Trans people aren't allowed to get angry; our gender identities are on the line

From three years ago. Still relevant:

"Policing trans rage seems to have become a major pastime. When trans people become angry, cisgender people use this to "prove" our gender identities are invalid, or as a way of discrediting us. If a transfeminine person gets mad, she's acting too much like a boy. If a transmasculine person gets mad, this apparently proves that his masculine identity is causing bad behavior. And everyone, including non-binary and gender-fluid people, is constantly forced to prove that we're not the unstable menace that transphobes often try to portray us as.

Imagine being addressed with the wrong name or pronoun all the time, and being told that you are a problem just because you want to live your own life. Imagine being aware that your very right to exist is being debated as part of a huge civil-rights battle. And to go with all of that pressure, your reactions are constantly scrutinized for any proof that you're unreasonable, and therefore unworthy to shape your own destiny. That's the awful conundrum facing trans kids right now."

— Charlie Jane Anders, On Transgender Day of Visibility, It's Time to Finally Stop Policing Trans Rage , Teen Vogue, March 31, 2021

Does that make you angry? "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

If not for transphobia, 'what kind of conversations could we be having'?

Three years ago, Charlie Jane Anders wrote this:

"Republican state legislatures seem to be locked in a competition to see which can be the cruelest to trans youths."

(Of course, it's gotten worse since then.)

When a kid comes out as trans, they've already done a lot of self-examination.

"Often, it may appear that trans kids and adults emerge fully formed, like Athena from the brow of Zeus, when in reality we’ve spent endless hours trying to make sense of our selves. The moment we reveal the end result of our self-discovery to the world, we face microaggressions, outright hostility and discrimination."

Of course, there's always more to do. Kids "need time to explore their identities and personalities," so why such "extraordinary scrutiny and intervention from the government"? "It’s beyond heartless to expect young trans and gender-nonconforming people to navigate this challenge while also being the objects of a national outbreak of paranoia."

"Take the North Carolina bill, which would require teachers and other authority figures to spy on young people and report any signs of “gender nonconformity” to their parents or guardians. Even if no teacher ever contacted anyone’s parents, everyone would still be aware that their clothes, hair and habits could be singled out at any time.

“Everybody is under surveillance when we have these restrictive ideas about gender,” says Raquel Willis, a trans activist and writer who founded Black Trans Circles. Even cisgender children and adults would be “boxed out of a human experience, because they are told they have to act a certain way.”

Anders says she wonders: "What kind of conversations could we be having about growing up trans and gender-nonconforming if we didn’t have to argue constantly against a manufactured panic and a wave of authoritarianism?"

"Opinion: We should celebrate trans kids, not crack down on them, Charlie Jane Anders, Washington Post, April 12, 2021.

Cass Review: April 10, 2024

After four years, Hilary Cass produced a review of gender-affirming care for kids in the UK.

Start with these:

The Cass Review: Nothing But Anti-Trans Propaganda: When you thought it couldn't get worse, it did. Z. P.Hopkins, Gender Identity Today, 17 Apr 2024

The UK’s Cass Review Is Already Harming Transgender Young People: Despite finding no evidence of harm, the Cass Review has already led to restrictions on gender-affirming care, while further fuelling transphobic moral panic, Kaylin Hamilton, Prism & Pen, 22 Apr 2024

Also this:

Erin Reed (Cass Met With DeSantis Pick Over Trans Ban: Her Review Now Targets England Trans Care, April 10, 2024) summarizes:

"Dr. Hilary Cass released a final report commissioned by the NHS, widely expected to target gender-affirming care. The report met these expectations, calling for restrictions on gender-affirming care and social transition, and even advocated for blocking transgender adults under the age of 25 from entering adult care. To justify these recommendations, the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality, applying standards that are unattainable and not required of most other pediatric medicine. Conducted in a manner similar to the anti-trans review by the DeSantis-handpicked Board of Medicine in Florida, which Cass reportedly collaborated on, the report and its reviews are likely to underpin further crackdowns on trans care globally.

The 388-page report featured 32 recommendations on how transgender care should be conducted within NHS England. It incorrectly claims that there is “no good evidence” supporting transgender care and calls for restrictions on trans care for individuals under the age of 18, although it does not advocate for an outright ban. ...it seemingly endorses restrictions on transgender people under the age of 25, stating that they should not be allowed to progress into adult care clinics."

The Cass Review, as Reed explains, used the subjective Newcastle-Ottawa Scale to declare that 101 out of 103 studies on gender-affirming care were low-quality, despite "connections between reviewers, Cass, and anti-trans organizations." In this, it resembles the Florida Review.

