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Notes -
Jesse Singal gets gaslit
Also, a more neutral take: https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/about-that-twitter-shitstorm-affirmationnot
Brief recap:
NYT shifts its coverage of medical concerns for trans issues from 100% supporting transition in all cases to a more questioning stance, particularly with minors
An open letter is sent to NYT laying out "serious concerns with editorial bias" in response to this shift
Jonathan Chait posts a critical response to the open letter at New York Magazine (no relation to NYT)
Chait gets dragged on twitter for being anti-trans, with a highlighted passage
Jesse Singal posts in support of Chait, showing the highlighted passage is directly in accordance with WPATH guidelines and explains what it means
E. Kale Edmiston, a trans man, posts in response that he, Edmiston, wrote the WPATH guidelines posted by Singal, and that Singal is misinterpreting them
Liberal media pundits and reporters pile on, when Singal defends the straightforward interpretation, demanding that Signal accept Edmiston's (frankly bizarre) interpretation of the quoted passage
Singal has done his homework and contacts several other WPATH authors, who all confirm Singal's interpretation of the passage and reject Edmiston's
Eventually this reaches Scott Leibowitz, overall head of the WPATH guidelines document, who says that Edmiston definitely did not write the highlighted passage, and later severely admonishes this lying and false attribution from within academia
Singal performs several victory laps on Twitter, demanding from the media pundits and reporters the apologies and corrections they had demanded from him
Good guys: Jesse Singal, Jonathan Chait, Scott Leibowitz
Bad guys: E. Kale Edmiston, Madeline Leung Coleman (NYMag editor), Michael Hobbes, Jeet Heer, Marisa Kasabas (MSNBC Columnist), David Perry, Eric Vilas-Boas (Vulture staffer), Miles Klee, Siva Vaidhyanathan
The most interesting, dire, and relevant info is from Eliza Mondegreen, linked near the top. Apparently there is a wink/nod system with the WPATH Standards of Care document, where the words are written a certain way because they must be, but they are interpreted much differently.
She concludes:
EDITS: Signal, Single, Liebowitz. added Cast of Characters, Eliza Mondegreen quote
This is something that has seemed obviously true to me for a while, but of course you can't prove it unless you are deeply inside the system. You express concerns about children being casually, almost instantly, referred for "gender affirming care" up to and including surgery, and clinicians and trans activists say "Don't be ridiculous, of course we don't think doctors should just write blank prescriptions everyone's needs are carefully assessed they get a comprehensive evaluation it's all very cautious and evidence-based blah blah blah..."
Every bit of anecdotal evidence I have ever read - but it's still anecdotal! - is that in practice a trans-identifying kid will be "confirmed" as trans basically on their say-so. I've never actually heard of a doctor at one of these clinics saying, "Well, actually, have you considered you might not be trans? Let's work on some of your other mental health issues and then revisit this."
I'd love to find out I am wrong, that the typical clinician is in fact cautious about going along with every child who presents as "trans" and pursues other avenues of care first. But I have yet to see any evidence that this happens... anywhere. Rather, it seems increasingly like anything other than immediate and unreserved validation of any child who presents as trans is treated as transphobic and life-threatening.
Jesse Singal does the lord's work, and he has two problems.
The first is that his work is very wonky. Like, he does deep dives into statistics, he actually reads the charts in the papers cited (and mis-cited) by activists, and points out all the errors, but it's not something easily summarizable if you really want to have an understanding of what he's saying. All his opponents see is "There goes Jesse Singal, known transphobe, obsessively bullying a marginalized community again." Who actually reads and parses his work in detail?
I'll admit while this whole thing was happening on Twitter, I didn't quite get the back and forth the first few times until I finally sighed, dug in, and reread the entire comment chain to figure out who said who said who said what about what when. And I'm fairly current on the issues, reasonably intelligent, and sympathetic to Singal. Meanwhile, everyone else is just posting dunks and high fives and "yikes!" And even after this fairly comprehensive vindication of Singal, I doubt a single person on the other side actually had their mind changed or their priors shifted an iota. What I have seen in response has been a lot of tepid "Well, obviously it's a very complex topic mumble mumble but jeez why does Jesse Singal care so much anyway?"
