- 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.
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.