of them recommended taking some other steps before calling, which we did.
The pod phrase “it’s complicated” comes to mind.
Secondly (I hit send too soon) I appreciate you saying what a strain and waste of resources it is to term not affirming a kid as trans as abuse. I’m not sure if it’s because parents have gotten so helicoptery as of late, but everyone seems to want to claim abuse when a child isn’t being raised they think they should be.
First off, I’m so sorry that your nieces and nephew’s life are so complicated. I’m sure it’s tough being those kids, but it’s also rough being the grown up that cares for them.
In reality there is always personal discretion because there is rarely some super cut and dried distinction.
Kid shows up with weird bruise on his neck, says he fell doing a trick on monkey bars. Is that true or did his parent choke him?
Right; isn't that what PTA meetings used to be about?
The most valuable information a parent can get is a clear feedback on how their child is behaving in half their waking hours.
Why not simply live stream classes?
Other children's privacy could be an issue, BUT 1) we did it during COVID (which is when a lot of parents learned about the reality of the school day) and 2) we do in daycare. So the sudden 180° in school doesn't entirely make sense.
I’m n every other child care setting I’ve been in open observation is standard.
Ballet, gymnastics, kick boxing, skateboard classes….everything
Only exception I can think of is mountain biking. But seemed more pragmatic than policy….kind of inconvenient to live stream mountain biking through trails.
School is an outlier, not a norm.
I’m not advocating for cameras everywhere all the time. There’s a case to be made that students may be more open to expressing opinions and present a different self than they do under the eye of parents. That’s fine and can be positive…..but the other extreme of it being a complete black box to parents seems more aimed at protecting the educators and not the adults.
I’ve never heard my elementary kids express concern over parents being able to watch them do gymnastics. They think it’s awesome and are very excited when I can make it.
PTA meetings are mostly about what and how to provide services and opportunities to the kids/ teachers that aren’t being funded by the county or state. I suppose some get political in a sense, but it’s mostly planning book fairs, and taking cafeteria duty so the teachers can actually get a full hour to eat lunch.
Sorry, I meant parent-teacher evenings, or whatever they are called nowadays.
In my day there were regular evenings where the teachers stayed late, met all the parents, and reported on the children. Not sure if it has anything to do with the PTA, but that's what I had in mind.
"Parent-teacher conferences" is how those were described in my youth.
Imagine the person at the PTA meeting that you find the most obnoxious. The most opposite of your views on everything related to schooling, politics, etc. Now be sure that if parents had the right to snoop all day long at school it would be THAT parent that would be the one watching. Not just the teacher and their kid, but your kid and everyone else’s too. And they’d be calling in every time precious didn’t get their way.
I Absolutely 100% do not want the nosiest and most judge mental parents in my kids classroom having the ability to watch them all day long in school. Orwellian.
Yes, that's a problem, although it is something we appear to live with for some other open classes. And during COVID of course.
This is why in an ideal world we'd be able to permit but not require teachers to give helpful feedback to parents, at their discretion.
I suspect the problem is that unions don't respond well to having vague guidelines that require using discretion. Hard rules are easier to adjudicate.
I bet this is why the TSA agent doesn't have the discretion to allow you to carry on the 102g tube of toothpaste, because it is 2g over the 100g limit. 🙂
Setting aside the moral implications of turning teachers into the children's Gestapo, this is also incredibly stupid and short-sighted because it will simply guarantee that kids never confide anything in their teachers.
Of course, I suppose you figure they'd just report that "Johnny looks a little fruity," and leave it to the parents to put two and two together.
Gestapo?
There's a deep understanding that children do WAY better when their parents are involved in their education. That's best when it means giving the parents feedback.
The ability to report to parents that the child is underperforming because they are high is not a question of being the Gestapo, but of doing the kid a MASSIVE favor.
When someone starts comparing parental responsibility to the Nazis, you know they’re maybe just a teensy bit off-kilter.
JUST A BIT
A hot topic in education a decade or so ago was the importance of parental involvement in schools. I think now it's referred to as engagement instead of involvement, probably due to helicoptering. But some of the benefits are about student achievement, self-esteem and behavior. This idea that deceiving parents is good, because they're not to be trusted, seems baseless.
Agreed — schools should err on the side of fostering good relationships with parents and children. And frankly, I think a little bit of conflict at home is usually a good thing for a developing teenager. It helps develop social skills and resolve interpersonal conflict as adults.
And I cannot stress enough for the one person on this thread who is not adding anything helpful or earth-shattering to this discussion — most parents are not abusive.
I think it’s possible to draw a clear and bright line between what needs to be shared with parents, and what not. For me that line would be: are there reasons to think that a child is in reasonable danger of harm due to sonething of which the teacher has become aware?
At the university where I teach, we are obligated by policy to file a report with the dean of students. If we think a student is at risk of harming themselves or others, or if we see they are in deep mental distress. This applies even though the students are virtually all over 18!
In a public school setting, there is no need to report students’ private sexual orientation, unless you take a hard line religious view that the child’s immortal soul is at risk. As a secular institution, though, the school can’t interpret this as harm that should be reportable.
Mental health issues that impact school performance, or could lead to self harm or violence absolutely are to be reported to parents under the standard. The same goes for a child who appears to be on the verge of joining a gang as described in the letter Katie read.
Reasonable people may disagree on whether a transgender identity falls into the category of “likely to lead to harm.“ Certainly, many adolescents are engaged in a process of identity exploration that may well lead them elsewhere in the long run.
However, I have yet to know a trans-identified young person who is not struggling with fairly severe mental anguish. We are told again, and again that these kids are at ultra high risk of suicide. if true, parents absolutely need to know!
Those of us who have seen these dynamics up close in young people are aware that many of them will not medicalize. But we’ve seen how peer influence has affected kids who were never gender nonconforming but then interpret their distress as related to gender. Many of these kids will desist, but the medical burden of transitioning is high, and it ought to be avoided whenever less-invasive treatment is possibly. The evidence is quite strong that social transition often leads to additional interventions even in kids whose onset of gender dysphoria was abrupt. The risk of unnecessary medicalization is one of which the parents should be aware.
Yes the “trans students are at a high risk of suicide!” campaigning line leads naturally into reporting trans students as needing a network of mental health support, for their own good. You can’t have one without the other.
honestly I think the best solution would be for school guidance councilors, at least in middle & high school, to help a kid work up to telling their parents. Like, "ok, if you're serious then our goal is to give you the confidence to be able to discuss this with your parents in a month and you guys can take it from there." Questions about kid's and teen's privacy are hard to hash out, and I don't think teachers should be turned into little guards or spies for parents but they also shouldn't be implicated in lying to parents ostensibly for the sake of the kids.
This! Unfortunately the laws are being written in both ways now to remove all nuance and discretion of professionals in these type of matters. It’s either out them immediately and refuse to use nicknames, or actively hide public knowledge from parents.
I’m glad my teachers didn’t call my parents that one time I showed up for class reeking of pot and refusing to take my sunglasses off. Of course if it had been a regular thing they probably should have...
Isn't that the sort of thing where some common sense can be used?
If kid is late once, the teacher may be annoyed.
Kid is late 5 times, it may be a behavioral issue.
Pot might be a borderline issue. For instance, not only does pot affect performance, but some *schools* might have a zero tolerance policy towards narcotics or smoking.
It could easily be the case that the parent is fine with pot but the school is not 🙂
Oh, I got caught when my kid was not even busted with pot, but was late for band practice and was then suspected of being high. Turns out the hall smelled of pot because the principal who just busted some other kids.
I also got called on the weekend when I was on the other side of the country when the same kid was busted for something he’d actually done: hanging up funny posters, spoofing the school’s ridiculous motivational posters.
The bar is often not very high at all for calling parents.
What are your thoughts on the disclosure of trans identity to parents if the school doesn't affirm that identity, doesn't make any accommodations for it, and isn't compelled to?
For example, a student comes out as trans (or perhaps a teacher simply notices other students referring to the first student with a new name, opposite sex pronouns etc.) but the school just carries on as if nothing has happened. Do you think in that situation the school should be required to inform the student's parents?
I feel that this scenario is closer to the one where a student comes out as gay, since the school isn't doing anything, so perhaps disclosure shouldn't be mandated. But then the argument could be made that since gender dysphoria is a mental disorder, parents should be informed because it's a health issue involving their children, so maybe it should.
That one is a bit tougher, I think. My instinct would be to just brush it off and let their parents figure it out on their own (unless they ask in a parent teacher conference or something.) It almost seems like in a situation like this, it's probably a kid trying to be interesting to their peers, and you can just roll your eyes and move on.
I think the issue would be if their insistence on being trans rises to the level of demanding the school and administration recognize it and/or it's causing serious distress to the student, then you do need to get the parents involved.
Also, I'm a curmudgeon when it comes to threats of suicide. If the kid threatens to kill themselves if the school won't let them socially transition, call an ambulance, send them to the hospital and call the parents. I keep feeling like I hear kids trying to emotionally blackmail their parents or school admin into letting them transition, and they should realize just how serious the issue is.
Agreed. If you don’t immediately call health professionals on threat of suicide you’re not taking it seriously.
I'd agree that in this case, as long as it's not disrupting the student's performance in school, then there would be no reason for a teacher to disclose to parents. But if the student tells the teacher, that seems different, and more like, say, admitting to deep anxiety, or self-harm like cutting, or to having an eating disorder (i.e., all thing which are in the DSM - flawed as that is).
Agreed. I mean, kids try on new nicknames and identities all the time. If it’s not crossing any lines of safety or security, just leave it be.
I don’t think the school should be required to disclose. The only thing they’re required to disclose is abuse.
And, really, kids get into all kids of shit. I don’t think they should be required to disclose if a kid is hanging out with the goths and has a new nickname either.
For reference, they are not currently legally required to disclose know.n mental health or medical issues. BUT they are legally protected to do so (minors aren’t covered by HIPPA at school) and the expectation is they should include parents if their involvement will help or is necessary (say, for permission to treat).
I mean the simplest answer is the schools should do what the parents want because the parents are their customers.
It gets more complicated than that, but at a base level parents are entrusting their kids to someone else and deserve to make a deal they approve of.
Should the babysitter call me about every little thing? Well it’s something we discuss.
In this scenario, I’d say the school should keep mum. The student is exploring a subculture here, no different from a girl wearing makeup or changing clothes once they’re on school grounds. This hypothetical student isn’t necessarily showing signs of gender dysphoria, but is showing signs of exploring identity like a normal teenager. Parents don’t need to know that.
I feel like there’s a pretty big difference between not telling a parent every minutia and actively keeping secrets, and it’s pretty obvious to any reasonable person where that line is. Like I don’t need to call the kids parent that say if they cut their hair and are going by “BJ” instead of Becky Jane and I overhear a friend use a male pronoun. But obviously in conferences I might be like “hey I noticed she’s going by BJ lately”.
That’s why I’m against the laws going both directions. They are hamhanded and prevent people from acting in a reasonable manner. Telling kids you can won’t use their preferred mode of address is Nuts. So is actively hiding their shooting up with Blackmarket T in the restrooms from their parents.
Note I agree with j&k in situations of actual abuse in which case mandatory reporting status matters.
That's one of the things that has really been bugging me about these policies — you can't have one policy and expect it to adequately address everyone's situation. So many of these you would have to take on a case-by-case basis. Each of these kids' family dynamic, situation, mental health status, and reasons for transitioning are all going to be different, and, I suspect, a lot of parents are actually pretty aware of what their kid is going through.
Yes exactly. Thank you.
“Homosexuality isn’t a mental disorder.”
But it was. That’s a major point here. Homosexuality absolutely was a mental disorder in the DSM for years. Relying on the DSM as the last word is one of the areas that concerns me. I don’t think it’s an issue in the same way today regarding trans care, but the DSM is not permanently the last word. It shifts and changes with time and with updated pressure and evidence.
Emma sounded like she was having a panic attack. Sam sounded like he needed to be back in his safe space where I presume no one disagrees with him or even talks until he's finished shouting. Which he does not seem to ever do.
That was horrible. Just horrible. Please never trick me into listening to anything like that ever again.
You could hear Sam and Emma’s discomfort over their cognitive dissonance triggering their amygdalas. Just shrieking.
The most frustrating thing is that in 5 years when they realize they were wrong they will not reflect or apologize. They will speak loudly and sarcastically about how they can’t believe how badly they were misled by garbage humans lying to them. Denunciation of the badness of others is their only factory setting.
I honestly had to pause the podcast a few times because something about those clips was so frustrating to sit through wow
Totally triggered by her triggering
They need to be mocked endlessly and never ever allowed to forget their cowardice.
Social transition at school without the parent’s knowledge is not a harmless step. This is why Erica Anderson (herself trans) filed an affidavit in a recent case on this topic arguing strongly that it should not be done as a blanket policy.
People are stereotyping non-affirming parents as dangerous, hateful bigots. When in reality, many of us *just know our kids*. We know them well, we love them well, we care for them well, we take them to thoughtful non-ideologically biased therapists, we make them dinner every night and drive them to school every morning, we talk openly and honestly and lovingly with them each and everyday. And we, the parents, will be there for them, picking up the pieces long after the schools staff that chose to be ally cheerleaders are far in the rearview mirror.
I do not appreciate having to play a game of 3D chess with the school on this issue. We have a meeting on Monday. If a few school staff continue to presume that my 14 yo autistic son saying “I don’t know” means he’s trans and needs to be affirmed as such and socially transitioned at school, we will be at an impasse. We will either not be able to send our son (who has complex Special Education needs) to school at all or we will have to…time will tell. We have sued them before and won, we may have to get litigious again. I don’t like it but as the shirt says:
I identify as: a threat
my pronouns are: fuck around and find out.
Here’s Erica’s affidavit for those who are interested. Long time listeners will probably remember that she was on the podcast early on. Her conclusion:
“A school policy that involves school adult personnel in socially transitioning a child or adolescent without the consent of parents or over their objection violates widely accepted mental health principles and practice.”
https://will-law.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Expert-Affidavit-Erica-Anderson-2023.02.0336.pdf
It's weird that social transitioning is simultaneously a very important part of affirmative care while simultaneously is also just a kid experimenting with a new look or a new name when people criticize why parents aren't in the loop. Seems to be a great way to insulate it from criticism.
That’s a good observation.
My husband and I are very much in the loop because our son talks to us about everything. We have are approached parenting letting our kids talk to us about everything so that they feel they can tell us anything. Even things we don’t like.
Schools have this idea that parents are checked out or not paying attention. For some parents that is the case but it’s just very far from the truth for us and parents like us.
So the school meeting this morning went well.
Over the weekend the paraeducator sent us an email where she used convoluted and tortured language to communicate information about…school supplies. She was using *plural first person pronouns* to avoid using either his name or any pronoun. So like “we noticed our backpack”. The overall effect was…very weird. We weren’t sure what to say about it but luckily, the sufficient and succinct language came to both me and my husband during the meeting.
Our son was with us for the meeting and the school staff appeared to take all of us seriously. We only talked about gender to the extent that they asked our son to clarify what he wants to be called since he’s said a few different things (mostly “I don’t know”). He did that and we moved on to the meat of the meeting which is the whole transition from middle to high school for a student with an IEP.
The pressure around gender and pronouns (some subtle, some not so subtle) is coming from the youngest and least credentialed person in the room who wasn’t there for most of the meeting. She’s a paraeducator. The VP and the SpEd case manager are older men and seemed receptive to our basic approach. The VP is familiar with us from our older son and knows that we are committed to our children.
That’s great! It sucks having to go into those meetings loaded for bear but you have to - you can’t do it unprepared. Having done the elementary to middle school transition IEP meeting, I’m hoping you have feet up drinking tea kinds of plans for the rest of your day.