Which brings me to my second point: Jesse Singal does himself no favors fighting these things out on Twitter. I get it - I understand his mindset. "People are lying about me on the Internet! People are saying I said things I clearly did not say! They're also wrong about the facts! They're saying things that aren't true, just read this damn paper right here that proves it!"
He cannot shake the conviction that if he yells this often and loudly enough, he will make them see. And he won't. Ever. So he ends up looking like deranged Reply Guy who is obsessed with this topic and wants to fight everybody. Meanwhile, his enemies, who don't actually care whether he's right or not, only that he's on the wrong side, see that they can keep winding him up by saying "Look at Jesse Singal being transphobic again."
I mean, a clinic in Canada was shut down over doing exactly this. To the activist, that's "conversion therapy", and they will end your career over it. To add insult to injury, the accusation which finally did get the Canadian clinic shut down turned out to be about a different doctor entirely. But the activist worked with what they had.
Coincidentally, Jesse Singal did the breakthrough reporting on that case too, including showing the person allegedly victimized by a doctor a photo of the doctor activist were attacking, to which the alleged victim responded that it wasn't the man who victimized him.
I wonder at this. Jesse has been working this beat too long, and seen too much of the inmates running the asylum for that. The problem is that he can't escape the cultural framework of D's good, R's bad. It is literally unthinkable to him that D's might be the baddies on this one. That as a party and a cultural force they are responsible for the mutilation and sterilization of countless children. It's too large an atrocity for him to even consider on his side's hands. And even if all the evidence, all the personal experience, says so, there must still be some way that R's are actually still the baddies.
It's unclear what his end game is. Maybe he doesn't have one. Maybe he doesn't hope for any change, and is just a reporter working his beat.
From my perspective, one that I imagine is quite similar to Singal's, the D's aren't the 'baddies' for three central reasons.
Firstly, for the average Democrat this is simply not an important issue. I could name literally hundreds of issues that are of greater significance than the trans debate, even for the average Democratic legislator I strongly suspect that the issue does not really occupy their thoughts very often. When was the last time Congress debated the issue? In state Houses and Senates it comes up more but even then only on occasion. The point is that this is an issue whose prominence on the internet and in vaguely left-wing popular culture is completely out of proportion to its prominence in partisan politics, and in fact its actual importance.
Secondly, where it does crop up in partisan politics its generally in the form of anti-discrimination bills, or culture war fluff like sports, rather than the specifics of transgender medical care; indeed, in general medical practices are not something directly intervened upon by politicians, so the issue is fairly left to the non-partisan regulatory state and independent medical bodies, and it's surely best that way. Even if you think the current state of affairs is unacceptable, I doubt that we'd be much better off with state or Congressional Republicans managing medical practices.
Finally, the Republicans are hardly any better. Singal is good because unlike most commentators on transgender issues (on the sceptical side) he doesn't come across as a deranged culture warrior with an axe to grind, which unfortunately seems to be the case for most Republicans.
Literally every single democrat on my street has one or more pride flags flying way out into the road so nobody can miss it. Some of them replaced the old version with the "progress pride" thing last year, while others just fly both. Half of them have "in this house we believe trans women are women" signs up.
I am not going to believe you that they do not care about this when it seems to have eclipsed race as the number one thing to signal party loyalty and make ominous threats to dissenters over.
Wait what, aren't you German? Where do you live? Kreuzberg? shudder
Haha this was a terrible name to pick, wasn't it.
Not sure if you know this, but Bernd is a stereotypical German boomer name. It is also what anons are called on the German chans.
Yeah, it was a reference to an old krautchan thing. Talk about dating yourself: may as well put up a "get off my lawn!" sign at this point.
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What's the average Democrat's response to Republicans' attempt to stop it? "Oh, that's not an important issue, go ahead, no I won't cancel you"? Maybe, but I suspect not.
