- Date: 07/13/19
- National Review
Gender dissenter gets fired for his academic views
Dr. Allan Josephson discusses academic freedom, child welfare, gender ideology, and the price he has paid for his principles.
Allan M. Josephson is a distinguished psychiatrist who, since 2003, has transformed the division of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychology at the University of Louisville from a struggling department to a nationally acclaimed program. In the fall of 2017 he appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation and shared his professional opinion on the medicalization of gender-confused youth. The university responded by demoting him and then effectively firing him.
Now he is fighting back. Josephson v. Bendapudi has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky.
Here Josephson discusses his case, gender dysphoria, academic freedom, and the medical harms of gender ideology for children with National Review’s Madeleine Kearns. (Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.)
***
Madeleine Kearns: This all started after you appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Were you speaking there as a conservative or as a medical professional?
Allan Josephson: Oh, I was speaking as a medical professional, clearly. And I was chosen because of the perspective that I would give. I had been directing the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Louisville for 15 years. I had been successful there and was asked to give a speech off campus and on my own time. It was not a university event, and I was speaking in my individual capacity.
MK: So what happened?
AJ: Shortly after that speech, it became clear that a few on my faculty were upset with some of the things that I’d said. Within a few short weeks — it was stunning how quickly it occurred — I was removed from my leadership position and then, within the next year, subjected to fairly hostile work-environment situations and, finally, not that long ago, informed that my contract would not be renewed when it ended on June 30.
Trofim Lysenko lives!
Gender identity is a rather confused field, with opinions ranging from John Money, who was convinced he could do sex reassignment surgery on infants, and have good results. To give the short version, Money was wrong.
This could prove to be every bit as much a future embarrassment to the field of psychiatry as psychosurgery.
Social Justice Warriors strike again!
Let’s face it, psychiatry is an exact science and molecular biology is a pseudo-science. At least in progressive minds. Is “minds” the best word?
I hope those “child sex reassignment surgeons” are still around in 10 – 15 years when $100 Million law suits start landing on their desks nationwide.
I can’t wait.
Doc: Normally I don’t care for Plaintiff lawyers and their $100 mil. suits, but in this instance I’m with you. Can’t wait.
The lunatics run the asylum, because far too few people with sense have the courage to challenge the insanity.
There sure is a lot to choose from. https://youtu.be/WgheGP_RZGQ
But I bet we don’t hear from Bruce Jenner as he no longer has the …
Just waiting for the progressive Big Leap Forward where they will eat their own. What progressives fear and hate most are other progressives.
Of sex (male and female), gender (masculine and feminine, respectively), transgender spectrum, and conflation of logical domains.
Yes!
There are 2 sexes, male and female
Gender is a linguistic term. There are 3 genders, masculine, feminine and neuter in Latin.
2 survive in most other Romance languages like French, Spanish, Portuguese.
Gender has nothing to do with sex.
Failure to breed has everything to do with extinction. Stupid of this caliber is self limiting.
There is no problem and no intervention is required. I have productive activities and am happy to leave the cull alone.
definitions are always a problem
hermaphrodite ?
Trisomy ?
is that male or female or none of the above
People always jump to the argument about anomolies, NOT the general population, when they have NO argument.
Sheri,
no argument, just a number of interesting question based on the statement, now if the statement had read `there are “generally” 2 sexes` . . . .
but then it didn’t,
and as my partner is a midwife and my daughter has Downs they were pertinent questions to TM, to which you appeared to have answered on his behalf, in confirmation.
6th Grade biology teacher, “Humans are bipedal, that means we walk on two legs.”
Student (and future SJW), “I know a man that lost his leg in a motorcycle accident, so you are saying he is less than human!”
Teacher, “Sighs”.
“Of sex (male and female), gender (masculine and feminine, respectively), transgender spectrum, and conflation of logical domains.”
I bring this up constantly, mostly to Kiro Radio in Seattle, who can’t seem to say the word “sex”.
Whenever someone says “gender re-assignment surgery”, I say “There is no such thing. Gender is behavior.”
One way to deal with people who insist on being addressed with pronouns/titles inconsistent with their biological sex is simply to not use 3rd-person pronouns and gender-specific titles when referring to/addressing them. Call them ‘this/that person’, and ‘person/human’ (or similar) instead of ‘Mr/Ms/Sir/Ma’am’.
Good way to get in trouble. From Board Policy 5144.1(a), proposal
presented to El Monte City Elementary District School board for
approval on 15 April (first reading):
Gender identity of a student means the student’s gender-related
identity, appearance, or behavior as determined from the student’s
internal sense of his/her gender, whether or not that gender-related
identity, appearance, or behavior is different from that traditionally
associated with the student’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.
….
