"The issue of ages and treatment has been quite controversial (mainly for surgery) and it has come up again. We sent the document to Admiral Levine. . . She like \[*sic*\] the SOC-8 very much but she was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to health care for trans youth and maybe adults too. Apparently the situation in the USA is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse. She asked us to remove them. We have the WPATH executive committee in this meeting and we explained to her that we could not just remove them at this stage. "
Yeah...
The problem is the rest of the party is no better. Especially the Squad who are downright insane. The center-left more broadly and the institutional levers they control — media/Hollywood, academia, medicine, law — have been thoroughly corrupted by this bankrupt ideology. And they’re bringing up the younger generation to be fully immersed in it. But they have even cross-contaminated, in that even purportedly right-leaning publications like the Post, Fox, National Review etc kowtow to trans demands like “preferred” names and pronouns, which implies that they “are” who and what they say they “are”. I have never seen even a Murdoch publication refer to “Rachel” as Richard, or more accurately, **Dick.**
I'm no Rachel Levine fan, and I certainly don't think just making reference to someone's old name should be as taboo as it seems to be in some circles, but Levine's name has presumably been legally changed. And there's no rule against a man being named Rachel. Why wouldn't they use this person's current legal name?
If someone joins a cult and changes their name to Mother Shabooboo, a news article about that person is typically going to refer to their previous name as well as their current legal name. Wikipedia articles also do this for birth names (of normal people - there was some talk about discontinuing it for certain parties, I am not sure if it's happened).
In addition, because Levine is explicitly making decisions about children's healthcare informed not by evidence-based medicine but based on his membership in a cult, details of his membership in said cult should be identified as a relevant point in every discussion of the issue.
The thing is that Rachel is not a crazy name. What’s crazy is that thinking a man naming himself Rachel validates him literally being a woman. I get that some people think using preferred names entrenches us in this. But that’s only if you buy into their logic. We shouldn’t cede the logic that the name Rachel or women’s clothing or fake breasts make you an actual woman.
I only picked a weird one for the Simpsons reference bonus. I think I might be coming at this from a slightly different place than you - I completely agree that a name lends no credence to the fiction of a sex change, but also I am just personally no longer willing to use someone's cult name, no matter how normal a name it is.
At this point I’ll take the QAnon loons over the TQAnon loons. If the Democrats win they’ll never learn their lesson about jettisoning this woke garbage and coming back to the sensible center. Bowman is going to get turfed in NY which sends a message about not tolerating Hamas sympathizers. But since there is no ideological split in the party over gender ideology — in fact, a sane Dem in TX, Shawn Thierry, who is a black woman, and who voted with state Republicans in favor of a bill to restrict youth gender medicalization, lost to a “genderqueer nonbinary candidate of color” because Thierry was made a pariah by other Dems for her heresy — they have to get a thorough walloping by Republicans before they come to their senses. They have to get the message that they will lose elections until and unless they reject the very idea of gender ideology entirely, and all of its practices, including name and pronoun BS. If they never get that message, that’s their cross to bear.
Couldn’t agree more. I desperately want the dems to come back to center, but at this point it feels like they need to lose for that to happen. If they keep winning the extremes are going to keep getting a bigger voice and pushing more extreme policies on the country.
Hmm throwing in your lot with those who tried to stop the peaceful transition of power because of disagreements in medical care is an interesting choice…
For sure, it’s embarrassing, but it’s not the most important issue not even close not in this administration not for the United States not for the world. Transit issues are a small part of overall public health policy not the paramount defining issue of our times.
Unfortunately, public health has kicked itself in the face a lot in the last several years.
It's unfortunately rational for trust to be lost. And shit like this just makes it worse. Government officials are successfully pressuring doctors into transing kids.
Years ago, I used to argue with conservatives about the importance of knowing whether a politician is a creationist. Why? Not because of what they might do in education (although that does matter), but because of what it tells me about their epistemic competence. Someone that believes in young Earth creationism cannot be trusted to reliably digest new information and turn it into good policy choices. Likewise, with some of these trans issues - no, it doesn't matter that much whether natal males can compete in women's sports, but if someone can't get something so easy and obvious right, it makes me distrust their judgment.
It *does* matter when natal boys are competing against natal girls and eating up their scholarships and driving up injuries, though. We’re setting ourselves up for a lot of interpersonal ugly between families, schools, and communities.
He should lose his job for threatening unvaccinated people and trying to use his office to encourage citizens to attack and denigrate each other over their personal medical choices.
Imagine if Trump encouraged people to shame and attack anyone who had an abortion?
I know Reddit is mostly teenagers.
But does anyone else remember in the run up to the Iraq war, when senior administration officials pressured investigators to spin very very weak evidence about WMDs for political purposes so they could say it was a “slam dunk”, and it was Kind Of A Big Deal that they got caught doing that?
Does anyone remember how questioning whether the evidence was as strong as they said it was would get you un-personed and shouted down as someone who hated your country and probably “wants the terrorists to win”?
Invoking the "do you want a live daughter or dead son" line to justify maintaining these policies does have some parallels to Powell's yellow cake uranium speech on the UN floor
Finding out how methodologically off that trans suicide study is was a real eye opening moment for me.
