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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Wesley Yang (coined "Successor Ideology") interviews Corinna Cohn, former trans activist, now regretting his (born male, now prefers male pronouns) transition as a teenager in the early 1990s.

I seem to recall the name from maybe 5-10 years ago, with some annoyance, like maybe pushing ultrawoke Code of Conduct mandates on open source projects. Might be wrong, haven't yet checked.

Now Cohn acknowledges being male and rejects his transition, but for health reasons remains on estrogen treatment. I suppose there is some question of what it means to be a detransitioner. Wesley Yang is well equipped to tear into this lamb, and does so, as far as I can tell. This is gonna hurt.

I have only read the posted transcripts, a tiny sliver. An excerpt:

On Affirming Parents

Corinna:

“For every parent who is transitioning their child, here's the future: your kid is going to get into their 20s and 30s. somewhere in this range. Even the ones who are failing to launch are going to figure out how to actually get their shit together at some point. Every one of these kids is going to start to ruminate. “How did this happen to me?” None of them are going to say, “Why did I do this to myself?” Because they didn't have agency. They didn't know. It doesn't matter if they said, “Oh, I really, really, really want to be a girl, mommy.” They don't know. They've got no idea. They're not even going to remember that. Right? They're not going to know that.”

“They're going to start thinking — “How did this happen to me?” And they're going to get to know kids. They're going to get to know children. Newborn babies. They're going to be involved with the lives of these children. They're going to watch them grow up and become thinking human beings. They're going to even watch them become adults. And they're going to know what innocence looks like. And they're going to start to remember that their innocence was absolutely destroyed.

And they're going to want to know why. And they will know at the time — I'm telling, I'm telling you now that the reason that this happens is largely because of the sexual interests of men like Rachel Levine, Admiral Levine, and other men who have continual fantasies that they wanted to be little girls”

So you have you have sent these children to satisfy the fantasies of these men. These children when they become adults are going to realize that this is why their innocence was destroyed: to make these fantasies come true. And the first people who will get the blame for this will be their parents. That is the future. That is the future.

Wesley: So I don't remember his name, bu he's like, “I'm 28 Look at me. I'm puberty blocked…”

Corinna. That was Seth.

Wesley: That was so powerful. And you're saying like, that's gonna happen to all these fucking parents?"

Corinna: Yes. It will not matter to these adult children…

Wesley: …that they begged and demanded and connived in order to get this is…

Corinna: I’m not even talking about that part. It won’t matter to these kids that their parents’ calculus was they want zero of one child to commit suicide. They don't care about one in 20,000. They want zero of one to commit suicide.

They won't care about their parents’ concerns. A lot of them aren't going to be able to have their own kids and so they're never going to even learn how to think like a parent. They're always going to think like a child. They're not going to appreciate what their parents were up against — being lied to by the government. Being lied to by their president being lied to by their doctors.

They're going to think “my parents ruined me.” For what? Why did my parents did my parents do this to me

So parents: that's what you have to look forward to.”

Corinna is no lamb at all. This is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for dinner.

I seem to recall the name from maybe 5-10 years ago, with some annoyance, like maybe pushing ultrawoke Code of Conduct mandates on open source projects.

Are you thinking of Coraline Ada Ehmke?

Could be. I have a vague recollection of like 3 or 4 like minded individuals from that era.

100% people meant Ehmke. I've never heard of Cohn.

Ada initiative and Ehmke earned a lot of negative attention, however.

I couldn't find any reference to Cohn from more than a few years ago.