Examples of the types of conduct which are prohibited in the
district and which may constitute gender-based harassment include,
but are not limited to:
1. Refusing to address a student by a name and the pronouns
consistent with his/her gender identity.
The best way is refuse to talk to anybody who attempts to tell you how you must speak.
If they say “when you speak to me you must use such and such a pronoun ” or whatever, you say fine: to comply with your demands I have to stop speaking to you. Good-bye.
Enjoy life in your bubble.
Someone I know recently posted some angry meme about how “if you don’t respect someones preferred pronouns in my house we will be asking you to leave!” Fine, I won’t be accepting any dinner invitations.
You’re are reading into that rule the requirement to address other people by gender or gender specific terms. It does no such thing, but merely polices the use of gender terminology.
“polices the use of gender terminology”! Oh how quaintly Orwellian a phrase that is!
Quaint indeed. The next extrapolation of that phrase will be achieving “gender terminology justice”. If you don’t comply, you will be labeled a genderphobe.
She, He, It: SHIt.
Xe, Xir, Xit.
Icisil, you can’t solve the terrible psychological (and apparently in some cases, physical) damage done to innocent children at the hands of politically correct “progressive” ideologue educators with a change in pronouns.
I wasn’t saying or implying that it was. It’s merely a personal defense against being sucked into craziness.
‘it’ works well for me. For both sexes.
(my native language does not divide things to feminine, masculine, and neuter – so you’d exclaim things like it‘s a girl when a girl is born)
But agree, person is more polite in English. The head story underlines the fact trans activism is running rampant and driving medicalisation of an issue of the mind as an issue of the body.
The patients will have hard time to live their lives without their biological sex.
The Russians and the French have already cracked this problem : call everyone Comrade or Citizen.
No leftist would object surely.
My comment (yet to appear as I write this ) that we adopt Comrade or Citizen as the gender neutral mode of address would only apply to English of course as , in French it is presumably still gender sensitive.
You have to wait till the top of the hour for new posts to appear.
Hugs
I agree with the approach. I speak an exotic language from Africa that uses “u” as the personal pronoun. It means approximately “that one”. There is no gender implied.
It is very convenient.
One problem confounding English fem-lib proponents is that the term “man” is generic and does not mean “male”. “Bring three men to assist,” does not imply that they should be males. Similarly “hands” as in farmhands and demands are not necessarily male. Man comes from the Latin for hand (manus).
The dumbing of speech in the 70’s lost such general knowledge to everyone’s detriment.
Pointing to the word “woman” and insisting that it means “wo”-male is done out of ignorance. The male of woman is weaman. The term has fallen out of favour but there it is. The term “weapon” means “male tool”, “pon” being a generic tool and wea meaning a male. Wo and wea are ancient.
Man is, as I said, a generic term for “person”. Mankind means person-kind, not male-kind. Humanity doesn’t refer to males, but to people. It is not ” hu-male-ity”. And finally the book “Ascent of Man” doesn’t refer to the ascent of males , but humans as a group.
It is unfortunate to see ignorance multiplied by the loss of a sound classical education in the basics of language. It is sort of humorous to see people attacking the three letters m-a-n whenever they occur as an example of “the patriarchy”. The attack is an example of people not knowing what they are talking about, literally.
I think there are Jamaican dialects which only use “I”, no “you, me, he she, it” etc. Confuses the hell out of me, but maybe smoking ganja makes it all perfectly reasonable.
This is the same issue, in another field, that Peter Ridd faced and, we hope, has been victorious!
Dr. Ridd’s speaking out threatened the GBR research funding, i.e. the gravy train.
Dr. Josephson speaking out on the other hand threatens ideology of irrational fanatics, and the vitriol is much stronger when their ideology is involved/threatened.
Louisville is general on the conservative side of the spectrum. That gives his case some hope…it’ll depend on the judge. If this had happened in the PRCa (Peoples Republic of California), DPRIl (Democratic Peoples Republic of Illinois) or the SSSNY (Soviet Socialist State of New York), it would be a lost cause for Dr. Josephson.
From the article quoting Dr Josephson:
“You mentioned earlier about the politicization of this particular field of medicine more generally and gave the example of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which last year issued a widely criticized policy statement endorsing “gender affirmation” [psychological, medical, and surgical sex-change treatments for minors]. You said something very interesting: that for people who aren’t familiar with this process, this could seem like there’s a medical consensus, when actually, it is a very small number of people driving this change.”
The Left is eating its own.
A lot of what is happening now is the pushing of transgender “identity” via gender reassignment therapy (gender affirmation treatment, i.e. pushing the change on a confused child as mentioned by Dr Josephson) if the child or adolescent speaks out to any question about who they are as a boy or a girl. That is completely normal in many cases. Leave them alone.