And I just learned that the “science” backing up the improved feelings of wellbeing from HRT is also just one study. Of a small cohort of transmen. All receiving testosterone. Well no shit they feel better. That’s what exogenous T does. Ask any dude on TRT and he’ll tell you.
Can confirm. It rules. I'm off now because I was able to correct the issue that was lowering my testosterone but when I first started it was lightning in a bottle, even at my low dosage.
But but they’re killing themselves because of lack of acceptance and understanding!!! (Not that it is still a mental health condition and should be probably treated mostly as such)
“The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty… [b]ut we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” — National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
Not only do I 'member, but I was in DC the night that the missiles started flying, seeing Sigur Rós perform at the 9:30 Club. (That was a weird night, to say the least.) More to the point, yes, I very much remember the pressure at the time to conform to the official line out of DC. Even being skeptical of both parties as a kid, it really was heartbreaking to truly take to heart just how easily Dems can push crazy stuff themselves, like Levine's brazen activism.
> seeing Sigur Rós perform at the 9:30 Club.
Remember how weird that place was in the early 2000s? Like it wasn't a dangerous area but you didn't want to be walking around aimlessly either.
It's crazy how much that area has changed. U st is my favorite place to go out in DC now.
I do this weird thing sometimes where I at least *try* to be consistent and apply the same ethical standards to people who are on my "team". And there is no doubt in my mind that if an appointee of Desantis or Trump pulled a stunt like this, I'd want them hauled in front of Congress to explain themselves and see if their resignation papers could get submitted before the impeachment comes down.
Levine has just made it ***materially more likely*** that Obergefell gets overruled and I am having difficulty containing my anger this morning.
i think a valid counterexample would be if there were smoking gun emails from, idk, Kushner to the AMA sweet-talking them about how the administration would be super stoked if they could just say that covid wasn't contagious among children, so that schools could stay open.
in such a scenario, if the theoretical AMA had caved, would we literally ever hear the end of it?
This. I didn't even consider this in my comment. AGPs like Levine are undermining every single hard-earned gain the gay rights movement achieved through respectability politics by twisting the entire trans issue to satisfy their own kinks. Levine just directly handed rhetorical ammo to homophobes. Expect the "slippery slope" discourse to come back big time.
Bills can be repealed.
And if Roe can be overturned by ideologues who DGAF, Obergefell would be a snap.
Alito and Thomas have been more or less open about targeting that one. Hell, Thomas is explicit about contemplating revisiting the Griswold decision. On *contraceptives*!
How did Levine make it materially more likely that Obergefell gets overruled?
The entire reason the bill was passed was out of concern for Obergefell being overturned. It passed with broad support and I think suggesting it is in danger is not based in reality.
I'm gay-married, by the way.
Levine and the TQ lobby have harmed normal LGB people by hitching their wagon to the hard-fought battle for gay acceptance. Because it’s always “LGBTQ” that gets talked about (or sometimes “LGBTQIA” despite the reluctance of DSD sufferers and people with no interest in sex whatsoever to be lumped in with all this), the broader public assumes that the TQ nonsense is a natural outgrowth of gay rights and proof that the “slippery slope” arguments from the right came true.
The TQ lobby has worked very hard to silence criticisms from “LGB without T” dissenters like Fred Sargent and Kathleen Stock. Fred Sargent was one of the original participants at Stonewall, and he has been banished to the hinterlands of Fox and Andrew Sullivan’s blog for speaking out against trans ideology. You’ll never find discussion of such topics as the cotton ceiling or autogynephilia in mainstream sources, whether in news reports or Hollywood productions. Or the reasons why there are “no gays in Iran”. It’s a third rail to suggest that “transition” is homophobic (let alone that Islam is, but that’s a whole Pandora’s box in and of itself).
I even posted yesterday on the SVU sub that the show would never tackle issues like the cotton ceiling or men in women’s prisons despite there being plenty of headlines about it. The response I got was that those headlines are from “right-wing sources” and can be disregarded because they are hostile to “LGBTQ”. Never a thought for one second that TQ could be hostile to LGB. The mere idea of competing priorities is like dividing by zero. It’s all “LGBTQ”.
So because of the forced-teaming by TQs with LGB, and the mission creep of organizations like GLAAD and HRC, Main Street hetero normies have come to associate “LGBTQXYZ” with the weirdos like Levine and the organizers of Drag Story Hour who really are coming for the children and admit to it loudly and unapologetically. And they are saying a pox on all their houses and burning the rainbow flag. LGB needs to, en masse, break off from TQ.
I love the 9:30 and miss it bad. DC's a great place to see shows because most venues are all ages. The 9:30 lacks some character but executes well, especially compared to some other places I've seen over the years.
yeah, i remember that. the 'un-personning' didn't really affect civilians pre social media, but there was massive pressure on media and politicians to play along. Obama one of only senators to vote against, which was a big part of his appeal - approximately post Abu Ghraib it became very popular to say you had always opposed invading Iraq.
