Wow! Do you have any photographs of this mythical unicorn?
Too dark. Not wacky enough.
Oh dear gods… they didn’t?!
[Peeks out through hands]
Did they?
Transgender isn’t some all-or-nothing binary; it exists on a spectrum where people can identify and express every possible degree and combination of gendered traits and behaviors.
Thank you so much for this!!!
Gender reassignment as punishment? Who greenlit this movie?
The number of people here stating proudly that they will not read the article is extremely disappointing. It had interviews with many people having diverse opinions and in my opinion is being radically mischaracterized as an op-ed. Certainly when compared with AndreaJames’s article about it, it comes off as being a paragon of investigative journalism.
Although I am obviously cherry-picking consider sentences such as the following from the original article, “How can [parent’s] help their children gain access to the support and medical help they might need, while also keeping in mind that adolescence is, by definition, a time of fevered identity exploration?” It seems like a pretty good question to explore compared to the copious ad-hominem attacks in this article such as, “How did Twitter addict Jesse Singal…”
It’s the usual disingenuous nonsense - including kids who aren’t trans in the study group and jimmying the numbers, misstating what trans kids actually do (socially transition maybe with reversible hormone blockers until they reach the age of majority) with the trollish headline grab of "sex-change surgery!!! and hormone - and ignoring actual studies and families.
Singal has also had to backtrack on his original big article on the subject by being forced to admit he misunderstood the study he was using to try and push these kids back into the dark ages - but kept using incorrectly for years.
But - sure - don’t promote trans voices talking about their lives Atlantic - go for the troll voice. Who has no connections to the community - no credentials to speak of - not a psychologist or social worker - no record of service to the community - he has a degree in philosophy - not even a health or biological field.
Because what the world needs is more cisgender people writing about who trans people really are, what our lives are like and what’s important to us.
One has to wonder what disorder compels someone to make such a cottage industry out of trying to eliminate trans people and our agency. Kinda dark.
Anyone familiar with years of Jesse Singal’s writing on the topic knows that this is how he operates. Anyone familiar with adolescence knows that it’s a time of fevered identity exploration. Anyone familiar with trans children knows that, until they were fired and banned by jurisdictions around the world, the sexologists Singal is defending between the lines of this piece waged and lost a 50-year war to stop affirmative approaches to supporting and helping these young people.
In other new yesterday - the actual experts in health - the WHO state:
“Gender incongruence, meanwhile, has also been moved out of mental disorders in the ICD, into sexual health conditions. The rationale being that while evidence is now clear that it is not a mental disorder, and indeed classifying it in this can cause enormous stigma for people who are transgender, there remain significant health care needs that can best be met if the condition is coded under the ICD.”
http://www.who.int/health-topics/international-classification-of-diseases
Imagine that - suddenly not described only with a mental health diagnosis and having agency respected. That Singal kid could learn a thing or two.
I’m stealing that.
Will all Jesse Singal-related Boing Boing posts (except this one) be deleted in protest? I guess we’ll wait and see.
Or even better, putting ‘again’ after ‘concern-trolls’.
ETA (Yeah - what Grey_Devil said, two hours ago. I’ll get my coat.)
It’s ok, it took me at least an hour to understand the title so you’re ahead of me.
O M effing Gawd! I have been advocating for this professionally (as an epidemiologist), within community, and with providers for years. Fuck yeah!
The number of people here stating proudly that they will not read the article
The number of people is two. Only one of whom explicitly says the will not read it. That person comments only on the number of ad trackers and says nothing about the article itself. The other says they have not read it and poses a question based on what’s been reported. Neither of these require reading the article.
True, although nobody can simply “have” a sex change. GCS has a lot of hoops to jump through, even in fairly permissive/supportive states like Washington–she says, in mid leap.
I don’t really have an opinion on the object-level issue here: I don’t think anyone should ask me if anyone else should have a sex-change operation. I’m not a doctor. I am for insofar as I do not think I have the right to object.
I do have an opinion on your argument, though. I don’t think it works. The pursuit of happiness is an ideal, sure, but in practice it is the most circumscribed of of them all since anything forbidden in law can be the pursuit of someone’s happiness. And the pursuit of happiness of children is the most circumscribed of all since the parents have the legal and, according to our society, to intervene in major ways particularly when what the child wants will lead to irreversible consequences. After all: few people will object to a parent vetoing, say, plastic surgery and (here at least) fewer still will object to society vetoing the parent’s right to send their child to one of those horrid anti-gay camps.