But the crazy thing about today’s transgenders and the Left pushing “gender reassignment” on adolescents is if left alone in the past, they probably grew up to be gay or lesbian adults in today’s world.
Today the gay and lesbian adult community today should look at this as, “What would this psychological trauma have done to me at age 13-17?”
Most Lesbians and Gay men today are successful as any hetero and same-sex relationships with careers, jobs. They are accepted to marry and work place discrimination is non-existent, a non-problem today. So this transgender agenda (gender reassignment on teenagers) is really an assault on being an adult gay or lesbian
What is hilarious about the modern Left is the fundamental contradiction between its dedication to Transgenderism (a man in a dress is a woman) and to Feminism (a woman is a distinct class needing protection from men). Similarly, the Left’s infatuation with radical Islam is also antithetical to its Feminism.
With luck, these contradictions will rip the movement apart.
We already see them ripping themselves apart but they seem to have a lot of ‘apart’ to rip. (Or, ripping themselves apart doesn’t seem to weaken them.) The danger of their force is that they are a violent, desperate minority with the dermination to overwhelm an otherwise complacent majority.
Following is an email I received this morning from the Economist Intelligence Unit (which, in recent decades, has become a ‘contradiction in terms’). It concerns ‘violence against children’, of which this gender re-assignment of minors is a component.
Child abduction and child abuse by government authorities is probably the greatest single source of violence against children. This is certainly the case in Canada.
It typically takes the form of the “Silver Bullet Scam”, which is the false charging of men with family violence. The assumption by the authorities is that men are “guilty until proved innocent”, part of the “just believe the woman” meme – which is a deliberate breakdown of over 800 years of British Law, the basis of our prosperity.
This scam is routinely used by sociopathic women to gain financial advantage and sole custody of children in fractious divorces, and it is actively encouraged by the Law Business in Canada. This dysfunction is exacerbated because our federally-appointed Justices are typically political cronies who have little apparent legal expertise.
Upon reflection, I think we are only seeing the “tip of the iceberg”. Ask yourself, why is this happening? Who gains from this egregious misconduct? Is everyone in the Family Law Business really this stupid, or is something else going on? Who gains, and what are their true objectives?
This deliberate destruction of the family by the authorities leads to several outcomes: kids who are much more susceptible to substance abuse, sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, etc. Maybe that is their true objective, hiding in plain sight. These abducted and abused kids are the feedstock for the “violence against children” industry.
Regards, Allan
From: EIU Public Policy team
Date: July 16, 2019 at 6:29:27 AM MDT
To: Allan MacRae
Subject: Global progress to end violence against children falls short
Reply-To: eiu_enquiries@eiu.com
GLOBAL PROGRESS TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN FALLS SHORT
This week in New York, global leaders are gathered at the United Nations High-level Political Forum (HLPF) to share updates on their countries’ progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The focus for this meeting is empowerment, inclusiveness and equality.
And, for the first time, countries’ progress towards ending violence against children is on the agenda. If data is any indication, movement on this front has been slow: fewer than 50 countries have reported on the prevalence of sexual violence against children.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Out of the Shadows Index (OOSI) —which benchmarks stakeholder response to sexual violence against children globally—confirms that we have a long way to go. A first-of-its-kind tool, the OOSI provides a tangible measure of progress towards meeting SDG 16.2 to end all violence against children by 2030, and creates accountability for governments, civil society and the private sector to drive change.
LEARN MORE https://outoftheshadows.eiu.com/
“Maybe” that is their true objective? Again, for those who might have missed it:
“The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already for the last 25 years. Actually, it’s over fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards. As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents and pictures. …he will refuse to believe it…. That’s the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.”
– Yuri Bezmenov, defected KGB agent, 1984
Another thought: was reminded by your post that a well-known blogger and author (whose name I won’t mention here) once told me in a personal communication that we should expect to see pedophilia mainstreamed and eventually decriminalized, and the child-abuse “industry” stakeholders to welcome this, since it will as you say provide ever more feedstock. Not *explicitly* perhaps, but since money is everything to the terminally amoral, welcome it nonetheless.
The “Silver Bullet” scam has existed for ~20 years, known by that very name – it’s been around decades longer under other names – IT’S TAKEN THAT LONG FOR THIS ARTICLE TO APPEAR.
DIVORCE AND THE ‘SILVER BULLET’, published on April 16, 2019
https://quillette.com/2019/04/16/divorce-and-the-silver-bullet/
Here are a few observations and some important questions.
Corrupt Judges, Crown Prosecutors, lawyers and cops all claim they’ve never heard of the Silver Bullet scam – but they certainly have known about it and have actively collaborated in it for decades. Who gains from this vile scam?
As I wrote above here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/14/first-they-came-for-climate-sceptics/#comment-2746197
[excerpt]
Child abduction and child abuse by government authorities is probably the greatest single source of violence against children. This is certainly the case in Canada.