I want that shirt.
https://etsytees.com/product/skull-i-identify-as-a-threat-my-pronouns-are-fuck-around-find-out-shirt/
My FTM sibling got it for me for my birthday. He knows (and loves) me.
Holy crap! What state is this in? I’m sorry you’re dealing with this (especially considering that they appear to be ignoring your son’s needs in lieu of being an “ally”)
Washington. We are in the thick of it. Seattle area public school but not Seattle Public Schools.
I strongly encourage you to wear that shirt to your Monday meeting. It should spark some fascinating conversations at the police station.
Zaggy zag zag, my man, if you have nothing of any value to say, please just leave me the fuck alone.
I have done more *today* to take care of gender nonconforming and trans-identifying children than you have ever done, or will ever do, in your entire miserable existence.
There I go, feeding the troll again. If I have to talk to any police anytime soon, it will be the ones that come to arrest me for troll feeding.
I’m a mandatory reporter for troll-feeders. Into my paddy wagon you go, Tess. You’ll be housed adjacent to HIPPO prison.
Seriously, when I read this round of trolling, my thoughts turned to how much material support and care I’ve given to gnc young people, and how fond I am of them. They tend to be bright, caring, original - as well as emotionally struggling. It is possible to extend care without displaying my terfier thoughts on the one hand, or subscribing to the ontological claims and political demands of the activists on the other hand.
Tess, I hope you can get the school to see reason. Perhaps it might help to have something on paper so you can share Erica Anderson’s position on social transition - I’m thinking maybe an interview she’s given so that the school will view it beyond the partisan debates. Hugs, if you want ’em!
Thank you for hugs, humor and ideas.
I’m reading the comments about teachers revealing their students’ gender identity and it seems there is a misunderstanding about what goes on in schools. In the PNW, where I teach, and I’m sure it’s the same in other blue areas, teachers are actively eliciting this information from students. We are encouraged to ask for names and pronouns at the start of the term (this is middle and high school) and then to ask if parents know. Students aren’t secretly confiding in us, we are creating a norm where they are encouraged to create a new persona at school. At my previous school, 10% of my students changed their names and pronouns. The schools are absolutely fueling this trend and then keeping it from parents.
Thank you for sharing this, as someone with direct personal experience.
In some cases, the kids are encouraged (both by peers and adults) to distrust their parents. Dividing kids from their parents can lead to a lot of high risk outcomes.
I was an early adopter of asking for pronouns at the university level circa 2015. I was also an early rejector of that ritual by roughly 2018, having seen how much harm was encompassed by Just Be Kind, It Costs You Nothing.™️ That was several years before one of my kids (who was also in college) was ensnared in gender identity ideology and then desisted (WITHOUT me coercing him in any way, for those in the back row who might shoot rubber bands at me).
I’m not surprised that PK-12 teachers are now in the thick of it. The younger ones came up through education schools where any dissent was anathema. The older ones are generally super kind and generous humans who wish to do well by all their students and therefore are easy prey. Those who are skeptical are in the same boat as I am: scared they’ll lose their job, be ostracized by their community/friends/family, and be seen by students past and present as having hated and deceived them.
Shayla, you are awesome and I empathize with every word I’ve seen or heard (on Jesse’s old Callin show) from you. Hold tight. Stay true to your principles up to the threshold of blowing up your life. Look for moments where you might plant a seed of critical thinking. Will this be enough? I don’t know. It’s just what I’m doing. It’s so impossibly hard.
Props to Jesse for going on the show - even though you can tell in his voice he has major regrets, he did what he said he would do.
Anti-props to Emma for bailing on live air and having her cronies back her up - that was a serious maskoff moment and was truly pathetic.
Props to Moose for being the goodest boy.
Can I go back to pretending the Majority Report doesn't exist?
I kinda felt like Jesse bringing up that Emma was going to be coming on show, in that moment where she was already back pedaling and grasping for ad hominem’s to defend herself, it was obvious that her response was going to be something like “Well actually I can’t come on your show because you suck.” And my sense is he knew when he said it that she would pull the rip cord, but he still went for the instant gratification of making her look dumb in the moment at the cost of (maybe) having that long form discussion later. I get it though, wanting to land some kind of rhetorical blow after they jerked him around for 20 minutes or whatever it was.
Ehh, odds are she would have backed out or ghosted by email, anyway. Better to have her back out in front of her whole audience.
Jesse and Katie,
I just saw this reader comment in NYTimes:
"Rachel
New JerseySept. 8
Shout out to the Blocked and Reported podcast, which broke this story back in June.
Journalists Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal (who has written for the NYT) do excellent work on Blocked and Reported. I highly recommend it.
157 Recommend"
About this Michael Powell article, which may be his last for NYTimes as he is moving to The Atlantic:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-statement.html
"“It’s our job to make sure people of all identities flourish here,” [Professor Brian Soucek] said. “It’s not our job to make sure that all viewpoints flourish.”"
Jesus, thats harrowing.
That was me! ❤️❤️❤️❤️
I find that programs like the Majority Report are targeted at the lowest common denominator of people interested in politics. This is the worst of sports fandom for people who are too nerdy for sports but not nerdy enough to actually care about the nitty gritty of public policy, or truly invested enough in politics to care about how change occurs, why people believe what they believe (outside of "stupidity" and/or "evil"), or how to defend your beliefs to people who challenge them. It's the same modality and mentality that the worst Fox News programming employs. There is little intellectual curiosity or willingness to hear out other points of view in good faith. Little willingness to seriously or honestly engage with complexity or disagreement, little willingness to challenge their own priors or their viewers' priors. These are not serious political minds. They are emblematic of the worst tendencies of contemporary American politics: tribalism, ego, grandstanding, stubbornness, anti-intellectualism, smugness, image-obsession.
I admire Jesse's optimism in trying to seriously engage with them, but I can't say I'm especially surprised that they conducted themselves so poorly. After all, when that's the image that one has created for oneself, one which has earned one good money and an echo chamber of adoring fans, why change?
Isn't this also a bit like the emotional rush (pun intended) of old school talk radio?
Like a soap opera, it's not about the stories' truthfulness, it's about the (melo)drama.
That's a good pun.
How the heck did Jesse stay so composed during that... Well done! My heart rate and blood pressure rose during those clips. Agreed on the importance of nudging people in the margins.
Jesse you truly win the award for having the most bizarre Hatred:Reasonableness ratio on the internet.
If I didn’t see proof of it on Twitter back when I read your article in 2018, I truly wouldn’t believe it. I’ve showed many reasonable people I know various writings of yours, sometimes people agree, sometimes disagree, then I always go “yeah this guy is bombarded with death threats” they’re just baffled.
The people who view you as a demon have truly lost the plot, but as you said, it’s important to engage with them sometimes, not to change then but to shine a light for they’re audience to see how absolutely bonkers this is.
God…Sam Sedar is so pretentious, listening to him is torturous
My only experience with Seder up to now has been from him voicing the character of Hugo the health inspector on Bob's Burgers, so I can be sure if he sounds annoying and dumb to me because that's my association with Hugo or if he was cast as Hugo because he sounds annoying and dumb.
"BOB, your email said conservatives, not attorneys general. Do you want me to READ the email to you, BOB?"
Whoa! The more you know!
The only way I got through this was imagining him as Hugo the whole time, which made it hilarious.
I agree, that was my first exposure to him and he comes off as really condescending and obnoxious.
First they came for the fat honky dicks and I said nothing because I did not have a fat honky dick
I've thought about this a little more, now my blood pressure has returned to normal. I don't know their standard demeanour - I'm just assuming from the clips that they're self-righteous, preachy know-nothing bellends, but I'm sure there are good people on both sides - so I wonder how much of their obnoxiousness was just reactive because they were caught so unprepared. Sam clearly didn't expect Jesse to actually call in.
I said earlier that Emma sounded like she was having a mental health event, and to me that's how a revision panic might feel if I too had spent the preceding year calling the examiner an arsehole on the Internet, only to find him in my house asking me to explain the cocks I'd drawn on the exam paper.
None of this is any kind of excuse.
Lolllll metaphot
Sam Seder sounds like a drunk uncle badgering his wife about some marital dispute, Twitter is clearly a font of discord and madness, and I question my understanding of people when I try to explain why anyone would subscribe to Majority Report
Seriously listen to it and forget the context - Sam forgot to take the trash out, Jesse scolded him for it, and he is doing everything he can to avoid admitting that he should have taken the trash out.
It’s too bad Jesse is no longer torturing people at Abu Ghraib cause he could have used the audio of his appearance on TMR to torment his captives.
My ears are still bleeding.
I listened to the whole BARPod episode yesterday, having already listened to the agonizing Majority Report 20-minute segment with Jesse calling in. I was thus RE-TRAUMATIZED, triggered, and will need a safe space indefinitely in which to recover emotionally. None of you should try to reach me, as I will be near comatose from the strain.
I’ve got a dumb question (and lack enough self awareness not to ask it)... why is a parent considered a “conservative“ if they have the expectation that school staff members not engage in withholding information from a child’s parent? Specifically, what part of that expectation indicates a parent’s political affiliation?
Because since November 2016, "conservative" means anybody who even mildly questions far left orthodoxy. Even if the questions relate directly to the health and well-being of your own child
Exactly. If you don’t agree 100% with EVERY progressive issue, you’re a conservative bigot.
It’s bonkers. It’s like they’re so purist they WANT to push more people to “the other side.” They can’t even be bothered trying to be persuasive with their arguments with a sympathetic audience!
When we were meeting with the middle school last year (not uncommon, we have a son with an IEP due to autism), it was clear they presumed us to be
1. conservative
2. uninformed
All because we said we were taking a wait and see approach with our son and his gender questioning.
Which given how incorrect both conclusions are would have been funny if we didn’t strongly suspect that they were encouraging him to lean into his thinking that he might be trans. Our suspicions have been confirmed over the summer and this first week of school.
I don't know about "uninformed," but based on your comments here across a broad range of subjects, "conservative" is definitely correct.
You got me. A gender non-conforming woman who founded a campus feminist group and actively worked for the Democratic Party as a board member and volunteer at different times for 20 years = total conservative.
Guess what? Having heterodox views doesn’t make me a conservative. It makes me someone who, when presented with information that disproves my prior views, is capable of thoughtfully changing her mind. I’m losing patience with yahoos who are incapable of the same.
Assuming that's true, it would be evidence that you were at one time a liberal, but the current evidence is that you have adopted conservative ideology hardcore across a broad range of issues and rejected your former affiliation with feminist and Democratic Party causes. David Horowitz used to be a leftist; now he's a far-rightist. It happens. I'm honestly not sure why you're fighting this self-identification (other than a desire to deceive the audience as to the true nature of your political positioning)-- it seems like you have some residual guilt over your knowledge that conservative positions on, say, healthcare and taxation are immoral, but cannot square that with your actual views.
For what it's worth, I would note that I do not in any sense think that "being a conservative" requires adherence to the radically fascist positions of the contemporary Republican Party; from the standpoint of "decreasing the likelihood of radical social change," the Democratic Party IS the current conservative party, and should be supported as such.
You simply don’t have any foundation for your claim about my political positioning. I remain firmly left of center on most issues.
I no longer play politics like a team sport. Your inability to engage in politics beyond surface level team sport is telling of our times. You really would he better suited to the listenership of the Majority Report. You make political arguments that are weaker than my teenage children's arguments. Fortunately they have all learned that people don’t fit in tiny little boxes.
My foundation is your public comments on this here website. That's a pretty good foundation, as you make a very, very large number of them!
The rest of this is just childish insults, which are uninteresting to me. No, I don't like you either; we can skip the rest of the namecalling.
There you come again with your projecting.
You have constantly insulted and belittled me and others here. You are unable to take even a tiny helping of what you like to dish out. I’m not surprised but I am impressed with your one dimensional consistency.
You have cited exactly 2 issues that you believe make me a conservative. Two does not a broad range make. On both of those issues, you misunderstand the full range of my views.
I need someone to come and cite me for troll feeding again. That said, when someone is so consistently nasty, I find it interesting to explore where the fuck that might be coming from.
I've offered multiple invitations to you to clarify the nature of your unknown, purported left-of-center beliefs (and, indeed, the nature of your known and very public right-of-center beliefs), and so far, it's been crickets all around.
I think you're full of shit.
Crickets? That’s rich and illustrates your lack of willingness or ability to process information that contradicts your black and white thinking.
I’m self aware enough to know that I can be accused of many things but unfortunately under explaining or under articulating my thoughts and feelings isn’t one of those things.
You are welcome to think what you will. I’m more confident than ever that I’m better off politically homeless than riding whatever train you and your ilk are so resolutely riding.
Where the "information" in question is handwavey, nonspecific statements that conveniently omit anything that anyone might actually have any interest in? Why, yes, I do indeed have trouble "processing" that information, because there isn't any. This is making intellectual bricks without clay.
You've refused to state what you think the law should be on abortion; you've refused to state what you think the law should be on gender transition; and you've refused to state ANY of these purported "left-of-center" beliefs that you claim to hold. When someone gets this evasive about what they allege to be core political commitments, it's a good bet that they are lying.
And don't think I didn't notice that absurd claim about "aborting neurodiverse fetuses," as if that was a thing that people do-- that's just a straight-up lie from the forced-birther handbooks there.
Sorry, but that’s completely misrepresentations the point Katie was making. She was talking specifically about Conservatives expecting to be informed if a child came out as gay, when surely everyone knows that countless gay people have come out to friends and peers but initially not to their parents because they knew their parents wouldn’t be supportive.
Katie specifically made the point she saw it as different to parents not being informed of potential mental health issues.
Emma and Sam Seder are true believers. They’re going down with the ship and their show will probably go down with it. it’s a power of the ACLU and others who have become internally corrupted however, Do still possess their powers of persuasion and advocacy.
But do they really have beliefs? Or are they just deeply invested in tribalism? Only the latter was on display here.
These are the symptoms of a fanatical belief according to chat GPT. How many of these things are on display on the majority report
Cognitive Symptoms
Inflexibility: Unwillingness to consider other viewpoints or facts that conflict with the belief.
Black-and-White Thinking: Extreme, rigid viewpoints with no room for nuance.
Confirmation Bias: Actively seeking information that confirms the belief while ignoring or dismissing conflicting information.
Oversimplification: Reducing complex issues to overly simplistic terms that support the belief.
Overgeneralization: Applying a specific belief or rule to situations where it is not applicable.
Emotional Symptoms
Intense Emotional Investment: Emotional responses like anger or fear when the belief is challenged.
Indignation: A sense of moral superiority tied to the belief.
Intolerance: Unwillingness to tolerate differing opinions or beliefs.
Paranoia: Believing that there is a conspiracy against the belief or that people are "out to get them."
Behavioral Symptoms
Evangelism: Constantly promoting the belief to others, often unprompted.
Isolation: Avoiding or distancing oneself from people who do not share the belief.
Aggressiveness: Verbally or physically confronting those who challenge the belief.
Rigidity: Engaging in ritualistic behaviors or routines that reinforce the belief.
Acting on Extremes: Taking extreme actions based on the belief, which can range from socially disruptive behavior to criminal or violent actions.
Social Symptoms
Groupthink: Strong inclination to conform to group norms and beliefs.
Alienation: Estranging friends or family who do not share the same beliefs.
Depersonalization: Treating outsiders or those who disagree as less than human or as enemies.
Us-Versus-Them Mentality: Viewing the world in terms of in-groups who share the belief and out-groups who oppose it.
BINGO. Well-summarized.
If my shrink had affirmed my OCD induced intrusive thoughts, I would’ve driven off a bridge by now, because that’s what my stupid brain was telling me to do every time I drove over a bridge
If my doctor had treated my strep throat by amputating my foot, I would probably have rheumatic fever-induced heart damage and definitely have one less foot.
What's your point?