How this rhetoric works

"Its like there’s this system of coordinated transphobia where extremists like DeSantis give cover to Britain, who in turn give a formal basis to the ‘critiques’ of the NY Times. And the NY Times, in turn, give Britain the press attention they wanted."
— England’s Trying to Ban ADULT Trans Care After the Cass Report: It was never gonna stop at trans kids, ElizaBeth, Apr 14, 2024

Previously, in 2023

Last year: The Myth Of "Low Quality Evidence" Around Transgender Care, Erin Reed, August 8, 2023

Here, Reed pointed out that "Gender-affirming care isn't unique in this regard. Some studies suggest that over 90% of medical care lacks "high-quality evidence" as classified by the GRADE system." That medical care might involve "individualized approaches," be justified by "observational evidence," or be ethical given that "withholding treatment would be considered unethical." Again, lots of medicine is like this — not just care for trans people. "No one labels gallbladder surgery as 'experimental," Reed says, even though there's no high-quality evidence for it if you ask GRADE.

Reed continued:

"Mischaracterizing the evidence around gender affirming care as 'low-quality' is a deceptive practice that relies on a layman understanding of the term. There is no level of evidence that will ever be acceptable to those seeking to ban gender affirming care, as controlled trials where trans youth are put through conversion therapy or denied medication are not ever going to ethically happen - especially given suicide risks among this patient population."

Kaylin Hamilton wrote that "literature reviews commissioned by the ongoing Cass Review into gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and similar reviews which were used as justification for the ban on gender-affirming care in Florida, all attempt to discredit the evidence base for gender-affirming care (at least partly) on the basis of these two issues," namely, "a lack of consideration for social factors and a comorbid approach to the relationship between gender dysphoria and mental illness."
— Gender Affirming Care isn’t a Panacea: We need to change the way we talk about — and research — the relationship between gender dysphoria and mental illness, Kaylin Hamilton, Substack, May 8, 2023

It continues not to be about sports

As Chase Strangio explains on an Instagram reel:

"This now-deleted comment was posted from the official account of NYC’s Community Education Council, District 2. Last month, the Council voted 8-3 to advance an anti-trans resolution. They claim they aren’t making schools less safe for trans kids but this is what they post publicly from their government account. At core, they want a world without trans kids and they are making that clear."

What happened? "In response to the simple suggestion that trans students be given the opportunity to attend school and participate in activities alongside their peers," New York's Community Education Council District 2 (CEC2) left an online public comment:

"True compassion means not letting children self diagnose their own medical condition. It means letting effeminate boys grow up and find out that they are just gay and having their male genitals intact. It means addressing underlying mental health issues and autism that radical gender medical practitioners ignore that still lead to suicide after 'gender affirming care.' It means not engaging in human experimentation on children that's banned by the Nuremberg Code with unproven sterilizing, mutilating & permanent hormonal & medical castration treatment and surgery. True compassion means teaching and supporting kids to love themselves as they are and letting them grow up unharmed."

In other words, the topic was basic educational inclusion for kids who are trans, and the adults on the Community Education Council immediately began talking about the children's genitals and hormones.

These same councilmembers, Strangio says, have previously claimed to be "just asking questions about girls in sports," not opposing trans kids.

"But here's the thing," Strangio says. "The discourse around trans inclusion in sports always leads to this place." The position ends up being that trans people should not exist nor have healthcare. "Ultimately, their end goal is to push an agenda that eradicates us."

Strangio's action item: "We are organizing to show love and solidarity for trans students and to fight this Moms for Liberty-affiliated council. Join us on May 2nd at 6:30, MS 131, 100 Hester Street, NY. Wear white."

I also direct you to my article: "Oh, It's About Sports, Is It?". It's a 14-minute read on Medium, and I gave you the unpaywalled friend link.

This is not about sports:

[Bluesky]

Read up on the Before “Moms For Liberty,” There Was “Daughters of the Confederacy” by Fay Wylde. That's a 7-min read with a friend link too.

On TV/lit fans identifying with the fictional villain

Spotted this on fictional villains:

"Traditionally, the majority of our cherished sociopathic antiheroes in TV and film have been men. Think Tony Soprano, Walter White, Patrick Bateman, Dexter Morgan, Don Draper. I’ve always found it difficult to love mob movies and series: Despite being ostensibly about the horrors of brute violence, “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas” and all the rest have a singularly passionate fanbase that seems to really have fallen in love with their central villains.

This is a notion the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum has labeled the “bad fan,” a viewer who misses the critical lens through which a character is presented and instead goes all-in on identifying with them. She traces this dissonance back to Norman Lear’s “All in the Family,” the groundbreaking satirical sitcom of the 1970s whose bigoted lead character Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, spawned, despite Lear’s intentions, genuine fans of the character’s behavior, those “who shared Archie’s frustrations with the culture around him, a ‘silent majority’ who got off on hearing taboo thoughts said aloud.”