It typically takes the form of the “Silver Bullet Scam”, which is the false charging of men with family violence. The assumption by the authorities is that men are “guilty until proved innocent”, part of the “just believe the woman” meme – which is a deliberate breakdown of over 800 years of British Law, the basis of our prosperity.
This scam is routinely used by sociopathic women to gain financial advantage and sole custody of children in fractious divorces, and it is actively encouraged by the Law Business in Canada. This dysfunction is exacerbated because our federally-appointed Justices are typically political cronies who have little apparent legal expertise.
Upon reflection, I think we are only seeing the “tip of the iceberg”.
ASK YOURSELF, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? WHO GAINS FROM THIS EGREGIOUS MISCONDUCT? IS EVERYONE IN THE FAMILY LAW BUSINESS REALLY THIS STUPID, OR IS SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON? WHO GAINS, AND WHAT ARE THEIR TRUE OBJECTIVES?
THIS DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY BY THE AUTHORITIES LEADS TO SEVERAL OUTCOMES: KIDS WHO ARE MUCH MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO SUBSTANCE ABUSE, SEXUAL EXPLOITATION, SEX TRAFFICKING, ETC. MAYBE THAT IS THEIR TRUE OBJECTIVE, HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT.
THESE ABDUCTED AND ABUSED KIDS ARE THE FEEDSTOCK FOR THE “VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN” INDUSTRY.
Regards, Allan
Indeed, cui bono? The very question I began asking as the climate hysteria industry really began ramping up. All of a piece, as a wise poster here said not long ago.
Since I don’t follow the popular media, I learned just today about the arrest of previously-convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein on July 6, 2019 for sex trafficking of minors.
I have long suspected that the deliberate destruction of the family by government authorities was just the “tip of the iceberg”, and there were much darker motives for this extremist illegal misconduct by the Law Business.
I SUGGEST THAT OUR INSTITUTIONS HAVE BECOME DEEPLY CORRUPTED AND HAVE KNOWINGLY COLLABORATED WITH THE LIKES OF EPSTEIN TO PROVIDE FEEDSTOCK FOR HIS CHILD-SEX TRAFFICKING OPERATIONS.
It is notable that I wrote just yesterday, before ever hearing of Jeffrey Epstein:
“Child abduction and child abuse by government authorities is probably the greatest single source of violence against children. This is certainly the case in Canada.
It typically takes the form of the “Silver Bullet Scam”, which is the false charging of men with family violence. The assumption by the authorities is that men are “guilty until proved innocent”, part of the “just believe the woman” meme – which is a deliberate breakdown of over 800 years of British Law, the basis of our prosperity.
This scam is routinely used by sociopathic women to gain financial advantage and sole custody of children in fractious divorces, and it is actively encouraged by the Law Business in Canada.
ASK YOURSELF, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? WHO GAINS FROM THIS EGREGIOUS MISCONDUCT? IS EVERYONE IN THE FAMILY LAW BUSINESS REALLY THIS STUPID, OR IS SOMETHING ELSE GOING ON? WHO GAINS, AND WHAT ARE THEIR TRUE OBJECTIVES?
THIS DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY BY THE AUTHORITIES LEADS TO SEVERAL OUTCOMES: KIDS WHO ARE MUCH MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO SUBSTANCE ABUSE, SEXUAL EXPLOITATION, SEX TRAFFICKING, ETC. MAYBE THAT IS THEIR TRUE OBJECTIVE, HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT.
THESE ABDUCTED AND ABUSED KIDS ARE THE FEEDSTOCK FOR THE “VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN” INDUSTRY.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-arrested-sex-trafficking.html
“The case received new public scrutiny after an investigative report published by The Miami Herald in November quoted four of Mr. Epstein’s victims, who are now adults, on the record for the first time.
One of the victims, Courtney Wild, now 31, was wearing braces when she first met Mr. Epstein. “Jeffrey preyed on girls who were in a bad way, girls who were basically homeless,” Ms. Wild told The Herald. “He went after girls who he thought no one would listen to and he was right.”
Investigators had identified more than 30 victims. The Herald said it located about 60.”
Is not gender identity physically determined at birth?
Just sayin…..
Gender is set at conception. The very first fertilized egg cell has one of the two possible genders. When the gender of a fetus is ascertained (one meaning of “determined”) may not occur until birth, but gender is not caused (another meaning of “determined”) by human choice or action at any age.
Just sayin… the actual scientific fact. Those who claim otherwise are wrong. Those who mutilate children based on their ignorance or denial of scientific fact are sick monsters. Just sayin…
‘Gender’ is a language term : in humans/animals the word is ‘sex’. But I fear that boat has sailed!