"I don't care about what you've actually written or said! All I care about is the kind of person you are, which has been determined by me, other media hacks, and advocacy organizations whose coffers depend on an ever-growing stable of named boogeymen, so shut the fuck up while I play the white knight to my paying subscribers, for whose intelligence I have nothing but the utmost contempt."
Me: “Hey, AI! How many teeth do humans have?”
AI: “Yes.”
I think I disagree that the torture article (2006, Sam Harris) is necessarily grotesque . He’s making a careful philosophical argument defending it in limited “rare” cases. Outlining the limits is very important for trying to avoid it in the majority of cases.
What a shock that Sam Seder even sucks at analogies.
Furthermore, it was very clear that those rare cases (ticking time-bomb scenarios) were not the sorts of cases where torture was used in Iraq and Guantanamo. Had the Bush administration pointed to Sam's defense to justify their torture programs, they would have been just as off-base as Republican AG's pointing to Jesse's article to justify their bans.
The article was by Pat Buchanan, I remember it well. He literally was arguing for Dirty Harry police tactics
It wasn’t this?
https://www.samharris.org/blog/in-defense-of-torture
You could be right. I thought he meant this one, which was in the WSJ and got a lot more coverage: https://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-case-for-torture-535
But in San Sader’s world maybe Sam Harris is a more significant figure
I think he mentioned “In Defense of Torture” by name, so it would have been the Harris article.
I guess so, which is interesting in itself - Buchanan was a presidential candidate and a national figure with a major media platform, whereas Harris was a pretty marginal figure outside of the atheist-progressive blogosphere. But the atheist-prorgressive blogosphere was Sam's environment of course...
I know it's a dog & pony show for their audience, but good god Sam and Emma are terrible. I don't know how many liberal leaning, normal people have to say things like, "My kid came out as trans, I don't exactly know what I should do, but the only people who won't browbeat me out of asking questions are conservatives and I don't like them but I guess I'm associated with them now through no fault or desire of my own." It's one of the things that stuck out about that NYT article a couple of months ago, and I don't know why people like Sam and Emma and even significantly more normal, less brain damaged people just cannot wrap their heads around the fact that stonewalling people and shutting down conversations, particularly about touchy subjects, will not help you make your case and will more often than not create the very situations you are supposedly against. And at what point can we also just accept that the author is, in fact, dead? If you write something, you're ultimately not responsible for anyone- whether you like them or not- using your writing. Republican AG's misquoting Jesse because they didn't closely read his article is just as bad as Sam completely ignoring everything he says because they didn't read the article, and they're responsible for it, not Jesse. Regular people use their brains and put interesting stuff out in the world and it seemingly only exists to get snapped up by absolute yahoos on either side in service of making their own point because why would you actually engage with something when you can just bitch about it and try to own the lib- or conservitards. Absolutely insufferable.
They told Jesse that he had an agenda and also told him to have an activist on the show.
Incredible.
The letter from the teacher makes me think that people should not send their kids to public school if they have any way to avoid it. It sounds like the institution itself is adversarial to parents.
I wonder how much of this is a parallel to the attitudes police can develop towards the communities they're supposed to serve because they mostly interact with the worst-behaved slice of the community. These policies seem to assume that parents are dangerous to their kids, which must be poisonous to relationships between parents and kids.
I just saw a story about a teacher's union in Colorado, I believe, that was instructing its teachers how to violate a law preventing teachers from surveying students on their pronouns... after a school administration told teachers not to do it at all. The union was suggesting they do it with paper and pencil as opposed to in computer systems, so they can easily be destroyed.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-controversy-erupts-jefferson-county-teachers-union-educators-destroy-evidence-student-surveys-gender-identity/
It's hard not to get the impression that (some) teachers view parents as obstacle to get past.
Parents are very, very often obstacles to get past. You often have to fight parents tooth and nail to get something for the kid that you know the kid needs. I don't believe in keeping secrets of any kind about the kid from parents, sexuality or gender or anything else, but dealing with parents is on the top 10 list of the worst aspects of teaching/education. Nearly every single one of them is 100% certain they know what's best for their kid, and many of them are certain they know what's best for *other* kids. And as you know, most people are idiots.
Most people are idiots includes teachers.
Yeah of course, that doesn't change anything about the point I'm making, that is to say, "It's complicated." But when it comes to parents, there's also a massive emotional bias involved, one of the most powerful that humans have, and it makes people even dumber.
I’ve seen families like this- where the kid clearly needs services and the parents refuse to consider that their child might have a learning disability.
Then on the other end you get some parents demanding things for their kids that the kids either doesn’t need or, in the case of grades/accolades, didn’t earn.
My bias is in favor of parents but I don’t envy teachers and some of the nonsense they have to deal with from parents, students and admin. I know so many teachers that have left the field or gotten themselves out of the classroom one way or the other.
I would upvote this if not for the bizarre advocacy of outing children (apparently not even just trans children, either).
I'm as troubled as you are by the letter from the teacher in NY, but I think it's important to note that public schools are run locally, and their cultures and policies vary accordingly.
I'd have a problem with the school the letter writer describes, but its policies are by no means universally held among public schools.
Not all public schools are the same. The public schools in my area are generally amazing and very well funded as far I am very privileged to have graduated from one of them. as I know there have been no cases of concealed social transition in my district.
Jesse needs an elevator pitch of his whole engagement with the trans issue. Maybe something like “trans care can be lifesaving but my reporting shows the standards of care for children are often not followed properly resulting in kids being led to transition when it wasn’t appropriate for them”.
Maybe that’s not Jesse’s actual belief but it sums up my understanding of the arc of his work (other than the pushback against addressing the problems with care which I think is a separate issue).
I think it would shut down people trying to downplay desistance as rare to just point out, “what if following the standards of care properly meant there would be even fewer, while still providing care for those who truly need it?”
Of course that depends on activists not being able to further weaken the standard of care
There can be no standard of care when treatment is based on subjective wants and desires. It's no different than cosmetic surgery (except cosmetic surgery is usually reserved for adults)
Yes. Plus people who have unrealistic expectations for their plastic surgery or are mentally unstable are supposed to be screened out.
Also psychosurgery, in general, as a method of distress alleviation was found highly questionable when we, as a society, re-evaluated lobotomy.
We should follow the "gender fluidity is natural" to its logical conclusion. If it's not a mental disorder, than pay for your cosmetic surgery yourself, like women have to do for their boob jobs and butt lifts.
“Multiple, highly respected European healthcare systems have determined that we currently lack sufficient evidence to justify providing puberty blockers and hormone treatments to minors” is a powerful and accurate soundbite that I think needs to be front and center. Because you can’t blame Republicans, you can’t fall back on “trust the science/experts” (this IS the science, these ARE the experts!). Instant cognitive dissonance.
“But what about all the studies…” “Most of the studies were performed on individuals very different in important ways from the current cohort of minors presenting as trans. And I’ve actually read the studies, and their actual data rarely supports the extremely pro-affirming care way they have been reported.”
I agree, I know It’s Complicated (TM) but when you’re getting shouted over, you need to have some clear sound bites. Jesse has a habit of immediately jumping into the weeds (interesting, relevant weeds, but still the weeds) and hedging and qualifying all his arguments, rather than making his point immediately clear, and that puts him at a big disadvantage here. On the one hand, it makes it clear he knows his stuff better than these shouty amateurs. On the other, it means that when he gets 10 seconds to talk at a time he never gets to actually say his thesis.
But at the end of the day there is only so much you can do when you’re getting loudly filibustered like this.
Jesse would’ve made a superb academic.
The problem is it won't matter. If you say:
> "“trans care can be lifesaving but my reporting shows the standards of care for children are often not followed properly resulting in kids being led to transition when it wasn’t appropriate for them”.
to an LGBTQA+ activist, you'll get the response "GENOCIDE! YOU'RE LITERALLY MURDERING US"
Sometimes it's best to let someone make a fool of themselves. You'll never convince an activist to budge, but maybe you'll convince the listener that the activist is a lunatic.
I was listening to this ep today at the LGBT Center in NYC. Not even aware that I was also wearing my Barpod tee. Over my headphones I heard a woman say "Does that shirt say Blocked and Reported? I guess that means you don't care about...." and then I missed the rest cause I was walking by her. I assume she ended it with "the literal murders of transpeople, especially transwomen of color!" Anyway, I guess I underestimated Katie and Jesse's notoriety!
She actually said, "you don't care about good rap music because you must listen to Jew-Z"
Lol yessss!
Pigeons! She thinks we are pigeon haters.
This was disheartening to listen to. I’m glad to hear even many of the listeners of TMR were disappointed with the tone of the discussion at least.
In better (and related) news, a new bombshell of a documentary series on Swedish public television just dropped called The Trans War. I’m sure English subtitles will be added soon. It reveals that ideologically driven doctors are still prescribing blockers to kids in Sweden, in direct violation of guidelines. It also questions the entire ideology in ways that I haven’t seen any mainstream outlet (in any country) do.
Is it on SVTPlay? What's the title?
Also I really really can't see this going well for those doctors - going up against socialstyrelsen is a real "fuck around and find out" moment. This may be the only time I will ever gleefully wait for the Jantelagen fueled - backlash.
I also see this really really helping the center right, there is a reason centerpartiet is doing well, and I hope they're the ones who pick up the disaffected sossar from this rather than M, L or SD.
Yes, it’s on SVT Play. Look for Transkriget.
Not sure I understand the political analysis. As far as I know, C is officially more “woke” on this topic than S. They’re also not doing well in the polls. And, the government who needs a wake-up call is the current one (M, L, KD supported by SD) who has a self-ID bill on their docket inherited from the S government that currently appears to be in limbo. Full disclosure: I’m a member of M and have worked in the upper echelons of the party.
As a sane lesbian, I’m heartbroken that the official “LGBTQ” chapter of every political party, from left to right (though the Swedish right is not typically socially conservative) are onboard with gender identity ideology. And because there’s less of this ideology in schools and normie everyday life here (compared to most of the U.S.) people don’t even understand that the script has changed A LOT from the old idea that a select few are transsexual and these are the ones that are asking to change sex and sex markers (as adults!)
This documentary really brings home the point that this all went off the rails at some point. I hope it will really wake people up to what’s happening, especially since the only way these legal - and cultural - changes happen is when people don’t know or understand what’s happening.
I had a long thing written out - but it got lost and didn't post.
I think I'm more out of the loop than I thought - a good friend of mine is very active in C in Blekinge, and she is a full on TERF so I probably just assumed the rest of the party was like that. I got stuck in the Netherlands during COVID and can't really move back until I get on top of the social housing list...
I'm kind of the token Leftist that still lives in reality for my more moderate friends and aquaintences. Mostly I'm very angry at everyone for how stupid (imho) every single party has been at dealing with SD - though most of my ire is aimed straight at S.
No one outside of the America-poisoned branch of V actually cares about this stuff. Hell, I remember articles about detransitioners that were totally neutral and fact based in magazines going back as far as 2015 with zero outrage.
Even the Swedish transsexuals I know want nothing to do with this, and all the nurses I know already made the connection themselves between self ID and cluster B disorders. No one wants this. It's bizzare.
Yeah, I know a young woman from C who’s also against this though she had to lean in to kind of whisper her agreement when I brought of the topic. I’m also personal friends with an MP for S who is very much against this as well. Unlike in the U.S. this is really not a left-right kind of issue.
The problem is that most normies don’t know about how weird it all is. I’ve had to tell otherwise very well-informed friends that a piece of legislation may be presented at any moment that would allow people to change their legal sex by going online basically. And they have no idea. Of course, the reason the legislative process has stalled likely has to do with internal disagreement within KD (and hopefully M, though I really need to check this with my sources). SD are firmly against it, but this particular issue isn’t part of the “Tidö” agreement. L is for it.
The problem is that many of the politicians who’ve paid lip service to the view that people should be allowed to change their sex more easily (such as the PM) likely have no idea what they’ve agreed to. I’m willing to bet that they’re thinking “okay, this sounds kind of weird but the full-scale no-guardrails version of this can’t seriously be what anyone is suggesting.” Well, it is. The willingness to play nice with activist organizations with long and otherwise honorable pedigrees shuts down whatever doubt they may be experiencing.
So you have the normies who have no idea what’s happening (in part because the average Swede hasn’t come across the more extreme forms of these ideas; I’ve personally never been asked for my pronouns in person or on a form anywhere), and then you have the people who know exactly what’s going on. These are either the activists or those who are mostly cowed by them, in “LGBTQ+” circles or fringy super-leftist groups, but are otherwise in the know. To they extent they (we) speak up, we’re treated as conspiracy theorists since the normies don’t know that this has taken over the old gay rights sphere as well as certain government agencies. But this is the situation everywhere. The activists don’t actually want everyone to know the details or the full extent of the ideology because the correctly suspect most people would disagree. Swedes are actually far less woke than most people outside of Sweden might think when it comes to these kinds of issues. I suspect it’s due in large part to our lesser degree of religiosity.
But you have all of the “LGBTQ+” chapters towing the RFSL line on this stuff, and they’re putting pressure on the politicians. Never mind that most gay people I know in my party (including me) are not *in* this chapter because we don’t agree with it. It’s all a weird manufactured fake consensus.
Just watched ep 1. Can I just say how based Dr Gillberg is? He's also one of the FEW professionals who is treating the "Hans Asperger is a Nazi" slander with the skepticism it deserves and not bowing down to the mob - I have so much respect for him and his balls of steel.
Agreed. So many people in this documentary are clearly over the bullshit.
The last paragraph was in reference to the LGBTQ chapters of the main political parties (funny how this is the only things they agree on…)
Nope, the same doc who is the head of the pediactric gender cllinic (or "unit" rather) at Karolinska is still doing her thing (at least I think it was her, I'll have to rewatch it). The revised guidelines allowed for the use of blockers in "exceptional circumstances." Turns out this doctor thinks they're all exceptional.
Her name. ;) I’ll get back to you when I’ve rewatched it. I’m sure there are others too, but she was mentioned as one of the main proponents of the affirmation approach.
Here’s a link to someone’s quick and dirty effort at a subtitled version. Not too bad from what I can tell, with the odd exception that the program used dubs English audio into Swedish. But that’s just Helen Joyce and most people are familiar with her takes anyway. 😂
https://www.bitchute.com/video/1ZLev4PKFd6D/
I like how the male host at the end acts like the masculine protector and says he will suspend the female host if she goes on Jesse and Katie's show. Emma Vigeland demurely looks at Sam Seder as her knightly protector and doesn't defend herself. How the hell has the left been caught in this regressive behaviour? It is the upside down world for someone who grew up in Sweden in the 70s and 80s. I cannot for the life of me believe that any women my own age would behave this way, nor any man feel proud of himself for acting like Sam Seder does towards his co-host.
If schools treat a kid as their chosen gender, that's an affirmative action by the school. If a teacher notices that a kid is gay, the school isn't actually doing anything in response to that. That's a huge difference.
It may be defensible for a school to keep a kid's secret. But it's never okay for a school to secretly do something with a kid and hide that from their parents.
The primary duty of care lies with parents. This is why schools have to tell parents when they see something that indicates the child is having issues, because parents are ultimately responsible for the child’s welfare. If a child was secretly trans at school but not at home, and then started self harming, the school could find itself responsible for withholding information about the child’s distress that could have allowed the parents to get appropriate support.
In any other case of student mental health issues, schools would expect to work closely with parents and professionals to help the young person stabilise. But when it comes to trans issues, they seem to be expected to lean into duality between home & school. It does not sound like a great solution, especially given activists’ insistence that trans youth are prone to suicide.
