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National Geographic Dives down the Rabbit Hole
I often visit kottke.org, a blog ran by Jason Kottke. He’s a typical brain dead liberal, but I usually choose to just ignore the annoying progressive garbage posts and look at the posts where he’s linking to genuinely interesting (and non-political) videos and stories. Anyhow, visited today and saw this image.
So National Geo’s next issue will be all about “evolving” notions of gender and include pics of 80 different 9-year old transgender kids, such as the one featured on the cover. Jason Kottke is, unsurprisingly, happy and excited. PJ Media is less thrilled (and I’ll direct you to them if you’d like more details about the issue beyond what I give).
How about that caption on the cover: “The best thing about being a girl is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy.” I no longer have to pretend to have the X and Y chromosomes and male genetic coding that I do in reality have, but…you know what I mean! They not only want to change what the words “boy” and “girl” mean, they want to change the meaning of “pretend” as well. It never ceases to amaze me how the Left, who claims to be the ones who are all about science, can engage in this kind of sophistry and expect that everyone will get on board.
I’m not fond of the idea of introducing new gender pronouns like “ze,” but I think it’d be less annoying than these troubled individuals appropriating (to borrow a favored word of the Left) the pronouns and words that until recently had been reserved for the opposite sex. You may be a transgender individual and mentally not be experiencing what the typical member of your sex experiences, but you sure as heck ain’t experiencing what the typical member of the opposite sex experiences either (a boy can claim to be a girl all he wants, but he’ll never know what it’s like to have a menstrual cycle).
Of course what really makes this whole thing particularly insidious is that this magazine is promoting the idea that prepubescent children should be encouraged and indulged by parents in any transgender tendencies they may exhibit. Avery, the troubled boy pictured on the cover, has been living as an “openly transgender girl since age 5.” I can’t respect people as responsible parents or adults when they encourage little children to make such radical and harmful lifestyle choices. Some children do experience more intense gender confusion than others, but the idea that a child should be encouraged, while their brains and bodies are still far from completing their full development, to claim an identity opposite to their actual sex (and even take steps to alter the natural development of their body), is evil.
While I believe the majority of people in this country still hold to common sense understandings of sex and gender, our popular culture’s take on all this has only gotten more and more relativistic and depraved as the years go by. The plunge down the slippery slope continues to accelerate.
I hope and pray that someday the pendulum will swing back in the direction of truth and sanity.
Published in General
My impression is it is much more complex than “sexuality.” In my experience, uncommon gender identity seems to be about 50/50 on sexual orientation.
I’d much rather have someone living under a delusion than see them committing suicide, but I cannot get behind all of society being forced to mangle the English language and declare the relationship between one’s sex and gender meaningless just to spare the feelings of a sliver of the population.
I don’t think anyone’s saying the best strategy is to just tell trans-folk that they’re broken. I imagine conservatives would all prefer they seek professional help for coping with their condition, as we’d hope anyone with major emotional/psychological disorders would (though I wonder how many therapists today still treat gender dysphoria as a problem rather than something to be universally celebrated and accommodated).
The wiki-article on the subject does say that many transgender folk are still attracted to the opposite sex (so, yes, there are men who really believe they are lesbians trapped in men’s bodies).
More instances of child abuse. See how the media celebrates this? There is reality and these people deny any and all instances of reality.
Also, why is a little kid watching a drag queen competition?!
Sorry if I screwed up the thread, but now that the post has upvoted I regretted being so open.
Anyone who quoted me – if you would change my name I’d appreciate it.
My bad
Unfortunately, looking at comments on posts like this it’s hard not to come away with the impression that many people feel people should just look between their legs and get over any issue they have with not identifying with Rambo.
It’s the “society being forced” thing that I can’t quite square. National Geographic isn’t forcing anyone to do anything with their children. They are trying to influence the culture. Even if it’s for the worse, they have a right to try. If they are wrong, which they almost certainly are if they advocate for parents influencing one gender over the other, I for one have trust in truth winning out in the long run.