I’d like to get some of the people behind this particularly disgusting form of child abuse and arrange them a little “gender reassignment” of their own. See how “cool” they find that.
Identity and sex are different, but sometimes sex really is indeterminate. You have Y, but it is not fully functional.
That is a totally different thing to what is being discussed here, which is sexual mutilation of children.
I have Y, and it works fine with a little blue pill.
I drilled down to the original interview, and it truly is a sad state of affairs. The Doc is correct, a confused child, who likely has other mental health problems is convinced by outside forces that are more concerned about pushing their agenda than any concern for the patient. All these gender flipping kids are nothing more than lab rats. Unfortunately, a high percentage of them will go on to commit suicide, as they learn later on that gender identity was not the real issue.
These individuals should receive treatment for the other underlying disorders with no encouragement or discouragement either way on gender issues until they have fully matured …. and that is past the age of 20 years for girls and even later for boys. And even then, if the anxiety and depression are not in full remission, they still should not be influenced on gender identity. Changing gender will not magically fix everything else. That is a fairytale.
On the bigger issue of the Doc being dismissed, the University should lose its accreditation or at the very least any state funding. This type of censorship should not be tolerated …. period.
‘All these gender flipping kids are nothing more than lab rats. Unfortunately, a high percentage of them will go on to commit suicide, as they learn later on that gender identity was not the real issue.’
In much of British literature there are references to ‘tomboys’ that is a young girl who likes to do the things traditionally more associated with boys. The overwhelming majority would mature in due course and assume their female identity without any hint of needing complex and expensive gender re-assignment.
it seems to me this acceptance of the tomboy in modern life has been lost. I do not know if this word exists in America
it used to..same as in Aus. I was one always outside up a tree or later on hanging round the boys for the CAR mechanical learning and dressing more like a boy to avert other “interests” they might of had;-)
horses cattle and other animal hobbies and always wanting to know how it was made and how it worked
girls were so damned boooring n prissy;-)
at that stage the present nutters would have me down as a wanna be boy and “assisted” to ruin my life.
at 17 I turned into the proper femme Bimbo as required to get/keep a job at Arthur Murrays 🙂
decades later got back into the making/working/ stuff via electronic assembly and was pretty happy n good at it. now I sort of farm and heres the old whats a woman doing out on the tractor thing again;-/
45 yrs ago I was told that equal wages and the freedom to do any work you wanted was going to be our wonderful future
bullsh*t to the max both still dont happen.
Im 60 tomorrow and stuff all has changed for the majority of girls/women since the 70s and it didnt really change then either.
Maybe they should have 3 genders, Male, Female and Wrasse. The latter after the New Zealand wrasse that can change from male to female and back as it feels with a change taking about a week. Its a bit fishy but what the hell….
It was Victor Borge who claimed that “in Denmark we have three sexes, male, female and convertible”. That was how long ago??
You’d never get that one past the SJWs today!
You really have to wonder who is behind all the insanity. It looks like an attempt to undermine morality and common sense. Who would do that? The Russians? The Chinese? Satan?
It’s a form of castration. It is being pushed by those who wish to destroy humanity, for whatever reason.
To deny that there are two biological sexes and that this is an immutable reality is to deny the fact that humans are sexually reproducing animals.
It´s very fashionable and important to be “individual person”, and refuse to understand nature.
Also morality is not in fashion anymore. Common sense is so rare that it´s impossible to say which direction is in fashion.
The money changers in the temple in a bankrupt nation. Divide and conquer. Politicians are just dispensable puppets who look for a moment of glory before they discover who really is in power. That’s why elections don’t change a thing or only make ‘government’ bigger.
There are 2 genders, male and female. On the other hand there are 100 psychiatric disorders of gender confusion.
There are a few intersex people, formerly called hermaphrodites. One can be a genetic female with superficially male external genitalia, or a genetic male with superficially female external genitalia, as with the South African runner Caster Semenya.
That is quite different from gender dysphoria.
Male and female are sexes, not genders. Masculine and feminine are genders. One can be male, but act feminine. Gender is behavior.
We’re seeing the death of science, free speech, and rational thought, as it’s all being sacrificed on the alter of progressivism.
Whatever made you think that intelligence should be a moral force?
What the new left wants is destruction of family, religion, freedom, and economic wellbeing to create the new world order. The main project is bringing down the USA because it is the world’s economic engine, and the bedrock of freedom. Corruption of the education system and institutional frameworks have been under siege for two or three generations. Climateering, knocking down borders, weaponizing immigration, creating new genders etc. are all part of the putsch.
Socialists have tried to appear a more attractive and caring alternative to free enterprise but their real life experiments in governance were a murderous disaster. Now the gloves are off and they arent afraid to show their fangs. They can’t compete but blowing up the foundation seems promising to them.