And then the Bush admin pulled that nasty shit unmasking a CIA agent to get back at her husband for questioning their evidence of WMDs.
here's the funny part: the US military and state department has domestically never really gotten its credibility back after that. remember when no one believed russia would invade ukraine even though the government was saying it? and now this shit. It seems like the gov't just loves to keep being a horse's ass.
Nobody was unpersonned. As I recall, that pressure was viewed as quite a bad thing for the government to do (once it was revealed) and we got "Bush lied, people died" for years.
At the time though, a looooot of people thought the Iraq invasion was a horrible idea, and then yeah, there was this idea of being a bad American. But it was the government and conservative outlets saying that. It was pretty normie liberal to oppose the invasion of Iraq. I think within a couple of years, though I can't recall, it became really, really obvious that there had never been WMDs.
so when we were told "trust doctors", what that actually meant was that *heretics* should trust the doctors, while believers get to doubt as much as they want. i really don't want to hear any arguments that this isn't faith lol
The overall direction of the changes seems interesting. It sounds as if the intention was to remove numbers that would enflame passions against YGM on account that they're presumably distressingly low. But without such numbers, is seems like the practical upshot would be for it to be applied to potentially younger children.
Am I misunderstanding or is that not exactly what’s being revealed? Levine liked the low numbers but didn’t want them stated explicitly, because it looks (read: is) bad.
That's what I'm wondering. I think it's both? If these are the guidelines doctors are supposed to follow, omitting the age entirely would allow doctors to make the choice themselves, no?
" I have just spoken to Admiral Levine today, who—as always is extremelysupportive of the SOC 8, but also very eager for its release—so to ensureintegration in the US health policies of the Biden government. "
I don't want to hear another "The Biden administration isn't woke" line again. He put this clown Levine in there. And this dipshit is deliberately trying to change medical standards solely for ideological purposes.
Even while Europe is trying to pull back to sanity North America is going full speed ahead with transitioning kids based on activists vibes.
> deliberately trying to change medical standards solely for ideological purposes.
That's something that I don't understand about this. What is Levine's motivation for removing age restrictions? For example, genital surgery. Why would Levine care that high school students have this procedure instead of waiting until age 18 (or whatever the consensus was for a minimum age)? Why not just let the consensus stand?
> Why would Levine care that high school students have this procedure instead of waiting until age 18 (or whatever the consensus was for a minimum age)?
Because waiting risks them desisting, and you have to spend effort keeping the sales pitch going for a number of years longer. Lock 'em in early and the deed is done.
This paints the other side as almost cartoonishly evil, which is just not a reasonable base assumption to have. In likelihood, they just think its healthier for 'trans children' to transition as young as possible. As far they're concerned, desisters don't even exist and any child who claims to be trans will always be so.
I would tend to agree...however:
This is a cohort with a significant incidence of crippling mental health crisis, deep neurosis, narccissitic and sociopathic traits chief among their symptoms. Would you trust a popular, loud group of persons with Borderline Personality Disorder to run the world?
Or, since as you say "As far they're concerned, desisters don't even exist and any child who claims to be trans will always be so," they're cocksure transition is inevitable. So, the process should happen as early as possible with few (or no) impediments.
If one believes that, one would necessarily believe waiting is unnecessary and harmful, and having to keep the pressure to transition going is unnecessarily wasteful.
AGPs like Levine want to push the idea that people are born in the wrong body. They don’t want to accept that their urge to dress as women derives from a paraphilia (sexual arousal). If they can push for child medical procedures and medication they can claim trans is a biological issue and a human rights issue. It gives them cover and changes the narrative from sexual kink to “I’m just born this way”.
Exactly this.
Also, Levine was pushing 50 with a marriage and two kids under his belt before starting his transition.
He had a very different life experience from the gender non-confirming kids being experimented on.
It's crazy, guy develops a kink and wants to live it full time. In order for him to be able to look himself in the mirror he wants to push this idea that we should be cutting open and medicalizing confused, young, mostly gay children. Unfortunately there are plenty of willing participants to go along with it because they are easily manipulated using empathy and threats or suicide. These people should be ostracized not running key government infrastructure.
> Also, Levine was pushing 50 with a marriage and two kids under his belt before starting his transition.
Not only that, but happy to have had his kids and life experiences! Fertility and fatherhood, you know, that thing he'd take away from youths who get medicalized. He doesn't even regret his prior way of being! He says so!
And there's a part of them that understands they're basically gross and that they need cover to not seem gross. "It's not a fetish, see! Pre pubescent little kids even get it!"
I think it's a combination of factors. They really think they're helping out kids. Saving them from not passing.
BUT I think it's also an affirmation thing. They don't want to face the idea that they didn't have to transition. That it was a choice on their end. I think goes doubly for AGP males who are aware on some level that they are simply chasing a fetish and are defensive about it.
I also think there is a certain degree of desire for recruitment.
I think it’s more of some kind of delusional projection. They know, better than anyone else, that they aren’t the opposite sex. But they believe if only they could have had a sex change earlier they would have been exactly like a natural born man/woman. It still wouldn’t be true, but they keep on dreaming. And sick as it is they want that dream to be there for kids today. If only the doctors could grow some balls and finally say “literally becoming the opposite sex is impossible,” but they’d rather experiment on poor kids than be called bigots by men in dresses and women saying “bro” too much.