Jeez…sometimes I complain if B&R has a bad episode but then I have to hear a little bit of something like Majority Report and I’m reminded why I value what Jesse and Katie do and, more importantly, *how* they do it, covering sticky issues in good faith, always allowing for the possibility of dialogue. And frankly this reminded me why I’ve started listening to–for lack of a better term–more ‘skeptical’ or ‘heterodox’ media in recent years; say what you will about some of the people who occupy this space but there’s more respect for discussing ideas than you’ll find with, say, Fox News or Michael Hobbes.
What struck me most about MR is how they’re still essentially stuck in the Bush era – making debates over torture central to any discussion, arguing that not putting something in the first paragraph of an article is equivalent to ignoring it, the basic belief that wanting to have a good faith discussion was a cowardly distraction tactic used by evil people – all of these were staples of the blogosphere c.2005.
Sam was certainly not familiar with Jesse’s work; he gave off unambiguous ‘I didn’t do the reading’ vibes. Emma was just going to parrot Sam’s lead – his ‘joke’ that Emma would be fired or whatever if he showed up on B&R revealed more than he intended, I think. I guess they really didn’t expect him to call in.
Sam and Emma absolutely were unprepared to discuss this topic with Jesse. You're right that they seemed surprised that he actually called in, they even attempted to give an out (more for themselves) due to the initial audio issues.
The knowledge gap became even more apparent any time that MR tried to "gotcha" Jesse. In particular when Emma brought up a study and Jesse immediately knew the author and details. She tried to shift the attention to how early he brought up certain points (after claiming he didn't make them at all), which came off as completely pathetic on her part.
Sam's admission that he didn't know anything about Jesse's work was the icing on the cake. He realized he was totally outmatched and unprepared, and decided to throw in the towel.
Kudos to Jesse for a good showing despite all of the factors that were working against him (audio issues, bad faith debating by MR, etc...).
The first time hearing them scream at Jesse made my blood pressure rise.
The second time it was clearer I was hearing them panic.
Jesse must have ice water in his veins, staying cool despite the screaming 😏
Some things that jumped out to me:
They keep mispronouncing Singal. I think that's a good tipoff to the level of maturity you're dealing with.
When she mentions Jamie Reed, Seder says she "worked in the front of..." which is the activist lie that Reed was a receptionist and didn't work with patients.
And after erupting over the top 25 percent, Seder adds while Jesse and Emma are talking that 3,500 words would mean it's not in the top 25 percent. Like that's a real gotcha, even though they said 25 percent.
It's weird that Bob's Burgers would happen to feature actors from opposite ends of the kooky political spectrum.
It’s weird because to them Reed is simultaneously a know-nothing receptionist, but also a lynchpin of their claims of quality care, since she’s the one entrusted with delivering information on side effects.
Todays AI image has crossed into hyperreality and I'm here for it. I think it's the platonic ideal of podcasters, possibly more real than Katie and Jesse themselves
The assumed sexes in the description disturb me.
Bold of you to assume the male-bodied men are men and the female-bodied females are female
I listened to this as a way of distracting myself from what I thought was a stomach bug. As the podcast went on, I got more and more agitated over those nut jobs. And my stomach pains got worse.
Long story short, I am now short exactly one gallbladder.
Unresolved for me though is why anyone wants to listen to Sam and Emma? They sound horrible. I had never heard of them before, and for the life of me I can’t see the appeal.
So many of us felt ill listening, but you win! Hope you feel all better soon.
I fully committed myself, man.
Wait, forreals? I hope your recovery is smooth!
Thank you! If my little terrier would stop trying to jump on my belly it would be a bit easier for sure.
How were you listening to THIS episode as a distraction? lol
Hope you feel better soon :)
Yeah- in retrospect I think it really ratcheted things up.
Wishing you a smooth recovery from your surgery.
One of my close friends just had emergency gallbladder removal surgery, too. I wish you a quick and easy recovery!
Oh my! I guess we should all avoid further intake of the Majority Report. Heal swiftly, Molly!
Majority Report's emotional violence almost literally killed me. I demand a restorative justice circle and ten Oxy tablets pronto.
I hope your recovery goes smoothly and easily. Lots of R and R is needed!
It’s going OK, thank you!
Can Jesse please explain how he kept his cool? Breathing exercises? Goddamn, I envy that skill. Made them look like hysterical cunts by comparison. So gratifying
Total concentration breathing of a demon slayer
Many spires escaped being slain before Jesse adopted a zen approach to conflict.
I don't think you need to have ever been a parent to express some general propositions on K-12 education. (i.e. schools need to focus on pedagogy over ideology ; teachers should report child abuse).
But I chuckle when childless K&J get into more nuanced discussions and don't seem to have consulted any parents. (The gay/trans notification issue being a prime example). I would love to hear Katie say "I talked to my own twin sister to get her perspective". Or other friends, family- anybody? I would imagine two 40 year olds know some parents with school age children.
I do not advocate standpoint epistemology. I just would like to hear insider perspective that should be especially easy to get -we're looking for parents not CIA agents with classified Intel on Ukraine.
I’m not sure what you’re saying here about “the gay/trans notification.” Are you suggesting parents should be notified if a student comes out as gay at the school but not at home? Are you equating homosexuality with gender dysphoria?
Absolutely not. I'm just using shorthand to refer to the discussion at hand. I agree with J&K that there's a major difference between "LGB" and "T."
I hadn't heard of Majority Report before, and I'll be happy to never give it a thought again. This episode made me angrier than any I can remember.
It must be difficult for Jesse to more-or-less stick to the high road in a conversation like that, but props to him for doing so. In the long run, not being a raving lunatic (like the hosts) will play better.
I hope Jesse finds the therapy he needs, though, to dissuade him from engaging in such masochism in the future.
First time I had to stop listening to an episode of B&R. Seder is either a fucking liar or a piece of shit or scared of his audience or acting in bad faith. Alternatively, he’s a lying piece of shit acting in bad faith because he’s scared of his audience.
This is the kind of discussion I sometimes have with my leftist friends - all bad faith, vitriol, and ignorance. And what really annoys me is that they're stoned on weed at the same time.
But if us primos are cousins, how will the personals work?? We can't get married to each other :'(
(Well unless…we're Muslims)
Here in Britain, cousins marrying is a path to success. So all good.
Speaking of which, bring back the BARpod personals! Met some cool people through them!
Second cousins are fair game. Maybe even first cousins once removed.
All right man. I can’t lie. I’m kind of annoyed that there aren’t people making YouTube shorts of Jesse’s owning of The Majority Report. If I knew what the fuck I was doing online, I would make a million fucking shorts to show how STUPID Sam and Emma (?) are. All the fucking weird ass lefties are doing it. What the fuck man? And I am a weird ass lefty. So it makes me equally as mad. Maybe I’ll figure out how to do it tomorrow. I’m fucking pissed about it. Because this should be absolutely the most humiliating thing for the majority report but the videos I’ve seen are favoring TMR.
In all transparency, I am drunk as fuck because I follow the fifth column’s rules of engagement: don’t send us a message unless you are drunk. They have made me this Way. But God dammit man. It really fucking pisses me off. These ridiculous idiots are getting an upper hand regarding this “exchange”, and it is arrrrrrrrgggging me out. I am not with that shit. Get your meme-making troll of a son to fuck with the majority report. Please for the love of God. See you in a couple days. Lol. (sorry man. I am really drunk. I really hope that I can delete this later. But if not, I love you motherfuckers. Some of the people that keep me the most sane in this world are BarPodders.)
I've only seen the Destiny and the Sitch and Adam responses and they were pretty glorious. And I normally don't like Destiny. He does seem to be pulling away from team sports somewhat though, maybe there is hope for him.
Back at you.
So mad.
... is the spelling of your username a reflection of the fact that you were drunk? 😅
Lol. No, but it might as well be, because boy, do I have drunken ranter’s remorse (truly embarrassing. I HAVE to delete it.) I snuck my last name in because I am oh, so very clever. (Gags)
Someone probably already said this but the difference is schools do not keep official records of who is straight gay and lesbian. Teachers don’t have to tell parents everything they overhear, nor do they have to report name or pronoun changes used in peer groups. But if the child says to the school “please record my name as Heath instead of Heather and all staff should henceforth refer to me by they / them”, well, that’s official school business at that point and you have to notify parents.
I think Katie's on the right track on parental notification, and I'd go farther. It's likely Jesse and Katie both know parents whose kids have started getting into trouble at school, and I'd encourage them to talk to the parents to get the other side of the story.
The level of alarmingness varies, but can include acting out sexually, drinking at school, smoking pot, smoking tobacco, smoking crack, dealing drugs, hanging out with drug crowds, joining gangs, dating drug dealers, running with a crowd that skips school.
I don't think it's unreasonable at all for normal parents to want to know who their kid is dating, and I don't think it's reasonable for the kid to expect that they can publicly date someone at school and expect that to be held private from their parents. I'd make an exception for literal counseling from a professional, but if my kid is dating a drug dealer or blowing someone in the bathroom (or smoking!), I want to know.
I think back in my day the teachers really were not paying attention to much and we were smart enough to keep it that way. When did kids get so stupid?
That’s kind of why I’d generally be on “team tell the parents”. Because by the time something is obvious enough to come to the attention of an overworked teacher, it’s likely fairly serious and they are just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
11, maybe 12 seconds. That's how much time Sam and Emma gave Jesse after saying he'd get 30 seconds.
I fucking screamed when I saw the child model picture that Katie used for getting a haircut. Could not be a more stereotypical butch lesbian and I love her for it.
Wow. The Majority Report is like hearing a Twitter meltdown being given a voice for the first time. It's amazing to me that someone could be so intellectually deranged by their own politics that they think willfully avoiding opposing views is a virtue, yet are also willing to "debate" that person whose views they won't engage with. Did they think Jesse's piece that none of them had read wasn't going to come up? At least be consistent with your stance on whether or not you engage with the enemy or their work, as to not make yourself look like a rambling schizophrenic on your own show. I bet the appearance starts to crack their image to alot of their fans though. Hopefully. 💋
I strongly suspect the "strict headmistress" Katie refers to but doesn't actually name is Katharine Birbalsingh. She's controversial because she runs the UK version of a charter school in inner city London and hold students to high standards, which they meet. It is among highest rated public (in American sense of public) schools in the UK. She does it with a fraction of the budget of most schools, and the educational bureaucracy hates her for trying inculcate "small c" conservative values like personal responsibility and accountability. She also teaches kids path to success is to not use smartphones, something Jon Haidt has been saying of late, but Birbalsingh has been saying for more than five years. She just ignited new controversy because she called for some consistent guidance from UK government on how to deal with gender issues in schools, because right now, each school in the UK is making up their own policy, and nobody is happy with that. The people running schools are under fire from both sides because of it. I've interviewed Birbalsingh twice. She's funny, but also talks super fast. An hour of conversation with her generated a transcript of 10K words!
I have been following her on Twitter and I love her approach. I am a public school teacher in the US and have taught at schools with very low and very high standards. She is right. High standards work for kids from all backgrounds. Is she too good to be true? Do they expel kids who won't buy in to their program?
The hate she gets online is so weird to me. Is any standard greater than pity and coddling considered abuse now? I don't get why she is such a lightning rod for lefty rage.
Send me an email at technoskeptic@substack.com and I'll send you draft link to article about KB. Will actually be co-publishing it, Technoskeptic Magazine and Quillette magazine at the same time.
Why she is such a lighting rod is the last question I ask her in the second interview. I think you'll find answer interesting.
I'm very troubled by this Majority Report episode. It plays like a Fox News show.
They questioned Jesse like he was testifying at a congressional hearing. No substance, just, "would you say that... do you agree with me? So you don't, you didn't answer my question, I want you to say no... just say no, so I can record you saying "no" to my dumb question."
Emma was never going to come on the pod anyways from the sound of it! Get Ana Kasparian
It appears the ONLY knowledge they do have about the subject is what trans activists say about the subject. Why is their perspective the only one that matters on youth gender medicine? Pretty f*cking slanted if you ask me! And I say this as someone that’s not gender critical either!
Katie, take a picture of your hair right now, and post the picture of your hair right now.
I want to see a before pic, a current one, and then the pic after she gets the cut repaired. What are we primos paying for, anyway?
This was like Dworman/Bump pt. 2. While it may have seemed unproductive on the level of content, it was extremely productive in revealing how utterly disingenuous they are. They literally could not engage with any of the facts of this issue they are allegedly so passionate about. Even if one agrees with them on the issue, it would be impossible to defend the way they comported themselves here. Embarrassing.
Damn those clips from the Majority Report are so painful I have to skip them every time. What was even the point of going on this show, to let a self important asshole scream his hatred at Jesse ´s face to satisfy the bloodlust of their audience?
My partner received an email letting us know that the WashU transgender clinic will be closing. I sent to BARpod/Jesse but whoa I wish I had someone to discuss this with!
(Who wasn’t my partner working in this system)
This is now being picked up on reddit and discussed in exactly the manner I expected, so it’s nice to not be shocked, I guess?
How are you and your partner feeling about it?
Yes, that does tend to happen when the government bans something-- people stop doing it, at least in public (I have no doubt that black-market blocker and hormone acquisitions will skyrocket, on the other hand).
Seems bad to me.
It does seem extremely bad that black-market providers will thrive on supplying medicines off-label with very poor evidence for their efficacy, yes. Doesn't mean govt should support off-label prescription of drugs with serious side-effects based on poor studies/studies on unrelated groups.
"Supporting" somehow equates to "not outright banning" in your view?
Hmm. So, the government "supports" Brazilian butt lifts?
That's the best you can do? God you're boring.
Yes, the government preventing the provision of drugs with serious and irreversible side effects to minors for non-FDA approved purposes is definitely unprecedented and beyond the pale.
I mean, is there an actual precedent for this? That's a serious question. What other comparable off-label uses have states banned in this fashion?
Depends how narrow a precedent you’re going for. Have state governments previously banned a particular off label use of a particular class of drugs? I’m genuinely not sure.
Are governments generally accepted to have pretty broad legitimate powers regarding the restriction of drugs? Yes.
Does off-label use of drugs generally expose providers to potential liability for adverse affects? Also yes.
My point was really that we ought to be specific about what’s happening: “banning health care” really means “restricting off label use of a drug with known serious side effects in a vulnerable population”.
Coming from the folks who got hysterical over off-label use of ivermectin for COVID, this seems at least a little hypocritical.
Saying "this is something a government could theoretically do" and pretending it means "this is something a government has actually done" is... I mean, I wouldn't even call that a half-truth. It's just lying. The former would encompass, for example, "declaring pi to be 3.2"; the latter would not.
Ivermectin, meanwhile, has been studied hundreds of times at this point and repeatedly proven not to work in randomized controlled trials. That's not mere absence of high-quality evidence, it's specific, documented proof that it's quackery. Comparing it to any form of gender medicine is idiotic. If ivermectin worked, no one would bat an eye that it was being prescribed off-label.
I’m assuming that Planned Parenthood will go about their business of providing cross sex hormones without the threat/fear of lawsuits? I did not read the Missouri law.
Planned Parenthood generally only sees 17+ or 18+ for gender transition medicine. The law going into effect in Missouri will limit that to 18+.
PP, an organization that I supported for a lot of years, is where my son’s childhood best friend got his prescription for estrogen. No history of dysphoria and in his own words, he got it “for aesthetic reasons”.
Yeah, because 18yo is such a mature age. I’m sure they all understand exactly what they’re getting into. Curious if any of the detransitioners are attempting to sue PP. I’ve only heard about the insurance company ones.
Chloe Cole has sued Kaiser, both as an insurance company and a healthcare facility. I believe other detransitioners have filed suits where they have named the providers, the clinics and the insurance companies.
The informed consent model of care though largely indemnifies the HCPs and facilities. I think it is probably the case pediatric patients will have claims under the argument that they couldn’t validly give the informed consent but that young adults will largely not be able to make that case. Additionally many detransitioners don’t have the bandwidth to focus on litigation- they just want to get on with their lives and focus on what they can do to build happy, healthy existences for themselves. Some engage in advocacy and public speaking but most do not and I can’t say I blame them.