The need to cut my leg off to improve my life is a recognised illness: paraphilia. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15997612
The need to cut my genitals off to improve my life is a healthy, normal and sensible reaction to white supremacists patriarchal pressure, or something.
It all makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
He needs to contact Dr. Ridd in Australia.
This is most definitely a trend as confirmed recently by a highly experienced pediatrics Proff here who said gender ”reassignment” enquiries went from 2 or 3 a year a decade ago to as many as 12 per week now. It’s a trend mainly taken up by confused and misguided parents….obviously.
I have read that elsewhere. It makes me wonder, where are the adults in the room?
cerescokid
The ‘adults’ in the room seem to be early years teachers who are instructed to teach children about transgenderism.
In my opinion, it provides a child an unnecessary choice most of us faced as a gradual realisation i.e. that there is a choice, but we faced it as adults. It was also gradual, which gave us all time to rationalise and choose between heterosexuality and homosexuality, it was not presented to us as an early years choice. It may also have bee peer induced as we naturally drift toward our preferred peer group over a period of time having tried mixing with different groups.
Forcing young children to face the stark reality of a minority groups gender identity choice is irresponsible as the natural confusion of growing up, with all the other associated challenges is inappropriate and dangerous for children.
Some kids like to wear gender inappropriate clothing at a young age e.g. little boys wearing dresses or girls dressing like boys for innumerable reasons, few I suspect anything to do with gender confusion. Introduce the subject of gender confusion at an early stage and, I believe, makes that natural experimentation a choice.
In the mad rush for woke virtue signalling our authorities, academics and teachers are endangering a lot of children.
Childhood is an opportunity to learn, not to be taught. It should be a sheltered environment with parents free to protect their children from harm and undue influence.
Teachers act ‘In loco parentis‘ and as part of a community. In the daily absence of parents they are there to do our bidding, not that of an external influence at the instruction of others.
Conventional 3 R’s education has served the world well for thousands of years. The ability to objectively assess the world around us spills from that. Strict dress code in early years education also eliminates segregation on the grounds of wealth, gender preference (other than between boys and girls) background, religion or upbringing.
In the UK at least, if parents wish their children to wear overt religious artefacts like scarves during school time, they are at liberty to educate their children at home. If they wish to avail themselves of a taxpayer funded, state education system they should be prepared to conform to the non discriminatory practise of dressing in a school uniform.
The Muslim community has held demonstrations outside a certain school in the UK where the values of LGBT were to be taught. For that, I congratulate them.
Sorry, I rambled a bit in that comment.
In my “uneducated” opinion (which frustrates my academic son) is that we should NOT confound sex/gender with sexual preference.
My own mental model is a 2 X 2 matrix (with the sex vector binary and the preference vector a continuum).
The discussion can start from there.
It has the benefit of eliminating a heck of a lot of letters in the Progressives’ alphabet soup of possible “sexes”; simplifying rational discussion of the issue.
(In other words, acknowledge that modern society doesn’t give a darn about who you sleep with – hear that, Rapinoe? – and doesn’t discriminate on that basis today either. That takes away a huge element of the “identity”/ victim politics of the left.)
Misguided parents have been tryanized by pill-pushing pyschiatrists for years. It is the psychiatrists who owe a professional duty of care. Not the parents.
Like most would-be tyrants, pill pushing psychiatrists tend to run when it’s made clear that they will personally pay the price for messing with your child.
Flower children of late sixties are now grandparents or grand-grandparents. They want an eternal summer of love for all their descendants. Taxpayers will gladly provide funding, even though some grumble on this blog.
Persecution of global warming skeptics in academia is primarily driven by politics. There is a cabal that polices its own field, and they are supported by like minded folks in other areas of academia.
This fellow stumbled into a much worse situation, because he challenged the ‘diversity’ scam. The diversity scam is just as strongly policed by activists in the field, and is just as strongly supported by like minded liberals elsewhere in academia. But the difference is that the diversity scam is also tied to tens of billions of dollars of funding every year for academia.
Federal grants require each institution to describe and demonstrate that they have an active, vibrant, and consequential diversity program in place. Your grant application is weighed on its own merit, but also on the merit of your institutions diversity program. A professor like this threatens every grant by every other faculty at the school. This is why the actions against him were so swift, in every facet of his job role.
There is no academic freedom when the grant competitiveness game is so skewed and rigged to require ideological purity.
When I was a small child I wanted to be a boy, I complained about my curly hair being ‘girlie’: my granny took me to the window and pointed out that one of my brother’s friends had curly hair. That shut me up but today I could end up in a gender clinic for that.
Susan
PS Now married with two children but I still only wear a skirt on compulsion. We’re all different.