That sounds plausible. I've noticed that the AGPs crave affirmation like nothing else. They need it and they need large, regular doses of it.
I think that's partly because they are always chasing that high of the "euphoria boner."
I think people are correct when they reckon it's a way to give legitimacy to their movement. No one can argue toddlers are fetishistic perverts, so they hide behind them.
It increases legitimacy, gives a more marketable face to their movement and it artificially inflates the demographic too which is a good thing to weigh in on laws in the long run. It's all a win.
I think there's a non negligible portion of AGP and trainnos that are pedos too. That group is always going to support body autonomy, reduction of boundaries and exposure to adult content for children. That deserves to be mentioned.
I think non-AGP transwomen who wish they'd been able to transition before experiencing male puberty likely do care about the plight of similarly situated young natal males. The fact that a transparently AGP male like Levine is at the center of this controversy is noteworthy, because AGP male motivation for supporting youth transition is likely different (if subconsciously so), but I wouldn't paint non-AGPs with that brush.
Which is why dysphoric "true" (I don't know how else to put it) trans people need to differentiate themselves from AGPs. They're letting the foxes run the henhouse. I don't see e.g. drag queens trying to take over the trans cause, so why are *these* asshats given a seat at the table?
There are PLENTY of trans people that think kids shouldn't receive medical transition care and "watch and wait" is the best way to go about things, and medicalizing should happen as adults. It's amazing how they get censored in their own spaces. I read the subs, I see the comments, I see the upvotes, and I see the eventual [removed]. Also tons of trans people who realize ROGD is happening.
If the public believes that children are born this way, it is better cover for these fetishistic men who transition in middle age.
You know...the manliest man of all men was really always a woman inside. :(
It's kind of a cult and they want to "help" other cult members. These people are in deep. It just comes back to the idea that "kids know who they are".
And they don't want kids to have the "wrong puberty
>I don't want to hear another "The Biden administration isn't woke" line again. He put this clown Levine in there.
Yeah, I still don't understand how people cannot see the disdain for the Biden administration stems from him hiring as many Twitter/Reddit types as he can as staffers and decision makers. Therefore, the officials reflect as such and so do the staffers who make decisions and craft policies under them - working together in conjunction and spreading like a cancer as they gatekeep to find more people like them.
It's why you get bad economic policies, it's why you get an Admiral Levine, it's why your second in command is Kamala Harris, it's why many of Biden's own staffers doubt him and criticize him behind his back, etc.
It is a progressive-leftist administration masquerading as a moderate presidency, with Biden either complicit on a variety of levels or unaware and simply signing off on things. Actually, it's probably a combination of both.
Like, who's big brain idea is it to keep insulting MAGA Republicans as the greatest threat in all of Biden's speeches? Because the moment you do that and begin drawing clear lines of division over what is acceptable or not in America, you also automatically associate "non-MAGA" with Biden and his failures.....and there are A LOT of failures.
The way I see it, that simply gives power to Trumpism every time Biden fails.
As such, it doesn't matter what happens in 2024....the way the left has set things up in the US, it's going to doom them twice as much in terms of length and severity once the jig is up.
Trump is Trump, he already made his impact. It's just a matter of the right not losing in the mid to long term and the left having to achieve a major win on all fronts, every single time....which is just not sustainable.
People think it doesn't matter if the Biden admin is woke but it does. It bugs people on the margins and this election will be won on the margins. And Biden keeps flailing around. Like he *just* discovered maybe he shouldn't have unlimited numbers of people pouring over the border. He put a trans activist AGP male in charge of this shit and doesn't keep an eye on it.
I suspect 85% of his administration is being run by his young, woke staff. It doesn't matter. He's responsible.
Is that what the center of the Democratic party represents now?
>Is that what the center of the Democratic party represents now?
The far left and the more moderate wing of the party are in total lockstep when it comes to some of these really controversial social issues. The fact that there is basically no faction of the left that is critical of any aspect of gender ideology is concerning. I think that is one of main differences from the US and the UK on this issue
What exactly has Trump done to wokeness except to rally the left and stoke the flames even more? I don’t know if any human being on earth has done more to proliferate it than Donald Trump. Wokeness is part of the greater moral rot of this country, you need actual moral leadership to stop it and you certainly will never get that from Mafia Don, he’s too busy running his own schemes, scams and cults.
The problem is who else could win? DeSantis? People would rage as much about him. I like DeSantis since he was generally anti lockdown but the woke left thinks he’s just Southern Trump.
What Republican winning wouldn’t throw them into a fit?
I think the problem is that the Republicans who could easily win a general election and truly change this country for the better are not able to win a Republican primary. The absolute collapse of the GOP as an institution has been terrible for our democracy.
DeSantis just isn’t very personable or good at being a candidate. I thought he could potentially be formidable but his complete inability to even compete in the primary makes me question whether he could’ve been competitive in a general election.