That makes sense. At some point as an adult, one has the right to made bad decisions. I have no legal background and am curious to see how this issue plays out in the next several years. I’m thinking about parallels to the opioid epidemic.
I’m not sure. My FTM sibling, like Buck Angel, opposes the informed consent model of gender care Both of them say that extended therapy was in their best interest leading up to their transitions. They might get derided as “truscum” and “trans-medicalists” by the TRAs and gender specials but I think they have a valid point.
We don’t amputate people’s limbs because they want their arms cut off so I’m not sure people really are entitled to make just any bad decisions they like.
Doctors have absolutely amputated people's limbs who had BID before, and the prevailing evidence, albeit the n is incredibly small for obvious reasons, is that it works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria#Prognosis
I'm no expert, but my understanding of the suits against opioid manufacturers is that they, like tobacco lawsuits, rely on the physically addictive nature of the products in question. Sex hormones are not addictive, at least not in the physical sense.
I also supported PP for many years. Now, they get $0.
Yep. I used to help plan events for their advocacy arm and there is no way I could even attend now. Instead, I support a women’s health clinic that isn’t caught up in the gender woo.
It wasn't banned. All the kids who were already receiving the treatments were permitted to continue. The facility *specifically cited* increased potential liability because of the extended SOL to file suit for malpractice.
So in your mind, "baseball did not ban the spitball in 1920" is an accurate statement? Wikipedia disagrees. Grandfathering in a handful of existing cases is not generally treated as "not banning" something. I think this is semantic game-playing.
In any event, whether a ban is accomplished de jure or de facto through the imposition of ruinous liability risk is irrelevant; red states have gotten very good at using the latter to alter the law (e.g. not only the Texas abortion ban, but also some of the anti-protest laws that they have passed in recent years).
"Ruinous liability risk"
Yep
Whoa. Did the email say why?
Here is the full text:
Since the beginning of this year, we have been navigating a complex challenge regarding the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. During this time, we have worked to complete an internal review and determine our path forward. We have now reached a point where we can no longer continue to operate the Center in the same way.
Missouri’s newly enacted law regarding transgender care has created a new legal claim for patients who received these medications as minors. This legal claim creates unsustainable liability for health-care professionals and makes it untenable for us to continue to provide comprehensive transgender care for minor patients without subjecting the university and our providers to an unacceptable level of liability.
For this reason, we have made the difficult decision to no longer allow Washington University physicians to prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors for purposes of gender transition. The Transgender Center will continue to offer other services, including education and mental health support for all patients, and medical care for patients over the age of 18.
This has been an incredibly difficult time for our medical providers, who have cared for their patients with skill and dedication, always in accordance with the standard of care and with informed consent of patients and their parents or guardians. We are deeply grateful to our providers for their commitment to their patients and their profession.
Please see below the statement the university will issue to news media shortly.
Sincerely,
David H. Perlmutter, MD
Executive Vice Chancellor for Medical Affairs
Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor
George and Carol Bauer Dean, School of Medicine
MEDIA STATEMENT
Washington University physicians will no longer prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors for purposes of gender transition. Patients who are currently receiving this care through the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital will be referred to other providers for these services. The Center will continue to offer other services, including education and mental health support for all patients, and medical care for patients over the age of 18.
We are disheartened to have to take this step. However, Missouri’s newly enacted law regarding transgender care has created a new legal claim for patients who received these medications as minors. This legal claim creates unsustainable liability for health-care professionals and makes it untenable for us to continue to provide comprehensive transgender care for minor patients without subjecting the university and our providers to an unacceptable level of liability.
Our medical practitioners have cared for these patients with skill and dedication. They have continually provided treatment in accordance with the standard of care and with informed consent of patients and their parents or guardians. We are grateful to our providers for their dedication to their patients and their profession.
We are committed to offering our support to patients and their families as they consider their options for future care.
Well, if the policymakers dawdle long enough, the lawyers were always going to step in at some point, so I guess this makes sense.
I find it amusing how the "solution" to letting doctors go buck wild was to let lawyers go buck wild.
It’s the American way!
Yes, it worked real fast. If the procedures weren't attended by so many potential adverse consequences or unsatisfactory results, an increased SoL wouldn't matter so much.
In fact, bans probably aren't necessary anywhere. All legislatures ever had to do was create genuine causes of action with reasonable SOLs, and you'll see the entire industry of dabblers and quacks and incautious practitioners dry up quickly.
But this simple and elegant solution is a big ask in the conservative states where bans seem so tempting. These are the very same states that have spent decades engaged in making medical malpractice suits damn near impossible under the guise of 'tort reform' because insurance companies fund their campaigns.
Regarding Sam and Emma, these were not the voices of knowing derision or confident condescension. These were the voices of panicked aborters. This is the first (almost certainly only) time I've heard either of them speak, but it sounds to me like they know how to get out of a situation they know absolutely nothing about while still looking golden to their audience of morons. I'm sure these clips are totally unfair to judge people based on, but none of the people I respect would ever talk like that in public. What an odious couple of people. The level of dishonesty it takes to press the eject button instead of actually trying to discover the truth is frankly despicable.
Jesse is absolutely right to walk away from that interaction feeling good.
In a past life, a different version of myself listened to that show regularly for, I dunno, a couple of months, and I can recognize when Seder is in way way over his head: he runs away from discussing concrete facts and goes ad hominem in a really unsubtle way. Jesse’s appearance, or at least the clips played on this episode, is a great example of this.
I’d like to believe that the fact that I only listened to that show for a brief period of time is a testament to my ability to spot this bullshit routine, but that sounds immodest—let’s just say I think it’s obvious now, and I would hope that at least a few members of his audience came to that conclusion upon listening to that exchange.
My favorite part of this episode was during housekeeping when they started making up fake merch.
Re: School disclosures to parents
Schools cannot discuss things like who students are dating or whether they smelled like MJ one day because the school cannot confirm and they ostensibly aren’t involved. It would be like gossiping about the kid.
However, if a student is found in possession of MJ — irrespective of how they smell — the school can and must tell parents.
And that’s why the gender identity is an issue. If the school is participating and validating by using a different names and/or pronouns, they are involved need to disclose. If the kid is just dressing GNC and not asking the school to be involved or complicit, there’s nothing to tell.
J and K, I consider you two friends at this point so I will tell you what I would tell a friend: Just. Let. It. Go. I’ve learned the hard way that some people are not willing to listen to anything that discredits their opinion, no matter how much data and factual evidence you have to back it up. It was pointless to go on the show and it’s pointless to have Emily on BAR.
What they essentially are saying in this very cringey segment is that if you report something that is true, if in any way it gives fodder to the “wrong side”, it should not be reported AT ALL. Just as reporting that the COVID vaccine may not be as efficacious as we first thought was treated as info that should not be reported, since it gave fodder to the antivaxer crazies. And probably it did, but hiding it is not going to make things any better.
I think that continuing to engage with people who absolutely refuse to listen to reason or disagree intelligently is a fools errand. I too have a desire to engage in a civil debate that includes nuance and respect but there are those who are simply incapable of doing that.
Please don’t invite her on the POD. What will you gain? She won’t listen to you, she will just make her non sequitur points and then you will “school her” gaining applause by your very loyal BAR listeners and then are you no better than they are having you on so they can gain the same praise from their own listeners? Just something to think about. Either way I love and respect you immensely!
It was far from pointless. It showed a lot of people who is reasonable, and who is not. If you go to Youtube, and read the comments, you'll find a lot of people who claim to be MR followers who are bowing out of it. Not hardcore fans, but that usually tends to be the smaller demographic among a population of followers. Believe it or not, a lot of people still tune into these shows to become informed. Most of us don't show up looking for validation in our beliefs, as we're not sure what to believe. Jesse going into that place, and speaking to an audience that doesn't get put outside it's comfort zone too often can be an eye opening experience for many people, and not usually in the way organizers expect.
I agree. In addition, this is a great albeit painful-to-listen-to record of Sam’s and Emma’s bellicose ignorance, poor manners, and intellectual vacuity. It wouldn’t exist as such had Jesse not called in. When the history of the shitlibs’ self-immolation in the teens and the 2020s is written in a few decades, this sneering contempt-fest will rate at least a footnote. I can’t think of a single better example I’ve heard of allegedly credible commentators working their way down the fallacy chart on Wikipedia as if it were a checklist of their duties, all while aggressively talking over and refusing to listen to their “guest”. They were so petulant that I found myself feeling embarrassed for their parents.
But something even better and more practical can come of this: Katie’s closing remark needs to be the next BAR t-shirt. “Jesse is not a garbage human. He is a garbage man.” Who wouldn’t want to wear that?
"Garbage Human" with "Hu" crossed out would be a neat merch idea
Yes I can see your reasoning somewhat but until I see them apologize to Jesse and ask him to come back on and let him actually speak, I won’t see this as anything but an ego boost on their part. But often I see Jesse fighting back on twitter with people who don’t deserve his time. I’ve done the same and realized that I was never going to make a dent in people’s shallow reasoning and in essence it just induced a lot of stress and mental exhaustion for myself. In the end, I realized that engaging with people who don’t have a good faith argument whatsoever, and are only capable of spouting lies and idealistic tropes as if they are scripture are not worth the time.
Jesse is... not very good at engagement on Twitter. What he manages to avoid showing on that episode of MR is what regularly comes out in his tweets. So he is ineffective. He's aware of this, and has regularly discussed this on the show. However I tend to think that this is a function of the limitation of Twitter, and not necessarily a failing on anyone's part. Twitter, given its requirements on brevity, is antithetical to nuance. And Jesse, indeed most issues facing society, are in fact, extremely nuanced.
The show portrayed Twitter goons as just that. Goonish behavior that is only acceptable on Twitter. Take it off that platform, and it doesn't just do poorly, but gets scientists wondering if things like social media are really bad for the psyche of an entire society. Yeah, I don't like seeing this stuff, or watching someone who deserves respect due to their respectful nature get treated so poorly. But there is no other way to expose these people for what and who they are then to simply step into their traps.
Jesse doesn't need to go back, or get an apology. The market will do the rest of the talking for him. This episode will see MR get fewer downloads, and have a shallower following. This will force the show into ever increasingly wild viewpoints that fewer and fewer people support, until eventually they're not even around anymore. That's besides the fact that some of those people will come here, and listen to the segments already made on this topic, which these two have been very diligent in addressing quickly.
It’s certainly possible to be both nuanced and pithy - but it’s not a skill Jesse seems to have (which is fine, and doesn’t prevent him from being an effective longer form journalist).
I don't fully agree. Certain things really do have a lot of nuance. Enough that it defeats the ability to be described briefly. The devil is in the details, and I don't much like taking in only what someone else thinks are the important points of an incredibly complex issue. However most things aren't incredibly complex, and you really can be both nuanced, and pithy about them. Trans issues are not one of those things on that list in my opinion.
Twitter certainly has inherent limits to how much nuanced conversation you can have on the platform.
But trans issues can certainly be covered on Twitter better than Jesse does (not perfectly, but better). He’s not a good Twitter user.
Re: Teachers not sharing things with parents
There's an important distinction that Katie and Jesse didn't acknowledge in their discussion about teachers sharing certain info about students with parents. There's a mountain of difference between teachers not being *allowed* to share info, and teachers not being *required* to share the info.
Wow. I am so glad I don’t live on the west coast. Every time I get my hopes up that this insanity is waning, I read another story about how parents are being denied their constitutional rights. I hate this for you and every other parent who is living through this particular hell. My daughter is almost 18 so I’ll soon be entering a different level of hell, the waiting and wondering, knowing Planned Parenthood is right there to pass out hormones without my knowledge or consent.
"when a husband changed my daughter's name"
Is this some kind of weird poly thing or did I just interpret the sentence wrong
I used to listen to Majority Report a few years ago but they very quickly became completely insufferable. Even when I agreed with them their sanctimonious style was deeply off-putting. They'd rather be smug than actually have any real conversations.
On the keeping secrets from parents issue...being gay vs trans is different. Being gay doesn't require any action from the teacher/school. Transitioning requires them to use a different name and pronouns. And in most cases, including my own public school district, the school then provides "affirming counseling" to the student without the parent's knowledge. Schools hide behind the abuse issue as an excuse for keeping these secrets. But, schools and teachers are REQUIRED by law to report suspected abuse. In almost all cases, a student coming out as trans indicates a potentially severe mental health issue that parents need to know about.
Exactly. I believe Katie touched on this a few weeks ago -- children who are gay, are not (necessarily) in distress; there’s no diagnosis, no potential medication, surgery, or request for others to affirm, nor desire to be admitted to spaces designated (appropriately) for their sex.
Being gay is merely a slippery slope to being romantically involved with a person of the same sex.
Identifying as trans or more specifically, suffering from gender dysphoria is a medical condition-- the idea of keeping this from a parent or guardian is disturbing, to say the least.
Yes, you articulated this much better than I did.
It is indeed difficult to make someone understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it
Good on you for keeping your composure, Jesse!
Please please please look into the story of Sage further and bring some sun light to that awful story. That story was first covered on the PITT Substack. Then reported on by Lisa Selin Davis. And yes since then it has been covered by largely right publications but not just the Daily Wire. It’s ridiculous that the MSM is not covering this story. Please do some investigative journalism on this. You can start by calling Lisa Selin Davis.
There was a lengthy story in The Federalist about this, although it was criticized for exaggerating some details. It’s so outrageous that I can see how people might think it’s stretching the truth, so, why isn’t anyone from msm doing their own story about it? This is the nightmare for every parent.
I’d only ever seen the odd clip of the Majority Report and it was in connection with them mocking Dave Rubin (who tbf is an idiot) but my conclusion was the show was nothing more than infotainment, they simply weren’t serious people. That so many of these shows (and let’s be clear there’s just as many if not more that lean right) are able to become so successful, with people who’s knowledge only any subject has the depth of a puddle, pretending to present serious political debate is a pretty scathing indictment of modern political culture. They’re all making us collectively more stupid.
Jesse experience just reinforces that view.
Sam Seder is intellectually dishonest.
Arguments have to be grounded in truth.
Since intellectually dishonest people are not grounded by truth, there is no way to push against their vacuous positions.
It’s like trying to land a knockout punch on a hanging sheet.
I’d be happy to cut Katie’s hair--but only her armpit and leg hair.
Ian Miles Cheong approves this message.
If Ian Miles Cheong cut Katie's hair then there's a big risk she'd end up covered in ants.
Woman covered in ants > woman covered in body hair
Controversial hot (creepy crawly) take here.
After this exchange, I finally actually read the Atlantic article and I don’t think anyone could honestly describe it as transphobic. One of the primary takeaways is that some individuals who transition are much happier.
I occasionally listen to both the majority report and blocked and reported and was just disappointed with the entire exchange.
This thread has generally covered all the bad arguments, bad logic, sound bites and theatrics over substantive points, and gish gallop from Sam and Emma’s side. What I was surprised by is how many Majority Report fans thought Jesse lost this debate. I don’t know what we can do to improve discourse in general.
Katie once again being the voice of reason. Meanwhile Jesse keeps trying to keep his connections with members of his former/current tribe not realizing that those bridges have been inexorably burned.
These people are accurately reflected in The Martyrmade podcast’s series on Jonestown “God’s Socialist” particularly the final episode. Upper middle class educated white people who have no skin in the game and who’ll lose nothing when this deluge passes.
“I think it was maybe…their last haircut ever”
This got the laugh, had to take a moment from the dishes. Well played.
Just when I am fed up with the MAGA crowd ranting and raving their nonsense, I hear this nonsense from looney leftists. It sounded like the Salem Witch trials or a Stalinist show trial. The self righteousness, ignorance and rudeness of these two people is just appalling. Jesse is to be commended for not freaking out.