Susan
In Britain you would have been called a ‘Tomboy.’ this now seems a very old fashioned phrase but is much used in English literature. Is this phrase known in America?
tonyb
Is this phrase known in America?
Indeed it is, e.g. https://www.hannibal2019.com/events-1/tomboy-sawyer
Many other examples to be found in that British monolith, the OED. : > )
I remember it from my youth in the 50s and into the 60s. Can’t say I have heard it since then.
I’m British. I was clearly defined as a tomboy: it was regarded as quite normal.
Some people need to read Nagel’s _What is it like to be a bat?_
updated version?
what is it like to be a dingbat;-)
Sounds about as interesting as a summarizing Proust competition.
Things post slowly on WUWT. That said, as of when I’m writing this, there are 34 comments and none of them has mentioned Jordan Peterson. That surprises me.
Peterson shot to fame when he proclaimed that he would not use made-up gender pronouns.
For reasons I do not understand, all efforts to get him fired have failed and any efforts to remove his professional license have failed. He still has his academic position and he still has his license to practice psychiatry. He’s as surprised as anyone else.
commieBob
Far too high a public profile to be fired. Academia is not very courageous, obviously.
I beleive that Professor Petersen is tenured and so hard to get rid of.
Like Trump with his Twitter account. They dare not cut him off.
My instant thought too. Who ya gonna call? Jordan B. Peterson. There is no higher profile dissenter.
Oopsie!
Peterson is a psychologist not a psychiatrist.
The gender fluidity people (employed by my government) came around to my kids’ government primary school and gave presentations to children under 13 years old.
No permission of parents was requested and parents did not get to see the presentation.
From what I could glean from my kids’ account of the presentation, it provided a script to the children that provided a path to becoming transgender.
One of my kids’ friends then followed that exact script.
This child has ended up very unhappy and isolated at secondary school. We are all very supportive of the child’s wishes and we hope that this wonderful person ends up happy and healthy. The child is now 13 years old and has been having hormonal therapy for some time now and I understand surgery may have taken place already or is immanent.
What bothers me is that I wonder that if that child had grown a little older they may have chosen differently. For example, perhaps they may have identified as gay or lesbian, which is a much better place to be as there are lots of gays and lesbians and they do not have surgery, etc. to be who they are.
I would not be surprised if this child changes their mind within a few years. Certainly, the script they have followed has led to extreme social isolation and associated mental health issues like depression and high anger levels.
I just can’t help but wonder, what would have happened if they had never attended that presentation?
Encouraging children to become trans is clearly serious child abuse. The outcomes are abysmal.
The above was written by a trans advocate. She points out that the real statistics on violence, murder, and lifespan don’t exist because they aren’t gathered. I don’t think she’s overstating the case.
If kids are somewhat unhappy now, counseling them to become trans condemns them to a lifetime of misery. Only a psycho SJW would do that.
A respected for his competences and wisdom engineer in our neighborhood drove a child psychiatrist out of his temper. And could sue him later for “violent menacing behavior” (until I came up with a better translation). Here’s the story:
That folk has a putatively hyperactive kid, age 4 when it happened. The kindergarten arranged for a compulsory appointment with a psychiatrist.
The father exhibited a small metal safe box and an angle grinder. Then asked the psychiatrist to find out what was inside.
He could either use the grinder and cut the lock or pick it. Shock and awe.
Further, he explained that the small safe contained an USB hard drive. Which could be cut open or connected to a computer. All with zero cognitive gain since the contents of the drive were encrypted.
More shock more awe.
Then he explained that his professional qualifications allow to precisely know how the disk stores data and how, in presence of the correct key-code, retrieve information without any damage.
Ever growing shock and awe.
Last, he challenged the venerable doctor to demonstrate identical deep understanding in his own field, the human soul which happens to be more valuable than a hundred bucks worth of disk, instead of forcibly break boxes and guess this or that.
Reportedly, the psychiatrist lost his temper. A massive tantrum ensued, witnesses showed from other offices.
Yep, all parents in the neighborhood know the story. And the kid ? He’s fine, reportedly very good in maths, same class as my kid.
Cool account, thank you.
The only way this happens is through long-standing, pervasive discrimination against those with conservative ideology throughout colleges and universities across the country. Because of the way such discrimination has affected religious groups, it is probably illegal.
But who is doing anything about it?
Not to put too finer point on it, any medico performing reassignment surgery on pre pubescent kids, should be put in the same bracket as Mengele. Pre puberty kids should be thinking its just for peeing with 🙂
People can think and act in any lawful way they want as far as I’m concerned.
I defer to others regarding their gender assignment choices. Don’t care at all. I grew up with two young fellows who behaved in feminine ways from the age of 4. Both are now openly gay. It was always obvious to me that they were born gay. Both are wonderful, kind and productive people. I only want the best for all involved.