Maybe I’m just more “protected” than most, but I’m not fretting at the prospect of society changing the gender of my children from what they personally desire. So far my 3 year old and 1 year old are almost too stereotypical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gtx7OVYby0
A video on the topic from an adult with gender dysphoria.
Nat Geo is advocating for parents to deny reality. Nat Geo is encouraging parents to say that their kid is the opposite gender. That is wrong. That is child abuse.
Transgenderism is a mental disorder. Those that are suffer from it think they are something that they are not. That is the classic example of a mental disorder. By asking the rest of society to suspend reality to support the delusions that transgenders live in is a disservice to everyone.
Perfect. Thank you for the post.
When I use the phrase “society being forced,” I’m not referring to just the National Geo story, but the broader movement in popular culture and government to force or exert strong pressure on people to accept transgenderism as normal and positive. See the controversy surrounding North Carolina’s bathroom bill or the case of the Canadian professor that may face sanctions because he refuses to use gender neutral pronouns.
I’m not worried about my children at all either. Children with responsible parents are going to be just fine. Who I am worried about are the children featured in the National Geo issue and children like them in the future who will be exploited by parents who’ve been sold the message by the popular culture that it’s awesome for your 5 year old to identify as the opposite sex and that you should do everything to encourage them should they manifest any such tendencies.
Sure, but there’s a difference between influencing and letting be. We shouldn’t want parents doing too much to influence kids either way. There are kids who grow up to be truly transgender so we should strive to balance the risks of false positives and true positives.
Most kids want to be cisgender. But every kid is different and even if one conforms to their sex ultimately that still includes an incredible range of possible preferences and expressions.
Parents that go all in trying to push their kids to a curtain gender are wrong, but there are also parents that are pulled, kicking and screaming, by their kids preferences. And of course, we can’t just let kids do whatever they want, but there’s a balancing act, and we should be careful not to go too far in the other direction by telling good parents they are wrong for not squashing any non-conforming act in its tracks.
Intriguingly, yes. Although this is rare, it is possible to have a trisomy (three chromosomes where there should be two) at the 23rd pair of sex chromosomes. XXY, XXX, XYY, these are all possible. However, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome usually still determines the expression of mostly male or mostly female characteristics. XXY people may be mostly biologically male but with a more feminine facial structure or even with some female secondary sex characteristics, for instance.
It is also possible for various factors to cause surges of unexpectedly different hormones at critical points in embryonic development. After all, a male baby is developing in an environment that is naturally shorter on testosterone than he will ultimately be. The surges in male hormones that a mother’s body has to put out in order to trigger the development of certain male traits can sometimes go awry or fail to reach the necessary levels to have their intended effect. In these situations, you may have a person with XY sex chromosomes whose body was never given the correct chemical signals to develop external male genitalia, and so defaulted in development to female genitalia (as the saying goes, we are all female until proven otherwise). However, such an individual may have fully formed internal components of the male reproductive system. The opposite is also possible. Such people are sometimes raised as girls, sometimes boys, and in many cases they have some very confusing and unusual challenges to deal with through development.
Anyway, just some interesting context on what people mean by “intersex”.
My general thinking is that a person who is struggling with their self image is not likely to be helped by surgical or pharmaceutical intervention more than simple counseling and therapy. If a person is intersex and chooses to be male or chooses to be female, they may not be as masculine or feminine as others of that sex due to biological factors, but forcing their body to behave differently has never struck me as an ideal response to that challenge. To hate one’s own body is a horrifying and sad prospect, and I am fortunate to have never struggled with something like it. But I would not recommend that an anorexic person get aggressive liposuction to reduce them to a 95 pound stick figure, and so by that principle I am very skeptical about a person who believes their biological sex to be incongruous with their personal identity getting reconstructive surgery to hide their offending body from their own dissatisfied gaze in the mirror.
Hence the extreme libertarianism. Accepting the primacy of government allows this kind of thing to happen.
This has been the case throughout history. There’s always a sizable portion of the population who seem to lack the faculties to think for themselves and so they go along with the whims of the prevailing culture. I’m just here to caution people not to go too far arguing against the bad parents that you start arguing against the good ones who do the best they can with a non-ideal roll of the dice.