The teacher/kid notification question is actually really simple.
Generally parents know better than their children, and this becomes more and more true the younger the kid is. And parents absolutely deserve to know important things about their children.
Now the case where there are actual concerns about abuse that is different. But too often stuff is kept from parents as part of the teachers (or school districts) political project.
Anyway, there is a huge difference in what is appropriate for a student who is 18 or turning in a year, and an 11 year old in terms of parent secrecy.
Man that MR episode was a perfect example of how so called progressives leverage the factual economy, where it is just far easier to create a mess for one’s chosen enemies than it for them to clear it up, and one doesn’t need to be smart or have any real information in one’s hands to do it.
Second, and this is true hair splitting from my armchair, I think Jessie missed an opportunity to expose Sam’s bad faith straw manning early. He mentioned what I’m assuming to be be Sam Harris’ article on torture, which made the point that torture is not actually an example of an unambiguous ethical phenomenon (as the commonly cited example from Australia indicates-in this case the police had a binary choice-beat up a car thief to extract information on the location of a car with a baby in it, or leave the baby to boil to death in the car-unless we would conclude that a boiled baby is a price worth paying to occupy the moral high ground of preserving the dignity of a car thief who would actually leave a baby to boil, we have to conclude that there is no such thing as a ‘simple’ ethical position at all, at least not if one cares about actual consequences . In my view the Jessie an error in conceding this point, which is easy for me to say from the sidelines. My advice is don’t feed the trolls.
Seder and Vigeland are so preemptively smug and convinced of their righteousness, it could never be a useful conversation. Mad props to Jesse for giving it a shot though.
Also, can't want to hear about The Birbalsingh (the strictest headmistress), I find her pretty fascinating.
Woof. I'm not sure I can even finish this. The clips are really painful.
Jesse, you must be commended for your calmness and patience in the face of the attack on you on The Majority Report. Listening to their hostile and rude diatribe was enraging. I would love to see you and Katie take on those bullying dunces in a real debate!
This is excruciating. People listen to these dingdongs every day?
Few comments: destiny’s analysis was entertaining, particularly the bit about how utilitarian arguments cut both ways. I think none of seder’s tribal listeners will be convinced, but if there are any free thinkers who hated Jesse because they simply trusted the wrong people’s “facts” maybe there’s a crack in the foundation.
Finally, unrelated, and not sure where to leave this but I continue to pine for the author of The Quick Fix to address some of these studies claiming medical racism. I keep hearing them trotted out in debates, in the npr sphere. Either it’s true, in which case it should be much more prominently covered, or it’s shoddy, in which case the people who keep trotting it out should be corrected. If I had to take a guess I’d wager it wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny because nobody seems to want to look at it too hard.
The people in the AI image look like they are going to eat me.
I need to stop listening to this episode because I just get angrier and angrier every time I do.
Sam and Emma are cowardly, childish grifters completely incapable of engaging in good faith. Fuck them.
There is absolutely no way on Earth that "Britain's Strictest Headmistress" is not a CFNM femdom video on the Internet.
Oh my god... they are so pathetic! Any time someone has to talk over their opponent or move the goalposts like that it's a dead giveaway they can't win the argument. Agree with Katie, Sam & Emma embarrassed themselves. Youtube and the internet has been great for democratising broadcasting, but seeing talentless blowhards like E & S massacre a delicate subject like this, and shit all over a decent and principled journalist like Jesse in the process, makes me want to bring back gatekeeping. They seem to think that it's enough to have a Very Strong Opinion and a loud voice in order to be an authority on current affairs. Knowledge and fact checking are not apparently important.
“Please do not ask someone to suck fat honky dick in the comments. We don’t like to censor.”
Kinda sad that the most airtime given to acknowledging this venue on the pod that I can remember, as opposed to the constantly mentioned subreddit, was to cite recent assholish activity.
I advocate for war. Tribalism is worth fighting for!
Ooh, when are we getting the Fat Honky Dick t-shirt?
Sam and Emma I think are probably the dumbest motherfuckers on YouTube. Neither of them are capable of forming a singe original thought. It’s a wonder either of them know how to breathe.
They're actually really good at what they do. Then again, so is Trump.
Jesse, are the rumors true that you were playing Slay the Spire while you were calling in to TMR? Cause that’s some next level Jedi shit.
I didn’t know of those two people before this episode and don’t care to listen to them any further. I prefer they keep those people out of my BARPod listening experience.
I get that Jesse’s approach here is that they need to justify their false/misleading claims and so he asks them variations on “What is it that I’ve written that you disagree with?”, but I don’t think that was an effective use of his time.
I think if he had ask more specific questions like “Jamie Reed’s claim was that patients weren’t being treated for cormorbities, not that they needed to have other conditions like OCD solved before undergoing treatment for GD. Do you disagree with that?” they STILL would have deflected, but Jesse would have gotten more substance across to listeners open to being persuaded. These people seem to act in such bad faith and I think the aim of going on their shows is to address their audiences, not the actual hosts.
Let Douglas Murray moderate.
Maybe he and Malcolm Gladwell can do it together.
After listening to that Majority Report the other day, mini wildfires proliferate in my brain when I hear Emma and Sam speak. So pardon me if I didn't understand what Emma was saying about OCD. But wtf I thought I heard her imply it's not something to consider before affirming care? What a shockingly juvenile understanding of OCD. Which she has?
No she was saying someone wrote in saying they had OCD and she “knows people with it”.
Ah, so even more ridiculous than I thought. Thanks!
Hello, if I could offer my 2 cents on how to proceed: I’ve seen these situations go down many times over the last decade, and I think that “debate me for charity” and “come on my show and debate me” are weak and often backfire. Both are often gauche IMO. If you do choose to proceed, I agree with Katie when she says there should be a moderator. I feel like there was just recently an episode where it was discussed that charities are seen as a morally simple tool, but in fact they often add a layer of complexity which fucks everything up.
I feel that as a culture we’re in a debate over which comes first: do we first get into the weeds and emerge armed with data and then make up our minds? Or do we first “care” and “sympathize” and whatnot, and then arm ourselves with data that supports our presumptively virtuous intentions? Seder is quite emphatic that he doesn’t care that he doesn’t know anything about Jessie, because Seder already knows that Jessie is bad because he detects it using his psychic powers.
Majority Report already humiliated themselves, and proceeding further just puts Jessie in a position where if he makes two or three tiny mistakes, his enemies will claim victory.
“And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.” -Hume
I always meant to read this stuff but every word has a different meaning in modern English LOL. Thank you though, I appreciate it that you read my comment and drew a connection to a venerated philosopher :) edit: or maybe you’re saying my comment is dumb and the quote is an argument against it, I have no clue LOL edit 2: I drank my coffee and read the quote again, and I get it :) thank you *dab*
So this guy doesn't even know if 2004 was 'before your time', Jesse. He thinks you might be under 20. Tells you quite a lot about his level of preparation for his own show
I took that as a straightforward, and immature, insult.
I was thinking later how every time they said, 'I DON'T CARE!!' they just sounded like a teenager talking to a parent. I was dying for Jesse to say, 'Well what do you care about then?' but he would only have been playing into their hands. (PS He is so right that they were filibustering)
I’m a mom and surrounded by young cousins who grew out of cross dressing for fun and no one called this “gender dysphoria.” However, if we must medicalize this very common rite of passage then note it’s not a “very serious condition.” What IS serious is transitioning. And if desired it’s 99.9% based in social psychosis. When a child reaches this point parents/guardians must take action. And it’s nuanced. There are great books available now with solid advice. Also, those audio clips of those fanatics was very disturbing. What’s the point here? It’s impossible to communicate with True Believers.
I have to make a comment about "gender dysphoria" and all the talk about it. There's your article right there Jesse. Do an article on the term. Find out how it was forced into the the DSM by activists, and the Ray Blanchard typologies disappeared. GID and AGP (Blanchard's typologies) are still very much extant. Think about it. We don't have a agreed upon definition of gender at all - because it's defined by the culture in which it exists. How would, say, traditional Sikhs (free from the imposed patriarchal dominant Hindu culture in India) transition? Women can wear the same clothes, do the same martial arts, preach, lead religious services, names from the Adi Granth are unisex. Would it be even possible for a "trans woman" to exist in a culture where hair cutting is forbidden? It's a purely cultural construct. So it can't be medical. And dysphoria is just another word for depression.
Now coincidentally, WPATH started as:
Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association.
Which also developed the "gender affirming" model based on Magnus Hirschfeld's work with medical transition. Which started in 1930. For context that is 5 years before lobotomies were also used as psychosurgery. It strikes me as interesting that psychosurgery would be so discredited in the case of lobotomies and yet...
Anyway. If you want a good topic for an article, look at the history of "gender dysphoria" being the diagnosis of choice and it should have replaced GID and AGP.
I would say being at odds with ones sex is a response to trauma and that it's a manifestation of trauma-related depression and not the cause. I should really bite the bullet and try to write and research this myself.
I wonder if Emma really meant to argue that gender dysphoria is an inappropriate term, or that you can be trans without having gender dysphoria. I’ve heard the latter thrown around a lot by trans supporters recently. Though then the question becomes - if you want to transition but don’t have any dysphoria, why should the rest of the world accommodate you?
I'm not going to touch the majority of this Charlie Day-level conspiracizing with a boat oar, but I do want to share a specific data point on the subject of autogynephilia, which is that it appears not to be all that explanatory of transition-related dysphoria because it turns out that everyone has it to some degree:
https://aella.substack.com/p/everyone-has-autogynephilia
Given this, it seems more like slightly elevated levels of autogynephilia are a symptom of whatever biological etiology is causing late transition, not a cause.
"Blanchard: Yes, it was primarily to make patients and also trans activists and transsexual-activist groups feel happy or that they had been listened to, but I would say that the name change probably owed more to — or owed as much to politics as it did to any change in the science."
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/ray-blanchard-transgender-orthodoxy/
I also had this conversation with Blanchard myself on Twitter before he was banned. He said GID / HSTS was due to trauma. *shrug*
Maybe read Michael Shermer's book about conspiracy to get a better understanding what conspiracies are (and aren't)? I'm not sure thinking the organisation that invented the diagnosis "gender dysphoria" wanting to see the diagnosis "gender dysphoria" in the DSM is an oar's length stretch or not.
Weird reply. *shrug*
Sam talking to Jesse about his work:
https://youtu.be/NoJ5ci0A8sY
Question for people who have already listened to this: how much of the ep is excepts from the Minority Report show? Because I already have a headache and I’m not sure I can stand it.
Well, since it's "Majority Report", there are technically no parts from "Minority Report", but some clips from that movie would have been a nice running joke!
TBF they only took a small fragment of it
I would still recommend having at least a stiff drink before listening. This was one of the more painful episodes to listen to.
Wow, that "Emma" woman has the most annoying voice I've ever heard.
What giant pieces of shit all those people are.
Destiny did good
Sam Seder sounds like the health inspector, Hugo Habercore, from Bob's Burgers.
Also Fenton on Home Movies?
Oh my wordness!
He is a fucking voiceover actor.
He is Hugo and Fenton! 🤯
And he manages to actually be like those characters IRL 😂
Home Movies was so good 😍😍😍
One of my all time favorites! Coach McGuirk is such an amazingly written character.
That's so spot on, but I'd never have come up with that on my own. I'm cracking up now!
[Editing this comment because I didn't initially realize you had discovered the voice actor connection] ... I’m posting this with very little awareness of the backstory, but here is H. Jon Benjamin calling in to the Majority Report I think in an adversarial way ... um, you’re welcome? Lol https://reddit.com/r/h3h3productions/s/Jb0mT8A6ig
Oh, no worries. And thank you so much. That was hilarious. I could listen to Jon Benjamin pretend to pick on Seder everyday. Seder came off far less annoying in that exchange, almost lovable.
Thank you! Yeah, my mind was blown once I realized that he was ever associated with anything cool.
Now I can begin my Saturday. Thank you!
I tried to check all the comments first, but if no-one else has already offered, I'm 100% in on a donation to a charity of Emma's choosing if she has the courage of her convictions to have a discussion with Jesse on BARpod. I'm DINKy, I'll go big.
But it's probably a moot point, what with her "boss" saying he'll fire her if she does. Poor Emma, her hands are conveniently tied.
So a theme I see in the arguments supporting MR here are based, largely, on the perception of the rights views of Jesses work. That seems like an extremely dangerous precedent for this movement to set, given that these fights do need to win in actual policy battles that will happen in courtrooms one day. To have the actual author of the article go on record claiming that the rights arguments made using his work is wrong would be extremely helpful. However the right is going to have all this ammunition to prove that even the left thinks that his work supports their case!
I'm regularly impressed at how much political power this movement has, and how little it truly understands how to wield it. It's not just the simple stuff, like maligning your opponents, and treating those who haven't decided as if they're those same opponents. It's the level to which they have to control a narrative, and the complete lack of foresight in seeing how those narratives can actually fall apart, and take your movement with it. Movements should try to fit into society, not try to make society fit around them.
Completely agree. That’s what was so satisfying about every one of the British tribunals and judicial reviews; watching these ludicrous positions being forensically pulled apart by barristers, while again and again their genderist proponents appeared to learn absolutely nothing about how terribly they were failing.
The omertà on reporting cases of mad illogic in trans policy (Isla Bryson, etc) cracked after the court hearings. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as the old saying goes.
This reminded me of when Jesse crushed Weinstein & Lindsay. I say this as someone who agrees more with his opposition (Weinstein & Lindsay, not the Majority clowns) but his arguments were more coherent and stronger even in a pitched debate.
Going to your opponents home terf and spanking them while at a disadvantage is impressive rhetorical skill.
Whether ‘home terf’ is a joke, a typo, or an indication that your autocorrect is too online, I like it!
(Edit: Grammar.)
When/where/what was this?!?!? I’m intrigued!
https://www.youtube.com/live/oWCi1PXbf8g?si=BZvlHpDsT75Vg6xh
Whoa!! Thank you!!
Yeah, watching it again now, I think Jesse’s arguments age pretty well for all that I disagree with his minimization of the dangers of wokeness compared to Trump. I remeber thinking Lindsay should have hit on the title ix kangaroo courts harder as evidence that Biden would and has instituted woke policy and would if elected. Still, a really interesting look back, so thanks for that.
FILABUSTER .... is the correct word for what Sam did!
I just hope no one with actual OCD listens to that show. No, OCD doesn't latch onto something “real” in the person. Sexual orientation OCD is a common theme, and I imagine the same must be true about trans stuff. Of course, obsessing about either theme doesn't mean you are gay or trans.
Love the show, but I don't think I can take listening to the clips of the majority report people treat Jesse so unfairly 😂
Do you want to know why Trump is going to be re-elected in 2024? Listen again to these clowns on majority report. If they are representative of the Dems then kiss the election goodbye. They won’t need another Jan 6 attack on the capitol. There will be a large margin of Red States.
Don’t want Trump again but the left Dems are totally imploding. Going down fast.
Forgive me, but I really don’t see how electing Trump will teach these people anything. He’s just as damaging to the discourse, but for some reason a big chunk of American voters have decided that The Enemy of Their Enemy is Their Friend.
Whether anyone learns anything doesn’t matter. We are going to have a second Trump administration. Maybe extreme leftist desire this and they will get their wish.
I'm pretty sad that Sam Seder voices a character on Bob's Burgers, even if his character is an obnoxious health code inspector.
I mean… isn’t that just perfect?
I suppose. It's about as perfect as Jimmy Pesto being a Jan 6er.
He's a gay man imitating his mother, which I find infinitely amusing.