However, other people cannot use the force of law to tell me how to speak or what words to use. My individual right to free speech supersedes others’ desire to be referred to in compelled codified words.
My speech in the workplace or in the community would depend on the circumstances… primarily the motivation of the person requesting special referential pronouns/names. If the motivation were to make a political statement or to make an example, I would not comply. If the person was psychologically fragile and kind with pure motives, I might comply.
Once again, liberals with power cross a bright line. Given enough power we can expect re-education and concentration camps from these neo-Marxists. Over 100 million dead and counting.
These liberals scream about domestic Nazi’s. But these Nazi’s have no path to power and there are very few of them. They have no recognizable national leaders. But the historically murderous Marxists are already well ensconced in the seats of power. And they are not hesitant to trample on individual rights. Censorship by deplatforming by firing of transgressors of “newspeak” is just the first step…seen now in the biological sciences as it was and is in the Climate sciences.
Similar to treatment that was meted out to Bob Carter and Murray Salby.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/08/silencing-climate-change-dissenters/
https://mlsxmq.wixsite.com/salby-macquarie/page-1f
From the full article: “Recently in the U.K., a doctor was fired for refusing to call trans patients by their preferred pronouns.”
How is it that progressives insist that they should be addressed as they want, while calling skeptics “deniers,” despite most of us being offended by the implications of the name? Once again, a double standard.
That’s the thing about the ‘tolerant’ left – you aren’t allowed to deviate from ANY of their positions.
Many of the comments here saying that it’s a matter of science that gender is binary show lack of scientific understanding. For one thing, because chromosomes don’t always replicate nice and neatly when a cell divides, X and Y chromosomes sometimes get each other’s genes. For another thing, the way a human male brain usually develops depends on hormone processes that are not guaranteed by a Y chromosome. There are biological differences that are often found in transgender peoples’ brains.
So, while Googling about Allan Josephson, I found this, whose headline says “‘No science’ behind transgender therapy …”. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/10/15/no-science-behind-transgender-therapy-for-kids-doctors-warn/ I know that headline is at most partially true. And that article has this: “Cretella pointed to former patients who change their minds “at age 28 or so and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, what was done to me?’” That seems to contradict Josephson saying in the National Review article linked by the GWPF that clinics offering such treatment were unheard of seven or eight years ago. I also found some familiar names standing up for Josephson, and they have a history of opposing antidiscrimation laws, for even sexual orientation, and claimed that homosexuality was a mental illness and favored conversion therapy for homosexuality, for example Focus On The Family. If Josephson would vocally distance himself from support by organizations who have been scientifically wrongheaded about things including homosexuality, then I might consider him as more credible about transgenderism. Meanwhile, what I have been seeing in hits in multiple different Google searches makes me have doubts that Josephson is a Peter Ridd or a Roger Pielke Jr.
When I was a little boy they wanted me to dress up like a girl to be in a pantomime. The man said I was pretty. I refused. The man got cross and said I had to. When I got home I told my father. Next day the man was EXTREMELY nice to me. Oh, and I didn’t have to dress up like a girl. I now have 5 children and 6 grandchildren. And if anyone wanted to mess with them … well, I have an example to follow.
Great story.
I must have been 4 or 5 years old, lying on the floor engaged in conversation with my parents.
My mom, flirting I guess, said something about being happy she married a “big strong man like your father…” (he wasn’t, but that’s another story!).
I responded with “well, I hope I grow up to marry a big strong lady”. Hilarity ensued.
I guess I should consider myself lucky I didn’t end up reassigned. This would have been circa ’65.
So quick to trot out the “born that way” defense at any criticism of their behavior, then turn right around to express “pride” in it as a behavioral choice. You don’t see pride marches for lactose intolerance or celiac disease or other genetic predispositions, positive or negative. You can’t rationally claim moral neutrality while demanding moral affirmation for the same thing. A behavior either has a moral component or it does not, and a moral behavior and an amoral behavior can’t be apples-to-apples compared. To illustrate:
Question A: “Is there a right or wrong way to be black?”
Question B: “Is there a right or wrong way to be sexual?”
In order to validly compare forms of sexual behavior to morally neutral genetic dispositions like race, one must answer “no” to both questions. Be careful with that, because by logical extension you will be claiming such things as bestiality and pedophilia to also be morally neutral.
Sometimes they bring out the “consent” defense to try and go halfsies: “animals or children can’t give consent!” So? Zebra can’t give consent to the lions who want to eat them. Yet the lions stay blameless, because they’re born carnivorous.
The dissonance is obvious to anyone not wearing ideological blinders. Whatever science may claim either way will stay TBI — True But Irrelevant.
Interesting case. Academic freedom of speech vs. Universities freedom of human power selection.