I don't think the average Democrat engages in much cancelling, or tries to While certainly they (and I) would oppose some (most?) of the measures Republicans introduce here and there, it still wouldn't, I think, stand as a great priority.
Average Democrats are not relevant to the conversation. It's activists and the leadership that decide on which course is taken, and they definitely do coordinate cancelation campaigns. They're also pushing through the trans ideology throughout the education system, legislature, etc.
There are things I'd also put in the category of "I'm against it, but it's not important". I prefer lower taxes to hiflgher taxes, less bureaucracy to more, etc. Normally these sort of issues would be ripe for a compromise, if you give me control over "unimportant" cultural issues, I'll give you pretty much anything you want. Does that sound like a good deal to you? Is there any evidence average Democrats would go for it? If not, it is simply not true that the issue is not important for them.
I meant leadership as well.
Where?
Well it would have to be within reason, but in very broad terms yes I would make social policy concessions for economic policy returns.
Throughout the western world. In Europe there's a bunch of self-ID laws being pushed, often covertly without public debate. Same for blue states in the US, though over there they are balanced by red state legislatures.
Yes, obviously it would have to be within reason on both sides. So if Democrats are so open to such a compromise, doesn't it seem strange to you they haven't offered one in all those years? Could it be an indication that the issue is more important to th then you claim?
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Hear that whistling? It’s the sound of goalposts receding into the distance.
They were definitely talking about normies rather than (just) activists.
The second part was added as a bonus to show his argument would fail on his own terms.
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Your post is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You agree that this trans pandemic is out of control and damaging people. You agree that Dems are asleep at the wheel, or facilitating it.
And yet when Republicans do what they can to try to stop it, suddenly they become the baddies. Because it's "culture war fluff" to keep rapist out of women's spaces. Or it's discrimination to ban the dangerous and unregulated mutilation and sterilization of children.
So you create this situation where you acknowledge the problem, your "side" broadly sits on it's hands or encourages it, and you claim the only people trying to stop it are the bad guys. Because, for whatever reason, even when Republicans are addressing the problems you admit are problems, and are trying to stop the things you admit should probably be stopped, it's just unthinkable to you.
Also, it's a preposterous framing that "in general medical practices are not something directly intervened upon by politicians". The FDA regulates what drugs we are allowed to take. Dangerous or inhumane medical procedures do get banned by governments, like lobotomies. This learned helplessness towards the medical community going off the rails with respect to trans treatments is bonkers. As is the vitriol even people who acknowledge it's a problem direct at anyone who attempts to fix it.
Yes, but that's not a partisan affair. The FDA should take whatever action they deem appropriate on transgender care and they don't need politicians to weigh in on the specifics of the decision. Politicians determine the broad remit of the FDA, they don't interfere with its functioning on specific issues.
I wouldn't go that far, certainly. As for 'asleep at the wheel', it's a question of prioritisation. Political capital and legislative time are finite, and I'd much rather politicians focused on any number of other issues than making ad hoc adjustments to the state of transgender medical care.
the FDA is partisan, acts in partisan ways, and is filled with people who consider themselves Democrats and with political donations to Democrat or more "leftward" orgs signifying their allegiances
"the admin state is a nonpartisan affair" is not a defensible position in 2023
additionally, claiming a political entity created through politics which acts on the politic on behalf of the politic isn't "political" is absurd
I didn't say it wasn't political, I said that it wasn't partisan.
In any case, simply because most people at the FDA will be Democrats that doesn't mean one can automatically conclude every decision they make on specific approval of specific treatments will be part of some partisan agenda.
I think this is actually broadly true. Undeniably, Democrats are overrepresented significantly in civil service work, but the administrative state opposition that it was frequently claimed Trump would encounter never materialised.
why would "every action taken" have to be "necessarily" part of "some partisan agenda" in order for the FDA to be not "nonpartisan"?
nor did I say that was the only reason to conclude the FDA was partisan
we went from you broadly labeling the FDA as "a nonpartisan affair" to now moving the discussion to defending that every decision taken is part of a partisan agenda
this is silly
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