Some people of accused here of cherry picking students but as far as I know she doesn't. Why her methods work so well, particularly in the inner city, is that her school may be the only structure a lot of her students get in their life. Having defined goals in a world that is otherwise chaos is the best leg up to give a child from a difficult background. I'll be releasing my interviews with her towards end of the month. I can't say she's never expelled anybody, but if it happens, I haven't seen coverage of it. Her impulse seems to be to fix the bad habits, not get rid of those who have them.
The difference between outing a gay kid vs outing a trans kid is mainly just medicalization. Medicalization is part of transition and social transition is often a gateway to medical transition and with medical decisions parents generally should be involved thus if any school is participating in social transition parents should be in the loop.
Social transition and medical transition are obviously different.
But I would say, social transition is a psychological intervention (the supposed justification is that it’s suicide prevention!) and certainly you’d expect the school to report a student requesting psychological care in other circumstances.
I think that's too easy.
If a child changed his or her name for some non-trans reason, and everyone was using the new name, presumably this information would be passed on to the parents. Names are important in all sorts of legal contexts.
If the child was an atheist (as most children are) and suddenly Orthodox Judaism went viral on Tik Tok and the kid demanded to be circumcised, presumably the parents would be notified of this.
If anything, the the issue with gay "outing" is an exceptional case, both because there is an actual historical context of substantial homophobic abuse that generates a plausible basis for withholding the information, but also because people's sexual interests and behaviors are normally considered exceptionally private information regardless of whether they're gay or not.
There's something deeply bizarre about saying that the difference between two things is medicalization and then arguing that schools should be involved in outing people in a circumstance that... doesn't involve medicalization. This is giving me vibes of Greg the Pre-Gay Kid from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Stop me if I'm making too much sense here, but how about just involving the parents when it, you know, actually involves medicalization? That seems like a fairly bright line, unlike ratting people out when they ask their friends to call them a different name or wear their hair different or whatever.
I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse about the reality of social transition in most blue states and jurisdictions in the US. It's generally an on-ramp to blockers and hormones heck many psychiatrists even recommend it as part of the affirming model. It's not just a fashion choice or a haircut choice it's realistically a non-pharm intervention for trans-identifying youth.
“Deliberately obtuse” is a kind way of putting it.
So what?
Seriously, even if I were to credit this "gateway" argument (which is just about as persuasive as other, similar arguments in the past, notably in favor of marijuana prohibition), what's the "action item"? Why is it necessary to act on the "gateway" instead of just acting on the thing that you actually want to act on?
(I mean, there's an obvious answer here, which is that the thing that you actually want to act on IS social transition, but presuming that people intend the natural and probable consequences of their actions is an advanced concept for this blog, so we'll put that to one side for the time being.)
I think the BARpod episodes where Jesse or Katie are the main characters are less interesting than the ones about other internet drama.
Yeah they always are much worse.
OK, Jesse was right, that child picture is bordering on pedo material.
Seder sounded like Hannity when he had Hitchens on. "I don't care what you think but go ahead...." Yuck. Thanks for all your work, guys
That was really hard to listen to, but I loved the sign-off, so it was worth listening to the end.
Thanks for that - I gave up on it around the second clip of Sam Seder’s Angry Soon-To-Be-Ex Husband voice because it was making me so upset, but the last six minutes are great.
Lol, Angry Soon-To-Be-Ex Husband Voice is spot on. Yeah, it was tough. Glad you made it through!! :)
I don't think that Jesse got Seder's analogy, and I think it's an important part of the overall Trans conversation. Have been going backwards and forwards on it for a while, and I don't think Seder is right, but it's still a point that needs discussing.
Simplifying, I think his point is that the amount of discussion about trans issues is excessive to the actual issues. So for example, the use of puberty blockers should be talked about, but the sheer numbers of people bringing this up constantly creates a hostile environment for those trans people who are just trying to live their lives.
I think where this argument falls down is it reverses the order things happened in. A lot of the anti-trans hysteria seems to have been caused by pro-trans voices shouting down and vilifying those who have valid concerns and this has amplified the argument into online and political spaces.
Whatever has caused this obsession with the issue in the mainstream doesn't take away from the fact that even if the aggressors isn't obvious, this is having an effect on Trans people.
I applaud your desire to talk about this in a calm adult fashion with the people you disagree with, and even though I think the show sometimes falls short of this, I do think it's the only way to stop this being a tribal shitshow.
p.s. Always happy to phone in to your show and talk about things Jesse and Katie. Just give me the word!
I feel like it might help people to be less brain-poisoned about this stuff to realize that critiques about journalistic focus are operating on an entirely different meta-level than critiques of the factual accuracy of individual articles.
For example: many individual articles about Hillary's email server in 2015-16 were factually accurate in the particulars and technically expanded the knowledge of the audience. In that sense, they were not maliciously false. However, it's quite obvious (in retrospect, but it was obvious at the time too) that the issue of technical compliance with government regulations about email storage got an inordinately disproportionate amount of coverage in the 2016 election relative to... well, basically everything else, really; that word-cloud image of Hillary coverage is just comical and all but speaks for itself.
Once you understand that "this article is factually correct, and also, from a strictly resource-allocation standpoint, should not have been written" is a coherent position, you can separate out those points and have a discussion about one or the other (or both, seriatim) without getting into this acrimonious and unproductive loop of critics thinking that errant focus by a particular journalist is a rebuttal to individual factual claims and journalists getting offended and refusing to heed justified criticism because they think that someone criticizing their focus is somehow impugning their professional integrity.
Sam wasn’t making a good faith “this is the wrong thing to focus on” argument. He’s saying “bad people used your article, therefore it’s bad” (and let his producer call it “lies” without making him demonstrate its falsehood or even, apparently, read it).
He dismisses Jesse’s concerns as “minutiae” without even addressing the question of whether they actually are unimportant even if true. He wants them to be trivial concerns, so they are.
But Jesse’s writing has a few main themes:
1) evidence in favor of the efficacy of gender affirming care is weak and very overstated in the popular press
2) doctors in many places appear to be short circuiting the best standards of care and rushing minors into treatment with minimal addressing of other serious comorbidities (Reed, but more seriously Tavistock)
3) overly aggressive “affirmative care” has very real, very serious negative consequences including but not limited to detransition, which is not a “myth” which Emma seems to assert.
*If these things are true* it’s actually very important that they be discussed, because otherwise we end up in the current situation: one side wants to ban everything, the other side wants to knock down all gates including parental notification. Both options will cause serious harm.
This is precisely my point. Seder, perhaps because he's a shock jock ill-accustomed to actually reasoning carefully, literally can't tell the difference between critiquing excessive focus on certain aspects of transition care, and claiming that specific reported statements about transition care are false. He thinks one implies the other, or that they are indistinguishable arguments.
My argument is that that's bad and people should differentiate the two.
We agree on that point. I was, to some degree, trying to reply to both you and Sean at the same time.
I never heard of "Majority Report" so I went to their website and looked at their store, to compare their merch to BARPod's.
Their store isn't set up right, on top there are two grey squares that say "insert product name" and I got a warning from my "Fakespot" extension that there are "potential seller issues"
https://ibb.co/Sx2tWg0 <---- screenshot
Vaush offered to debate you. We NEED that to happen! I’m a former fan of his and this is the issue I’ve always had the most disagreement with
So Jeff Maurer just did a great article/podcast on Sam Seder’s opening arguement during the call in.
For those who don’t know him, Jeff Maurer was one of the lead writers for Jon Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” and left the show after getting fatigued with the form. I’ve found him to do a good job of finding the line between finding the joke and being intellectually honest. I also think I noticed a change in the show for the worse after he left the show without actually knowing that it happened at the time.
I really appreciated his take here and thought it was a good rebuttal of the point Sam Seder was trying to make.
https://open.substack.com/pub/imightbewrong/p/bad-people-might-use-your-journalism?r=bw20v&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
And the podcast version: https://open.substack.com/pub/imightbewrong/p/imbw-audio-are-journalists-giving?r=bw20v&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Is it just me or does Seder sound like Charlie from Always Sunny in Philadelphia?
Glad I've never listen to such drivel like Majority Report, which I guess the name says it all.
Personally, if I were to go after Jesse and Katie on the issue of transphobia, I'd hone in on his chummy relationship with Julie Bindel, who truly fits the label 'TERF' (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), and their role in laundering of that kind of toxic radical feminism. Instead, Seder can't muster up anything more than "right-wing transphobes cite his Atlantic article". Having been immersed in this milieu for a few years, I think there's as much to be criticized in the larger Bari Weiss/Julie Bindel/Unherd media ecosystem as there is in the Chris Rufo one. But 'woke' types, who have their own special brand of cluelessness, lack the nuance to do anything more than lump the two together and not critique the former effectively.
Bari Weiss and Julie Bindel are in the same ecosystem?! And as Unherd? Huh?
I would guess that the only thing Seder et al would be willing to criticize a feminist for is the trans-exclusionary part. I don’t think their worldview could handle exploring / admitting any other faults within feminist movements.
These folks are Prudes for Nuance.
I have some respect for Bindel, but that's been greatly reduced since I heard her on some podcast or another holding forth on male sexuality. She confidently declared that men can "use their hand" for sex, pretending that masturbation is precisely the same as, and meets the same needs, as partnered sex. Such an idiotic, male-hating, anti-human point of view.
I no longer listen to Bindel's opinions.
Not surprising - she has a long history of this, and there are many in that movement that were far more extreme than her.
In general, I really, really wish Jesse and Katie would put some energy into studying the history of the 1980s "sex wars" and political correctness wars of that era and radical feminsits place in that early version of the culture wars. They were very much the pro-censorship, pro-cancellation side at the time, and looking at the current generation of gender-crits, they really haven't changed much on that score.
The crazy thing is, the modern American left argument for limitations on so-called "free speech absolutism" were pioneered by a coalition of early proponents of critical race theory (eg, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, etc) and radical feminism (eg, Catharine MacKinnon, etc) in legal scholarship.
Also, the cover article on Ms from back in the 1990s which endorsed the idea of Satanic Ritual Abuse that Katie occationally brings up - this is when Ms was thoroughly old-school radfem, rather than intersectional feminist. In fact, radfems in Swedent kept the SRA scare going in that country well into the 2000s.
Jesse and Katie are really good at uncovering the nuances of various issues when they're paying attention and take the time to do the research. And, definitely, many of their critiques of the current state of gender medicine and activists role in it are well-founded, and they're very critical of right-wing anti-trans activism as well, but unfortunately have a *huge* blind spot when it comes to the gender-critical movement. And it's ironic that Jesse's fiercest critics actually miss that aspect entirely and instead play up his non-existant connections with the far-right.
Jesse, Jesse, Jesse…. Why, oh, why, would you stoop so low as to grace the #BlueMAGA King & his lapdog with your presence?! Confirmed pseudo-intellectual Sam & #NepoBaby airhead Emma are regularly ratio’d on Twitter/X for their supremely bad takes on nearly everything. Don’t feed the trolls!
I google searched the toddler image, and I think it came from this article: "30 Brand New Haircuts for Toddler Boys." I should also say that after looking at that article, I am not sure if people just need models so they can pick out their haircut or if QAnon is right and 80% of the world is just cover for a pedophile conspirancy.
https://es.men-lifestyle.net/13590120-30-brand-new-haircuts-for-toddler-boys (Safe for work, but somehow left me feeling unclean.)
It seems like, if a kid comes out to one of those teachers with the safe space thing on the door, the teacher shouldn’t tell the parents...but if a kid decides to socially transition in school, the parents should be informed.
Even with the safe space business, the teacher should at the very least be thinking about how to help the student get to the point of being able to being the parents in. And if there’s a real threat - not just “they won’t approve,” but an actual safeguarding threat - how to get social services involved as well. The whole point should be aligning support, not driving wedges into the kid’s life.
Yes that’s fine I agree. I just mean that coming out to parents can be the hardest coming out. I essentially refused to do it, and left getting a handle on my being a lesbian to them. So my point is that a kid who is just figuring this stuff out needs a place to talk. After a friend, the teacher they like with the safe space sticker is probably going to be the one who they feel least scared of telling. The idea that this person would need to tell the parents when the kid is still working it out, is really not a great thing to imagine. But yes, if the kid is doing a new gender etc at school the parents should be told.
I am wondering how much your experience tracks to generations as much as individual families. When I was at school in the 1980s, no-one came out to anyone if they could possibly help it. My teens’ friendship circles come out to each other (and sometimes go back in, experiment, work things out, re-come out, etc). Speaking to a teacher about all this would be “cringe,” though they all know gay and lesbian teachers because the world is a very different place than it was when I was their age.
I am wondering how much the “safe space teacher” is already becoming a relic of earlier LGBT mainstreaming. That’s not to say that kids might not look to a non-parental adult for support, but I can see that becoming more of a school counsellor role (alongside all the other standard issue teen talking points) rather than a “I need to find a safe teacher to come out to because I can’t talk to anyone else,” situation.
In my generation, it would have been weird to come out to a teach like that. I came out first to friends, but by my senior year of high school I was essentially just out, and that meant that teachers knew too. But it wasn’t the sort of thing I would have talked about with them? I had an English teacher who gave me a novel about a lesbian teen, which was really sweet, but I think that was as close to actually talking about being gay as I got with a teacher. But that’s my generation. Kids these days are apparently weird, and teachers are often younger than I am, so they have different ideas about how to make a welcoming classroom than they did when I was in school.
Every once in a while, this show inspires me to comment with my appreciation, and the opening of this episode is one of those times. Without necessarily agreeing with all of your tentative conclusions, your willingness to acknowledge when your beliefs contain inconsistencies (and to explore them a bit), and your understanding how other people can wind up at different conclusions in good faith even when you disagree with them, puts you on the side of the angels in my book. The world doesn’t need more “people who believe in X”; it needs more people who can peacefully explore how we arrive at our beliefs and show some willingness to coexist with others. Thanks, guys.
Eh, I’ve gotta retract that praise now after hearing Jesse continue to say “affi-david”.
Well, that sounds like a hectic experience. Sam Seder's voice reminded me of the character Fenton from Home Movies.
Sam Seder WAS the voice for that annoying turd Fenton! Art imitates life.
I’m not a parent but I am more conservative than most people here, and I think to my mind the objection I have to teachers keeping secrets is that it’s the school usurping the authority of the parents.
the values-neutral proposition for parents being informed about their children is that they are held legally responsible by the state for the wellbeing of the child, more legally responsible than the school district (a part of the state). So the state wants to simultaneously hold the parents legally and financially responsible for the children, but keep information about said children from the parents. This is an untenable position and will eventually result in some parents getting sent to prison for *not* acting on things they didn't know
I'd just like to point out that if you go to the link to episode hosted by the Majority Report it is shown as unlisted. The only reason I noticed this is because I had to go the show notes because I could not figure out why I couldn't find the correct episode on their YouTube page. Well there's a reason for that, the Majority Report apparently doesn't want you to find that episode organically, because unless you have the link to the video then you can't find it.
They posted an edited video of the full show that’s an hour and ten minutes long and is listed. Jesse’s interview is taken out.
In the description of that video they have a link to the full (unlisted) show. It looks like they typically do that.
Huh, seems rather convoluted.
I just checked. It looks like that’s what they do with all their “News Day Tuesday” streams at least.
The fact they had Jesse call in was probably a way to bury the “debate” in the first place by not making it a part of the regular show.
The next episode should be great - I think I mentioned some Katharine Birbalsingh drama here once (there is a lot of it), I'm looking forward to K&J's take!
Looks like Eric Stewart has found his landing. Spot in Majority Report is almost too good a fit.
How Hesse got beat on his own beat is a little alarming though.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/07/20/florida-state-fires-professor
Sam Seder got fired from Bob’s Burgers and started the world’s most pathetic hashtag campaign to try to get back on
Sam Seder is still on. I think you’re thinking of Jay Johnston, who voiced Jimmy Pesto. He got axed because he was there for Jan 6.
