Dems, wake up!
But what's the best way to dispel progressive illusions about gender medicine?
A new grassroots group of US Democrats hopes to discover how to break the spell of gender ideology and return their party to liberal values of science and reason.
Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG)—launched yesterday with an X (Twitter) Space—plans to commission research on the most effective messaging to reach voters on the Left who believe the science is settled in favour of “gender-affirming” medicalisation for gender non-conforming youth.
“The only way it’s going to end is if the Left stops promoting gender ideology,” said a DIAG member hosting the Space. (She spoke anonymously; the parents, teachers and lawyers who form DIAG are volunteers with family and livelihood to protect from activist attack.)
In the US, the Democratic Biden administration has aggressively promoted the gender-affirming treatment approach for minors who reject their birth sex and has pitted its legal resources against Republican states that seek to restrict paediatric transition (a handful of Democrats have supported these state restrictions).
Parties of the left and centre-left internationally, influenced by university-educated elites and identity politics, are typically pledged to gender ideology.
While there is pushback from the right—especially the populist right—parties of the centre-right include uncritical supporters of gender medicine and many members just clueless about what is at stake. This has a lot to do with misleading or incurious media coverage and the politicised groupthink of medical organisations.
The framing of the gender medicine debate as an emotive Left-Right culture war obscures the detailed, evidence-based critique of this “progressive” medicalisation and the fact that concern about harm to vulnerable children cuts across political, social and religious divides.—GCN
Illness is not health
“We believe that everybody deserves evidence-based medicine,” the DIAG host said in yesterday’s X Space. “And nobody should accept what passes for medical care under the guise of ‘gender-affirming care,’ because it’s not care to introduce illness into healthy bodies, for whatever reason. There should be better options.”
But she said the task of persuading fellow Democrats that gender ideology in medicine, schools, sport and government was regressive, not kind nor progressive, was not as simple as offering facts and data.
“People don’t want to hear [the case against gender medicine], people can’t hear it. People think you’re lying, people think they know because they’re getting their information from the ‘experts’ [and from captured media outlets].
“There’s got to be other ways to reach people. And so, one thing we want to do is some listening sessions and some focus groups, and find out what kind of messaging actually works with people.”
The DIAG website suggests one approach inspired by the book How to Have Impossible Conversations by Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay.
“Remember your fellow liberals ended up here [in support of gender ideology] out of a desire to do good,” the website says. “These discussions are inevitably about morality: what it means to be a good or bad person.
“Challenging these [gender] ideas can cause the same brain responses as being in physical danger — that’s why building rapport is so important. Avoid ‘dueling sermons.’ Be sincerely curious and listen closely.
“Research and experience tell us that simply regaling someone with facts will result in them clinging more tightly to their beliefs. Leave the facts for later and focus first on establishing good faith and finding common ground.”
The idea is to use questions that genuinely engage the other person (“What do you believe?),” expose contradictions and problems (“How can someone be ‘born in the wrong body’?),” or sow seeds of doubt (“If there was no evidence that gender-affirming care stopped kids from committing suicide, what would you think?)”
The website also has advice for those on the Left who out of disgust no longer donate to organisations—such as Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Democratic Party—because they promote gender ideology.
DIAG says it’s a wasted opportunity to quietly ignore their funding appeals; better to tell them exactly why you won’t donate anymore. “Don’t forget to let them know where your donations are going now that they’ve decided that promoting the medical harm of young people is a winning strategy.”
“Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach—including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures—have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.
“And while Donald Trump denounces ‘left-wing gender insanity’ and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.”—Pamela Paul, opinion article, The New York Times, 2 February 2024
Not giving up, yet
The mood of those who spoke in DIAG’s X Space yesterday was one of anger at the Democratic Party but also a sense that the tide may be turning against gender ideology and the party may not be beyond saving.
Erin Friday, a lifelong Democrat and Californian lawyer whose daughter used to believe she was a boy, welcomed DIAG “because we really do need to figure out the methodology to reach the Democrats, especially if you’re in a liberal state, because we don’t have a chance of having rational discussions with lawmakers while the Democrats continuously pass laws that are harming our kids.”
More than a dozen blue states including California have passed laws promising a “safe haven” for trans-identifying youth and their families who might leave a neighbouring red state which restricts puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for minors.
Ms Friday, who co-founded the non-partisan group Protect Kids California with Republican loyalist Jonathan Zachreson, is campaigning for a citizen’s referendum to outlaw medicalised gender change for minors in the progressive heartland of California.
She told the X Space yesterday that the existence of DIAG refuted the claim that “all Democrats are crazy [for gender ideology]—that we are all gung-ho about harming kids and taking away parental rights, because it’s just not true.”
She also reported a breakthrough of sorts.
For the first time in four years spent advocating for children and women, she had found a Democratic lawmaker—a senator in California—willing to spend an hour and a half talking over the issues with her.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” Ms Friday said. “So, there is a sea change—and it has to come from both sides of the aisle in order for us to be successful.”
Kara Dansky, president of Women’s Declaration International USA, but speaking “solely in my personal capacity as a really angry Democrat”, offered congratulations to DIAG and a warning to its members.