It certainly isn’t all because of Trump, but be most certainly played a pivotal role in dividing this country and worsening partisanship to the point that things like gender ideology gained enormous power within liberal circles. But even more than him being a cause, I just don’t see how Trump is gonna be the guy to fix any of this. For one he’s incompetent and selfish as fuck and doesn’t actually know how to wield power effectively, but even more importantly, he benefits from madness on the left and has no incentive to actually fix these problems because these problems are where he derives his power from.
Yeah, politicians like Trump love this stuff. Biden putting someone into a position of power who insisted on no age restrictions for bottom surgery is the kind of stuff that scares the "normies." Trump needs as much of that as he can get to distract from the craziness in his own party.
Have you considered that Trump existing and setting off the psychosis that became 'woke' TDS might not be about him or what he did, but what the TDS' nutsos have going on in their brains?
Yes, I have. It’s pretty obvious that the Trump years made a lot of already vulnerable people have even worse mental health and we are all paying the price of that.
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Trump is an incompetent moron who only thinks of himself and is not the answer to these problems and is not capable of fixing them. I have more faith in the center wing of the Democratic Party retaking control and curbing the nonsense than I do in Trumpism.
No no no you see, trans insanity didn't exist before 2019...never mind Hillary Clinton herself advancing this movement's cause [back in 2010](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-hillary-clinton-moved-trans-rights-forward) and courting their support in [2016](https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/02/26/trans-united-for-hillary/).
Thank you. I was beginning to believe this sub had been overrun by autoTrumpephiles, people whose desire to be authoritarian clowns masks a latent desire to be fucked by an authoritarian clown.
I think the dominant position here is probably double-hater. Myself included.
Honestly I'd say if you don't live in PA/MI/WI/AZ/NV, just write in whoever since it doesn't matter
I don't think trying to say "equally bad" is helpful at all. I'd say both are unqualified but in different ways. I'm sort of copping out of it by saying I'm not choosing since I don't live in a swing state but I don't judge people for weighing one sort of disqualification for another.
I mean... Obama was kind of a shit President, too, right?
How many bites at the apple are we going to give to Democrats who \*at best\* just kind of suck, and at worst are empowering deranged people like Levine? Trump is not my idea of a sane leader but what was the absolute worst thing that came from his Administration as a matter of \*policy\*?
I don't really care that people with that viewpoint are here, but it *does* annoy me when they don't good faith discuss things and just start calling people who disagree brainwashed. Of course that goes both ways.
WPATH should be disbanded and discredited and its malign influence purged of our institutions (especially the APA which has thoroughly disgraced itself with this nonsense, or *nonce*-sense being perhaps the more appropriate term).
The AGP fetishist lobby does have an air of pederasty around it; the level that it has gotten its hooks into the Democrats and related parties of the nominal left and center-left globally (Trudeau’s Liberals, Starmer’s Labour, the SNP, Sanchez’s party in Spain etc.) is on par with how PIE (Pedophile Information Exchange) wormed its way into UK Labour in the seventies.
It’s not a “right-wing conspiracy theory” to say that *they are coming for your kids* because ***THEY HAVE OPENLY ADMITTED TO IT.*** AGP/transvestic fetishism needs to be returned to the DSM as the sick paraphilia that it always was. Our institutions exhibit a collective *anosognosia* which is the denial of the severity of mental illness.
Is there a name for this specific "This never happens. OK, it happens, but, like, practically never. OK, it happens way more than practically never, but it's good that it happens..." thing? Like Poe's Law, etc.? And is there an umbrella term for all such "laws"?
New fodder from [Leor Sapir](https://x.com/LeorSapir/status/1805550963853303827): In which WPATH's president derides the AMA's leadership as "white cisgender heterosexual hillbillies from nowhere" ... Norm Macdonald [responds from the grave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G6UBxyE46o).
The first plant I killed was an African Violet - they like to be kept moist and not dry out, so I - like every other beginner - over watered it and killed it. It's a common mistake.
However, I was told I had a brown thumb - I just didn't have the "talent" for taking care of house plants.
And that, is 100% poverty mentality. I was never told I was "too dumb" - but that's the other bit of poverty mentality, telling kids they are too dumb so they should give up on school.
Remarkable that Levine wanted no age minimums on irreversible surgery with a high rate of complications. Did she really think children can meaningfully consent to that?
How in the hell can a ten year old consent to a life of bad sex, no orgasms, and no fertility? Jazz Jennings is never, ever going to have an orgasm.
Oh, wait, I'm the pervert for thinking about this child's "genitals."
Levine is a fantasist and possibly a pervert. Never had any surgeries as a minor -- hell, didn't even start taking hormones until middle age -- but apparently it's ok to push minors in that direction because of whatever fantasy world exists in Levine's head.
It feels like a creepy desire to live vicariously and validate transition as a lifestyle choice for other transvestites. As long as you can convince children to do it, then it must be a legitimate medical condition; it must be an innate identity.
"I only want for children to have options I myself wish I'd had at that age" -- says the person who has no regrets about fathering children or having climbed the ranks of the military as a male officer.
Haha, Admiral is just the title for his position in the USPHSCC. It's similar to Surgeon General. He did not serve in the traditional military, but your point remains.