Editors: You could help with this, considering that others might have already abandoned the conversation or struggle with editing. @exjon
Friends, remember that this is an issue of normalization more than legislation or scientific dispute. That means we can all help to combat this sort of nonsense simply by refusing to pay lip service to it.
The Left and even some on the Right (including some Ricochet members) will respond in anger when we object. Don’t abandon truth for comfort. Be kind, but be firm.
This ties in perfectly with Susan’s post about the nature of evil. Increasingly, people mistake evil for good. They think we are the ones being unkind. The more of us who reject that position, the easier it will be for each of us to do so.
Even in adults it can be tragic. I once saw such a patient – born male, but felt that being born male had somehow been a mistake. He underwent gender reassignment surgery. Pronouns now get difficult.
Pre-surgery he had had a satisfactory sex life with women. Post surgery, still liked women, but then began having negative repercussions from the hormones. I don’t recall the details; it was a long time ago. In any case, by the time this individual consulted us, the hormones had been discontinued, and libido had vanished.
I suppose that someone could make a decent living doing integrative endocrinology with a post-op transsexual clientele, (someone probably is, come to think of it) but I don’t think I’d want to be the one do it.
The whole thing was very sad.
At this point I just think performing sex reassignment surgery should just be banned. It is quackery.
I think it’s worth quoting this evergreen post by Dr. Paul McHugh:
The doctors that stopped Johns Hopkins from doing sex change surgeries on that basis of it doing more harm than good … former chief of psychiatry Paul McHugh and surgeon Lawrence Mayer… have just been essentially put out to pasture by Johns Hopkins because they refused to follow the multi-gender zeitgeist. Johns Hopkins announced last month that for the first time in 40 years, they’re going to do sex change surgeries again.
Our academic institutions, like our entertainment and press, have failed us. Indeed, they’re making war upon us. Burn ’em to the ground, and build our own.
And also, in the words of @whiskeysam, piss on the ashes.
Issue arrived at our house today….went straight to recycle with the junk mail. I wonder if Nat Geo would have gone with this cover if they though Trump had a chance of winning….
This is insane. Trying to push your kids to be their birth sex is wrong?
Actually, kids are rebellious. If it doesn’t involve chemicals or knives, let them pretend all they want. Most of the XXs will end up accepting that they are girls and most of the XYs will end up accepting that they are boys. Don’t give them another stupid way to rebel.
Up until maybe 10 years ago, I would have said that it wouldn’t even occur to them to rebel in this way.
I agree. Or rather, give them plenty of ways to rebel, just not this one.
Another friend’s twin toddler boys both were attracted to sparkly, bespangled old-timey purses at a church yard sale. They bought them with their allowance. They became their pre-school lunch boxes, and were the envy of the 3-4 year old’s room. They both grew up to be heterosexual, ordinary, very nice men.
What sex you are is—with the very helpful details provided by @rebark in #72—is biological in the full sense (DNA plus all the other factors nature helpfully provides) but how you express that sex within a given culture varies quite a lot. So there isn’t any rational reason why a little boy wouldn’t be attracted to a sparkly pink purse, or a spangly tutu: why wouldn’t he?
When it came to my own kids, I did two things relatively well. First, I set a lot of limits. More to the point, I set the boundaries of acceptable behavior well inside the limit of what I could actually tolerate. This gave them room to transgress —a developmental inevitability—without actually doing anything really awful. (Had my first husband lived, we would’ve been able to manage this even better—sigh). Second, I ignored stuff like “gender expression.” I could and did tell them “you have to behave kindly and respectfully according to our society’s regrettably lax standards and/or our family’s more stringent ones” but I did not tell them “you have to be a boy” or “you have to be attracted to women.” These are between them and God, and I have to trust them and God to work that out. If one of my kids grew up to be gay, lesbian or transgender or whatever, then I would expect and hope that they would be kind, respectful, useful gay, lesbian or transgendered persons who love and serve God and neighbor.
Child abuse pure and simple.
You haven’t been paying attention.
Psychiatry has been politicized since the vote to remove Homosexuality from the list of diagnoses.
Who took the photo of this kid? Bob Guccione?