Ah, I didn’t realize Seder was back. He started a hashtag campaign called #whereshugo to push for his character to return. The jimmy pesto incident was more recent
I actually don’t know if Hugo has been on recently now that you mention it. I just don’t think Seder had ever been “fired” - if he’s gone it’s just that the writers don’t have stories for Hugo any more. He was kind of a one note character, to be fair.
I checked the wiki and apparently Hugo’s most recent appearance was in 2021.
Have you guys seen this? https://youtu.be/YM4w7KZBbug?si=06Y4UD4XIeh8i50W
Yeah I get what you're saying, Greg, but I figure there must have been at least some people who previously thought they were OK but who saw them in a different light following this (unless they are in the habit of treating guests like this, which I doubt, if only because people they disagree with would rarely have the guts to call in). The others ... are probably beyond hope anyway
I found a puff piece on Doc Marie's bar, sounds like they're doing well. They do also glance over the one day opening. https://youtu.be/MksNDwkzwT0?si=UfojDKY7piRdjkak
Given that Jesse is a known Pervert for Nuance, I suggest a new term for “friends of the Pod” like Sam, Emma, and Matt: Prudes for Nuance.
It strikes me as very accurate, particularly with Emma sounding like she was about to retreat to a fainting couch upon being exposed to that dirty, shocking nuance.
Are you aware that parents smoke weed? and what teacher would be stupid enough to complain that a student smells like weed to the parent? Several of my 6th and 7th graders smell like weed and I pretty much got a contact high from our open house this week, my room stank so much. Our new weed laws are quite liberal and to bring this up to a parent is lacking in much common sense.
Also, this whole “omg teachers are hiding that my kid is trans” is ridiculous. I am here to teach the kids and not diagnose dysphoria. I will not be calling people to tell them i think their child is trans. If a child actually approached me telling me they wanted to be trans but their parents shouldn’t know or whatever I’d send them to the counselor. Any contact home would come from the counselor or administrator (it’s why they get $$) NOT ME-i’m here to teach geography. As it stands any pronoun changes for a kid come from a parent request.
It’s how most schools work.
I wish you’d meet parents and teachers in real life. I love your podcast but detest when you get into what you believe they do in schools
OK but the teachers *are*, if not “diagnosing dysphoria”, definitely acknowledging dysphoria and directly participating in the child’s social transition (changing name, pronouns, etc.) and withholding that information from parents.
I don’t think the expectation is “go tattle on the kids if they overhearing them talking with their friends about trans stuff” but if the school is actively participating in a social transition that’s a very different situation.
no. We are not, and shut the fk up. Seriously
I sincerely hope the classes you teach do not include logic or grammar.
There are documented cases demonstrating that your personal experience is not universal.
what “logic” are you referring to you stupid c&nt? some morons in California? stupid tik tok videos? Get bent you shtbag. We have enough sht to do and have enough trouble getting the kids to turn in their homework-much less try to trans them out. Why don’t you watch your own fkking kid? aren’t you spending all this time with them? i see them for one hour a day. This ridiculous narrative has turned your gddm heads.
Online my grammar is quick and dirty as my motor skills have always been poor-i actually write very well
At the risk of being labeled a Karen, I would assert to the moderators that this rates at least one request to suck fat honky dick on the incivility scale.
oh, YOU’RE OFFENDED? you can talk sht all over the internet about teachers and spread hoaxes and rumors and retweet tik tok videos? take one stupid story and make it sound like an educational standard? you’re upset? try walking a minute in my fkking shoes. Anything we do or don’t say is a potential lawsuit and all of you people suck whatever type of dk there is
None of the things you are assigning to me are things I have actually done. None of the things for which you say “we”, as if you speak for all teachers, are actually universal.
If your goal here was to increase the respect for the quality and diligence of public school teachers… well I can’t imagine how you could have done worse.
Also if you’re going to cuss, fucking cuss. Use your vowels, this is not Twitter.
Looking forward to you demonstrating your “actually good” writing skills at some point, until then I see little point in carrying on with this conversation.
No, you’re a liar who spreads rumors about teachers already. There is no prayer of increasing your respect for the profession and you certainly haven’t earned mine. You have no quibbles with the actual substance of my complaints -that largely all over the country teachers are literally not involved in your kids’ gender no matter what some moron on tik tok tells you-so you complain when i misspell my swears.
I also am uninterested in displaying my strong writing skills for someone so willing to propagandize my career. It actually is quite difficult for me to type
on my phone but it’s better than handwriting, an avenue where i get the kids to give me a hand on the board.
Bch-oh wait, you prefer Bitch - i am used to my social media hacks-It is a universal truth that teachers are uninterested in your child’s gender and even less interested in getting your kids to swap genders and can think of nothing more miserable than acting cagey among parents and kids about these notions. What you’re hearing is the Mary Kay Leterneaus of the job and you love it. By all means stick to the “documented” headlines of your occasional outliers
Is this the school teacher version of finding an empty room and screaming?
people suck
do us all a favor and yank your kids... charter schools can’t pay enough to match taco bell, and you can do this all yourselves
just wait till nobody wants to teach your fkking kids anymore. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth the money or the benefits. Bad enough all the crap we took when God forbid you all realized how difficult your own kids were when it came to schooling during the pandemic but NOW it’s back to lying about us and insisting that we shame kids for being white and convince them to be trans. Man, pull your kids from school. Charters will shut down as teachers working there cannot afford to live. Good luck teaching them yourself like it’s lockdowns again
at the risk of being labeled a karen can i ask the moderators to remove misinformation in these posts-specifically that teachers “diagnose” dysphoria?
man you people suck
all the “documented cases” there are about teachers diagnosing dysphoria. Are you going to accuse me of sleeping with my students while you’re at it because of Mary Kay Letourneau?
Would you tell a parent if a kid was smoking tobacco?
if i actually caught the kid smoking tobacco or weed on school grounds i would tell either the parents myself or have the admin do it after i write them up. A kid smelling like weed or tobacco smoke is usually due to their homes
That’s good that any pronoun change requests have to come from parents. Our school teachers use whatever name and pronouns a kid asks for. The counselors always ask the kid if they have told their parents and agree to be “discreet” when meeting with said parents. That way, my 15yo daughter can be trans identified and out to everyone at school for a year and her parents will never know, until a woke neighbor casually uses her as an example of “the fragile persecuted children!” . I think it is inappropriate to ask the teachers to bear this burden of keeping secrets, but until our state legislature passed a law against it I don’t think they had a choice. Most parents just want to know what’s going on with their kid at school. Most teachers just want to teach. Most teens are going through the normal developmental process of psychological separation from their parents/childhood and trying out new identities, as they have always done. Not all rules are bad. It seems that it’s good for kids to learn in school how to follow the ones that will help them function as adults in the real world. The smell of weed makes me nauseated. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.
There’s variation among districts. Huge variation. If you scroll down to Shayla’s comment about common practice in the PNW, she provides details on how her district and many others mandate teachers and other staff participate in actively affirming social transition while cutting out the parents as the default even with no basis for presuming abuse at home.
I’m glad you don’t presume to diagnose. I’m confident few counselors have any training in differential diagnosis. Most trainings for them, and for therapists (my sister is one), just dictate: you must not question, you must simply affirm - otherwise, the child is likely to suicide or at minimum commit serious self-harm. This is a conveyor belt. It’s not actual care. I teach (higher ed) and I’m well aware that there’s no exploratory therapy at our student health center, thanks to activists, only affirmation. I already know multiple detransitioners. I no longer refer students who are struggling with gender to student health; I did in the past.
I‘ve read down this thread and so won’t be engaging further with anyone who swears copiously but disemvowels all the spicy words. I might make an exception if I get a response literally calling me a Big Honky Dick. (Bg Hnkx Dck won’t do.)
there’s actually huge variation among the few schools who act like this in a couple of states and the rest of the country and all the other school systems. First of all i don’t know if a kid is socially transitioning or not unless the kid asks me to use different pronouns. Hasn’t happened yet. That comes from the office when it does because a parent requested it. I will not be keeping track if a kid wears different clothes or whatever
i call parents and email about grades and behavior issues all the time
i do not diagnose dysphoria and decide to ring up a parent. That’s ridiculous
i have two kids and the only contact i will get is about grades or some stupid thing my son may have done
Nobody is walking any kid anywhere, i just forward their gddm name to the counselor and say they are having issues about gender etc. YES, COUNSELORS SEE YOUR KIDS about all sorts of sht, and i just TOLD you we don’t discuss genders with the kids. I have too much sht to do, and I’m not calling your a$$, and the principal will not be stopping counselors from meeting with kids upset with all sorts of issues that happen during school. If YOU don’t want your kid meeting with a counselor ever, you need to say so, because there is an open sign up to talk to them about anything upsetting them, whether it’s you at home or gender or their friend. Your kid will see the counselor about whatever they gddm well please unless you expressly say i don’t want my kid to talk to a school counselor when sad. If that’s the case, rock on. It doesn’t depend on age
in the mean time maybe be with your kid and see what the she likes to do and what she does online? because that’s the basics. Your daughter wants to be trans-that’s on you to figure out
I am a woman and very charming in real life, so charming that i would never call a person to tell them i think their kid is trans. Good parents actually know what their kids are into actually
i told you i’ve been teaching for 24 years so anything with the boys i am familiar with and yes i enjoy the kids too...i have two teenagers and just pay attention to your kids and their online behavior and don’t expect us to decide to inform you out of nowhere they want to be trans
Classroom management is a constant hassle and i said above that any student of mine who stinks of weed is due to parents. It’s not perfect but I run a tight ship and a hood show. Guess what i’m not doing? calling parents to tell them weird personal crap about their kids
good show not “hood”-avoid any offensive ideas with this pls
wowza you actually had to get the school calling you telling you your daughter wanted to be trans? you didn’t figure this out yourself? and you need to be influenced by us? No. I thought you ppl were all about the pernicious influence of parents but now you want me reading up on it, all good
teachers not parents. One minute this fool is scared the teacher is trying to trans out her kid thru her influence and next minute she’s advising a book about influencing others
if your phone is constantly ringing with school calls and your inbox is full of teacher emails that isn’t a good sign..
24 years public school!!!
all of it in MIDDLE SCHOOL-you’re talking to a veteran teacher here and i know my sht
I call B.S. No one who has been teaching for over 20 years writes as poorly as you do.
And if I’m wrong, and you are indeed a licensed educator, god help the students you teach.
24 years and i have extremely poor motor skills so i will be quick on dirty online
you can go fk yourself
Burn that stupid bitch to the ground
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Z-man comment politely and enthusiastically about a non-trans topic. I can’t remember the specifics to point to the thread, but gave me hope.
Yes, engages on other topics. Seems like a genuine person expressing actual opinions to me.
Boy, people sure are awfully concerned with how I'm spending my (checks notes) $5 a month here. Think of all the... one lattes I could be having at Starbucks with that kind of cash! This is definitely not a sign that they're uncomfortable with actual debate and pushback on their ideas, no sir.
Let me reassure you that oft in the stilly night, when slumber's chain hath bound me, fond memory brings the light of other days around me.
I think I have seen you comment on another topic, and you were just fine, actually regular and pleasant. But you are part of the BARpod community now, and you stand out as “the troll.” I really don’t think you came in with that title as your mantle--rather, I think you just want to push back--but your tone of disagreement doesn’t match the general tone in disagreements here. Hence, you really stand out. If you did reply to non-trans (maybe with a “like something, say something” attitude), we’d get to know you better and bristle less when we engage.
This situation reminds me of my favoured line from the movie, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle: “Oh Eddie, you don’t want to be the town drunk... not in Manhattan.” (I like Manhattan, and I like the BARpod comment pages, and I’m disappointed to see anti-social behaviour erupt in either place.)
(P.S. I still hear that damn Sousa march when I see your name.)
I think that’s a really good point, Timothy, about people getting to know each other a little (across a variety of topics) making it easier to engage on more emotional themes.
I also think it’s easier to give someone else the benefit of the doubt/a charitable reading when it feels reciprocal and like all participants are engaging in good faith. Once a sense of positive regard has been lost it can be hard to get back, and I that might be something like what’s happened here.
There’s a real difference between “you’re a transphobic bigot” and “I’m struggling to grasp how xyz can be motivated by anything other than a discomfort with trans people. Can you please help me better understand?”
No one owes anyone the second approach (of course) — but shouldn’t be surprised with the response when choosing the first, either.
Believe it or not, I'm actually quite capable of identifying the difference between respectful dialogue about trans healthcare (or any other subject) and the kind of genocidal guttertrash that is routinely lobbed about this forum.
Jesse Singal is actually a good example of the former (if he was not, I would never have subscribed in the first place; I'd rather buy my one latte and dump it out on the street), but, as he's noted, he doesn't read the comments sections. Ross Tucker is another; when he discusses the science of trans women in sport, he always does so in a respectful and careful manner. I am simply not going to treat that kind of argumentation the same as I do someone yelling about how the "Democrat Party" is full of "tranny-humpers."
Someone said the “Democrat Party is full of tranny-humpers”? Really? I missed that.
It was to that effect, at any rate-- possibly not those exact words in that exact order, but I distinctly remember the "humping" reference. Commenter going by the nom de plume of George Q. Tyrebiter.
No pushback (except from me, obviously), numerous likes.
All you've proven is that we've recently attracted multiple trolls in the last 4-6 weeks. (Damn that circumcision episode). I've advocated that people ignore George, as I do.
As Sarah and Timothy allude, trolling is more about tone than content. The idea that anyone here advocates genocide is nothing but ad hominem attack.
Do you think characterizing people as “genocidal guttertrash” is any more appropriate?
edit: apologies, you did not actually say the *people* were "genocidal guttertrash". My bad. I should have read more carefully before reacting. Still, I find your approach counterproductive and off-putting and your arguments unconvincing.
Do I think that there is a difference between good things and bad things? Hang on, is this the setup to one of dril's tweets? Am I on Candid Camera? America's Funniest Home Videos?
Look, I fully realize that "disagreement" and "trolling" are treated as indistinguishable here-- nothing so irrational as a community of self-proclaimed rationalists-- but the accusation is objectively ridiculous, and I am not going to give it the slightest heed. It's nothing more than sour grapes.
But disagreement here involves steelmanning, trolling involves mind-reading and ad hominem attacks. Nothing about the regular discourse here comes down to sour grapes. Please reread the Aesop fable before you make that claim. Or, back it up referencing the fox and the grapes.
"disagreement here involves steelmanning"
LMFAO. Good one! I'm glad to see that comedy hour has returned in lieu of what appeared, at first glance, to be some kind of serious claim about the nature of this forum.
Well, if you can’t see it you can’t see it. Obviously I’m not the one to adjust your vision.
I think he’s most likely exactly who he seems to be. Yep. We all know him. He’s ‘that guy’.
I was pretty surprised by the letter as well. We all jump on the trans stuff, but that actually seemed to be the least of the problems. If my kid was using drugs or being recruited by a gang, I'd certainly want to know. If the school not only put my kid in an environment with someone they knew was recruiting for gangs and then didn't tell me my kid was being recruited, I'd go pretty ballistic. I'd hope it isn't representative of public schools. If they're making such an effort to protect possibly trans kids from possibly abusive parents but still keeping kids in a school with gang recruiters or widespread drug use that they're not telling parents about, they're causing a lot more harm than they're preventing with these policies.
You're also in a red state, right?
JESSE’S HERE EVERYONE!!
(Try to look busy.)
get back to work
Jesse, it’s a Saturday
That's fair enough -- it's why I'm taking a break. I see you deleted your tweet so I'll delete my response.
*comment
Or outside. We demand Jesse touch grass for an hour a day, just like in prison.