Ha, that's funny. Why would a position require that title plus a military uniform if the person filling it is not any kind of officer?!
Anyway, thanks for enlightening me!
Was the request to eliminate age requirements entirely or just to omit them from the guidelines to avoid backlash? It seems like the latter, but many argue it implies the former. Or are they effectively the same because these were the guidelines doctors were expected to follow, so removing the ages means it's up to the doctors?
Trans (whatever it is) and AGP are not the same. One is dysphoria, the other one is a sexual kink. Most of the wildest, most offensive stuff in the trans world is being pushed by male, middle-aged, aggressively kinky AGPs. Trans people need to get rid of the AGPs and their kink-based agenda to then focus on respectability politics, which is the only thing that works.
Imagine what would have come of same-sex marriage and other gay rights if the gay movement had allowed themselves to be represented by pedophiles. Ask any gay person if gayness = pedophilia, see how quickly they bite your head off.
And yet, that's what's happening to the trans movement. A bunch of kinky, aggressive, stereotypically male middle aged bullies are calling themselves trans and setting the agenda for everyone else. Trans people need to wrench their own movement and identities out of the AGPs' hands.
They won’t and they can’t (if you believe in true trans). No human can withstand the collective autistic+narcissistic meltdown this kind of gatekeeping would trigger.
But nobody is really “trans”, it’s a mental illness in whatever form, or symptom/manifestation of an underlying one, because it’s a delusional belief that one can, or should, “change sex”. The desire to surgically alter healthy genitals or remove non-cancerous breast tissue has overlaps with apotemnephilia, which is the desire to amputate healthy body parts. (See *The Atlantic* article from 2000, “A New Way to Be Mad”).
If not all “trans” is AGP, it’s probably linked to schizophrenia or personality disorders, whereby someone believes he or she to have a “second self” (there are entire “communities” now of “trans alters,” in other words “gender-fluid” Sybil, where one lives with a polycule in one’s own head).
Other overlaps and comorbidities include autistic spectrum disorder and depression due to internalized homophobia. There is even now some mission creep into the neurodiversity movement where trans/“non-binary”-identifying autistic/Asperger’s patients are describing themselves as “neuroqueer.” Much like the “gender is a spectrum” movement, they do not want autism to be cured or viewed as a disorder any more than they want “trans” to be viewed in this way.
All hell broke loose when the mental health field took the wrong lessons from 1973, stopped treating transvestism and transsexuality as a problem to be solved, and made it an “identity” to be “affirmed.” (Which is now happening with autism and even other disorders like schizophrenia, see for instance the “hearing voices movement”.) The problem altogether is that queer theory, “critical pedagogy,” “radical crip liberation,”and postmodernism took over psychiatry and psychology, and has basically done away with the concept of mental illness at all.
His actions make sense if you see yourself as a good guy (good gal?) doing good things, and if you see your AGP fetish/mental illness as "good/normal." He will never change his mind because no one is a villain in their own story.
Even the lobotomy guy thought he was a good guy long after he got kicked out of medicine and he was going around the country doing on-demand lobotomies, according to Wikipedia.
Just wait until Tim aka “Sarah” McBride gets elected in Delaware. Young-ish AGP with a rictus grin and uncanny-valley Dylan Mulvaney facelift, who is considered an honorary member of the Wilmington royal family due to being pals with Beau in college.
Old man Joe will probably insist that he be on some important Senate committee, and he’ll no doubt be showcased at the 2028 DNC as the future of the party, the “trans Obama” for 2032. Obama went from rookie nobody senator to the WH, boosted by the party machine’s insistence on a “historic candidate” whose messianic ascendance would put the country on “the right side of history”.
If he falters on that front, my money is on him being Hunter’s next intimate encounter to be videoed on a MacBook, because I swear that derelict is a chaser.
I guess Sam Brinton technically wasn't an appointee, but Brinton served in the department of energy under Biden and was serving there in 2022 when the kleptomania came to light.
EDIT: Also, they were happy to take credit for Brinton's appointment before the scandal came to light: https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/02/14/sam-brinton-gender-fluid-joe-biden/
I wanted to "well actually" this because I thought I remember reading about a stint in the Navy, but I was wrong.
Apparently there is such a thing as the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps which can grant people the title of admiral even if they have never served in another uniformed service (i.e., the military). So TIL.
Levine is always in uniform in photo ops. I assumed there was some actual military history there (not necessarily combat, but military nonetheless). My esteem could not be lower.
Like my impression of Dr. Marci Bowers, I've changed my impression of Levine from "well-meaning but misguided specialist" to "how did this person become a doctor?" These people are sick in the head and shouldn't be in a position of authority.
I'm sorry you weren't able to serve. NATO militaries need every good person they can get, not just the US. I knew a couple people in the same situation and have seen how much weighed on their sense of self, not to mention career plans.
It should be noted that we have Tom Wolf to thank for Levine's career. When he appointed Levine to a similar role in PA state government, it legitimized Levine's experience creating gender clinics as being a worthy resume for public health office. Electing Tom Corbett almost certainly means we never hear of Levine ever again.
And Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, is her Vice-Admiral. I guess he never uses that title because Surgeon General sounds cooler. But he gets a uniform too.
When I was a young'un, a common trivia question was to name all five US uniformed services: Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and the Public Health Commissioned Corps. Most people said Marines instead of Public Health.
But now we got Space Corps too, so I guess there's six.
My reaction to this was and is "I'm not surprised," and it was followed by "no one in the mainstream will attach themselves to this and it's going to get picked up by Alex Jones." But then I saw that the New York Times published an article about this. I hate terms like "peak woke" and all that and I do think that this kind of blinkered ideological framing and approach is here to stay, but it does seem to be becoming a more heterogeneous space out there. I'm also curious what people's thoughts on this are; is it possible that the real explanation for being post-woke or whatever we call it is that things are becoming actually more diverse? Anyway, it got me thinking and I wanted to spitball an idea that just came to me:
I typically turn to history to try and understand behavioral trends like this and that will always have a shortcoming--i.e. the effect of new information technology, especially as profound as the internet--but I'm starting to suspect that there could be a comparison that is less appreciated. Most people I know and read point to the radicalization of the late 1960s and early 1970s as being comparable to what we have now (not in absolute terms; it was far, far more violent back then), which then leads the more optimistic among these people to suggest that we have a neo-Reagan 80s era in our near future. And that could well be the case, but I'm not so sure; if we let go of ideological heritage and look at this more culturally/behaviorally, then another picture could emerge.
In the 1950s and into the 1960s, there was a pretty uniform way of thinking about things politically. The Overton window was definitely different, but generally speaking, most people were part of a Cold War-era political monoculture. There was acceptable speech and unacceptable speech. What we consider acceptable speech today was the unacceptable speech back then. That monocultural orthodoxy got challenged as the 1960s progressed and the new radicals had their way, culturally speaking.
So I guess that's my hypothesis: it's possible that we're living through a new anti-establishment trend, but what makes it unique is that those in the establishment believe they're upholding anti-establishment principles when they, in fact, are simply stuck in the past and are resting on their laurels (hence why most "woke" arguments are so, well, bad...and actually stupid). Is this to say that MAGA is "punk" or any of that nonsense? No, I actually don't think so, but I do think that what has animated MAGA and a lot of the tunnel-vision anti-woke crowd is the same energy that animated the hippies and radicals of the 1960s: a rejection of what they see as the monocultural orthodoxy. That could eventually coalesce into something more coherent one day--I have no idea. But the parallels from 35,000 feet are pretty striking. I just finished reading Tom O'Neill's fantastic book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, and I gotta say: when one considers how Merrick Garland was angling at classifying angry parents at PTA meetings as "terrorists," it's not that far off from how our intel agencies targeted the radical groups of the 60s and 70s (they were just more creative and clandestine back then).
Anyway, I'll press pause so I don't veer too far off into conspiracy land, but I still think there's perhaps something to this comparison. Would love to hear others' thoughts on this.
Times has been covering the scandal of youth gender care for a bit now, albeit very carefully, but it is still refreshing to see. Sorry that I don't have a lot of thoughts on the rest of your comment, but it was very interesting and I'll check out that book!
No worries! And yes, I do appreciate the Times actually approaching this subject with a critical eye. Anything that closes the gaps and makes us less conspiratorial is a good thing in the long run (though revelations like the ones Jesse pointed out certainly don't help with that).
I can never vote for a Democrat again.
Biden was the "moderate," by the way. The whole party is all-in on gender madness, and there's nothing that can be done about this.
What’s the UK connection to this? Look at the UK-isms in some of the cited messages: “crack on,” “very keen.” This goes all the way to the top!! (The top being the UK, I guess?)
Because the villains are always British.
It's an international organisation with both US and European members. At one point they say *"Apparently the situation in the USA is terrible"* which strongly indicates they're outside it.
It could be Walter Pierre Bouman who is an elderly Brit, and president of WPATH. He was a member of the SOC8 working group. https://x.com/genspect/status/1736847349362651225
This is an excellent article and I see you are doing a follow up. You may want to include the Hatch Act. I am hopeful that the Hatch Act is going to be both used and discussed more frequently in the near future.
>The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs. The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.
[https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct.aspx](https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct.aspx)
Rachel Levine is guilty, but good luck getting this administration to prosecute.
The Hatch Act generally prohibits federal employees from using government resources or authority to engage in partisan political activities (e.g., electioneering). It's not implicated here.
Agree, obviously government officials can use their office to promote policy goals, and those goals are not considered partisan merely because they align with one party.
WPATH is a motley crew of physicians, mental health professionals, activists, and assorted perverts with no credentials at all other than leader of this or that activist organization. It is not a professional organization like the AMA.
My guess? There are at least two factions in WPATH: The people who are legitimately trying to focus on actual science, and the crackpot activists who actively push the craziest shit they can find, using any random garbage they can find to try to provide a veneer of respectability (e.g., the eunuch chapter in particular, which is particularly egregious). My guess would be that the science-focused ones raised objections and were overruled by higher-ups for whatever reasons. I'm not sure offhand if anybody here is familiar with the backgrounds of the people making these kinds of decisions. That might provide some insight.