“You’re going to get called a right-wing fascist, you’re going to get called a grifter. It’s not fun,” she said.
“Those of us who have been doing this for years—and some of us for decades—have been getting called Nazis, grifters, etc. You’ve just got to deflect it and move on.”
“[Australian politician and women’s rights campaigner Moira Deeming] was presented as a racist and white supremacist who supports neo-Nazi ideology without giving her a reasonable opportunity to refute these allegations or defend herself, harming her reputation and creating a lot of distress and risks for her and her family.
“The events that Ms Deeming has been subjected to [after a Let Women Speak rally in Melbourne was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis] appear to be part of a wider trend in many countries… for which I expressed my concern [previously, highlighting] ‘the escalation of intimidation and threats against women and girls for expressing their opinions and beliefs regarding their needs and rights based on sex and/or sexual orientation’.”—UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls Reem Alsalem, letter to the Australian government, 23 November 2023
Video: “Medically transitioning children is the new conversion therapy”—Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell
Betrayal
A lifelong Democrat in her 50s told yesterday’s X Space: “I know five boys who think they’re girls, right now—that is statistically impossible if we are to believe that trans is [a] small population of people.”
“Our children are being indoctrinated and the Democrats are the ones that are pushing it. My side. It’s a betrayal.”
Also in the Space, a speaker who identified himself as Alex—“a gay male” and a libertarian in his politics—argued that gender medicine “should be a bipartisan issue, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum.”
“As someone who was a young, effeminate boy, once upon a time, I have a great deal of fear and horror in my heart that if I was born today, I think I probably would have been labelled as trans and put on that road towards transition.
“I worry about the fact that kids are already confused enough, they’re growing up in a whole new world. When I was growing up, the Internet was still somewhat new. There’s so much more pressure and influence these days.
“And as if figuring out your sexuality isn’t enough, trying to figure out your gender is kind of [adding] insult to injury, particularly, I think, for those of us who potentially identify as homosexual or have same-sex attraction.
“It does concern me that some people may see being trans as a path of less resistance than being gay. This is something that I’ve heard from people from Christian families. They feel like that’s easier on their heart, I suppose— without an appreciation for the lifelong medical consequences that come along with transition.”
“The LGBT Courage Coalition is proud to support social worker Tamara Pietzke, the newest US whistleblower to speak out publicly about the reckless practice of irreversible medical interventions for gender-distressed youth.”—News release, LGBT Courage Coalition, 5 February 2024
Trans realism
Alex told the X Space: “As someone who’s got trans friends that are medically transitioned, they will be the first to admit it’s not a magic cure. It doesn’t resolve their gender dysphoria. It certainly makes it more manageable for some of them. But it isn’t a magic cure.”
“I think they also push strongly against the notion of science denial, the notion that people can change their sex—that’s not a thing. They are very much at peace with the reality that they are a trans male or a trans female… reflective of the reality of the situation.
“I think that children are being misled and doctors are under tremendous political pressure to go along with this. And I think the same is true for parents who have children that identify as trans.
“All I’m pushing for in this discussion is more restraint from the medical industry. I’d like to see the depoliticisation of the issue.”
I wonder at the feasibility of influencing and initiating change at the political level?
In Australia the targets would presumably be Albanese and Mark Butler (Minister for Health). Albanese has only ever had one job in his life, as a bank teller for a year and Butler’s only job prior to entering parliament was working with the Unions for fifteen years. Neither of these senior politicians are likely to commit to anything that might upset their electorate.
I believe that change, if it is to come, must evolve at the coal-face, the medical profession. Those directly involved in addressing and treating children as well as the large cohort who merely support ‘affirmation’.
It is clear that this subject is receiving ever more introspection and doubt in the public space. There may well be a tipping point where the ethical considerations take centre stage. If that were to occur the protagonists would be in a vulnerable place:
Dispensing off-label hormonal therapies to children with unknown long-term effects, mutilating, irreversible, sterilising genital surgery, all without any formal studies to confirm efficacy and safety.
The status quo has violated virtually all of the long-established principle in medicine that demands ‘do no harm’.
Medical defence organisations are already beginning to address the inherent risks. Enough pressure and exposure and the specialist medical colleges will flick the switch.
“ I believe that change, if it is to come, must evolve at the coal-face, the medical profession “ yes Vincent , but how to implement this strategy ( to protect future vulnerable children from medical intervention) via feasible tactics? Intuitively an overwhelming majority of the key clinicians ( child and adolescent psychiatrists, paediatricians, paediatric endocrinologists) providing this medical support have remained silent out of fear of career retribution. If legislators could be made aware of the quiet level of disagreement, they might be persuaded to act appropriately? How might the voice of majority of the profession be obtained? All the key players i.,e., the relevant colleges, AHPRA, appear to have been essentially bluffed by the activists within the profession, who likely are a relatively small , but powerful, subset. So, yes, the “ change” must come from the medical profession, via tactics which convince lay legislators who are the ultimate setters of the goal posts.