"Opinion: It’s time to change the way we think about sociopaths," Sara Stewart, CNN, April 20, 2024

The idea is, you're not necessarily supposed to identify with the villain. The author might be trying to show you something about the villain, but even if that information is delivered from the villain's perspective, that doesn't mean the author hopes you'll identify with the villain's personality or choices.

I wrote a book about fictional eunuch villains called Painting Dragons.

See also my old blog post: How literature teaches us to be better people

U.S. Interior Dept BLM rule prioritizes conservation and clean energy

From today's Washington Post article:

"For decades, the federal government has prioritized oil and gas drilling, hardrock mining and livestock grazing on public lands across the country. That could soon change under a far-reaching Interior Department rule that puts conservation, recreation and renewable energy development on equal footing with resource extraction.

The final rule released Thursday represents a seismic shift in the management of roughly 245 million acres of public property — about one-tenth of the nation’s land mass.

* * *

'We oversee 245 million acres, and every land manager will tell you that climate change is already happening. It’s already impacting our public lands,' [Bureau of Land Management director Tracy] Stone-Manning said during a Washington Post Live event last year. 'We see it in pretty obvious ways, through unprecedented wildfires.'"

— The U.S. just changed how it manages a tenth of its land: The Interior Department rule puts conservation and clean energy development on par with drilling, mining and resource extraction on federal lands for the first time, Maxine Joselow, Washington Post, April 18, 2024

Uri Berliner's fact-free complaint that NPR is too liberal

From an article by Larry Jaffee I learned that,

"on April 9, NPR journalist Uri Berliner published on The Free Press — a repository of anti-trans coverage that champions detransitioners, founded by former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss — his complaint that his employer has been overridden by liberal bias. The Free Press states it’s “#1 on Substack,” the same platform on which Erin Reed publishes.

In short, Berliner believes a woke culture at NPR in recent years has transformed the outlet to its detriment."

Berliner had also spoken on an episode of Bari Weiss's Honestly podcast.

One diagnosis by Jamelle Bouie (Bluesky 1): "aging white journalist intensely resentful of younger colleagues of color who are getting acclaim and recognition he desires — many such cases" (Bluesky 2): "the anti-woke hysteria in journalism is about jobs and status, not standards"

Another by IDtheMike (Bluesky): "I finally read the Uri Berliner essay, and it's just an old guy looking for reasons to vote for RFK Jr who happens to have worked at NPR for 25 years. In short, he's losing his marbles and diagnosing his paranoia as a conspiracy by NPR. It's sad."

The New York Times reported credulously on Berliner's appearance: "NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias."

On April 12, NPR suspended Berliner without pay for five days (which it revealed on April 16) on the basis that he violated NPR's policy by not seeking approval to appear in another news outlet. He was warned that another violation would result in his termination. Berliner resigned from NPR the morning of April 17.

Berliner's essay had "angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR," as David Folkenflik wrote for NPR.

Folkenflik continued:

"Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR's new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network. Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year. Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization."

He added: "Several NPR journalists told me they are no longer willing to work with Berliner as they no longer have confidence that he will keep private their internal musings about stories as they work through coverage."

As Parker Molloy describes it:

"Berliner, a senior business editor and reporter, argues that NPR lost conservative listeners in recent years, making vague accusations about biased coverage and an unsupported claim that the organization “tell[s] people how to think” — something that would have benefitted from even a single example.

As one Democratic House staffer noted on X (fka Twitter), few of Berliner’s claims held up to scrutiny. Whether claims about NPR supposedly ignoring “Russiagate” stories that made Democrats look bad (they didn't), claims about NPR not covering Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 (they did), or claims about NPR brushing off the “lab leak” theory of the COVID-19 origin (they didn’t) — these simply didn’t hold up to light scrutiny."

For more info, Molloy recommends:

“The Real Story Behind NPR’s Current Problems” (Slate, Alicia Montgomery, 4/16/24) “Uri Berliner dragged NPR. What now?” (The Night Light, Joshua Johnson, 4/10/24) “How my NPR colleague failed at ‘viewpoint diversity’” (Differ We Must, Steve Inskeep, 4/16/24)

Jon Becker says (Bluesky): "I have now read responses to Uri Berliner by 3 current and former NPR employees (Joshua Johnson, Steve Inskeep, and Alicia Montgomery). They are all very strong critiques and fact checks. But, nobody who reads The FP will see them. I wish I knew how to solve that problem."

Further reading

On the theme of consequences, may I please direct you to my essay: "When I, A Trans Person, Spoke to a Bioethicist About Consequences: We did not agree, and I was wrong," Jan 7, 2024"