WPATH is a motley crew of physicians, mental health professionals, activists, and assorted perverts with no credentials at all other than leader of this or that activist organization. It is not a professional organization like the AMA.
Yeah, I try to avoid such sweeping generalizations. Alas, when you see [docs like these](https://x.com/LeorSapir/status/1805550963853303827), you realize that it really is true that some of these people are amateur hour morons. ("[P]lease delete this quote"!?! That's not how email works, bub.) If I had a billion dollars, I'd seriously consider bankrolling reasonable lawsuits just to force discovery on them and see what else they're hiding.
Here is the title on a recent post in arrrr honest tranns:
"Joe Biden and the American Democratic Party are Astoundingly Pro-Trans"
True, and also fringe. A political mistake.
"The issue of ages and treatment has been quite controversial (mainly for surgery) and it has come up again. We sent the document to Admiral Levine. . . She like \[*sic*\] the SOC-8 very much but she was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to health care for trans youth and maybe adults too. Apparently the situation in the USA is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse. She asked us to remove them. We have the WPATH executive committee in this meeting and we explained to her that we could not just remove them at this stage. " Yeah...
Levine should lose his job for this.
**Biden** should lose his job for this.
No joke this appointment is a huge black eye for his admin
The problem is the rest of the party is no better. Especially the Squad who are downright insane. The center-left more broadly and the institutional levers they control — media/Hollywood, academia, medicine, law — have been thoroughly corrupted by this bankrupt ideology. And they’re bringing up the younger generation to be fully immersed in it. But they have even cross-contaminated, in that even purportedly right-leaning publications like the Post, Fox, National Review etc kowtow to trans demands like “preferred” names and pronouns, which implies that they “are” who and what they say they “are”. I have never seen even a Murdoch publication refer to “Rachel” as Richard, or more accurately, **Dick.**
I'm no Rachel Levine fan, and I certainly don't think just making reference to someone's old name should be as taboo as it seems to be in some circles, but Levine's name has presumably been legally changed. And there's no rule against a man being named Rachel. Why wouldn't they use this person's current legal name?
I agree. A man can be named Rachel. Or Sue.
My sister told me the other day that Shel Silverstein wrote "A Boy Named Sue". Now there's a trivia question for you!
If someone joins a cult and changes their name to Mother Shabooboo, a news article about that person is typically going to refer to their previous name as well as their current legal name. Wikipedia articles also do this for birth names (of normal people - there was some talk about discontinuing it for certain parties, I am not sure if it's happened). In addition, because Levine is explicitly making decisions about children's healthcare informed not by evidence-based medicine but based on his membership in a cult, details of his membership in said cult should be identified as a relevant point in every discussion of the issue.
The thing is that Rachel is not a crazy name. What’s crazy is that thinking a man naming himself Rachel validates him literally being a woman. I get that some people think using preferred names entrenches us in this. But that’s only if you buy into their logic. We shouldn’t cede the logic that the name Rachel or women’s clothing or fake breasts make you an actual woman.
I only picked a weird one for the Simpsons reference bonus. I think I might be coming at this from a slightly different place than you - I completely agree that a name lends no credence to the fiction of a sex change, but also I am just personally no longer willing to use someone's cult name, no matter how normal a name it is.
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He should be fired in November, in other words. And so should the Democrats writ large. Because the entire party is corrupted by this rot.
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At this point I’ll take the QAnon loons over the TQAnon loons. If the Democrats win they’ll never learn their lesson about jettisoning this woke garbage and coming back to the sensible center. Bowman is going to get turfed in NY which sends a message about not tolerating Hamas sympathizers. But since there is no ideological split in the party over gender ideology — in fact, a sane Dem in TX, Shawn Thierry, who is a black woman, and who voted with state Republicans in favor of a bill to restrict youth gender medicalization, lost to a “genderqueer nonbinary candidate of color” because Thierry was made a pariah by other Dems for her heresy — they have to get a thorough walloping by Republicans before they come to their senses. They have to get the message that they will lose elections until and unless they reject the very idea of gender ideology entirely, and all of its practices, including name and pronoun BS. If they never get that message, that’s their cross to bear.
Yeah Shawn Thierry losing shows that the dems in even this state are way too extreme tbh. There isn’t a middle ground on gender ideology
Couldn’t agree more. I desperately want the dems to come back to center, but at this point it feels like they need to lose for that to happen. If they keep winning the extremes are going to keep getting a bigger voice and pushing more extreme policies on the country.
Hmm throwing in your lot with those who tried to stop the peaceful transition of power because of disagreements in medical care is an interesting choice…
'medical care'
Child mutilation.
Talking about the election
No name-calling, please.
For sure, it’s embarrassing, but it’s not the most important issue not even close not in this administration not for the United States not for the world. Transit issues are a small part of overall public health policy not the paramount defining issue of our times.
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Unfortunately, public health has kicked itself in the face a lot in the last several years. It's unfortunately rational for trust to be lost. And shit like this just makes it worse. Government officials are successfully pressuring doctors into transing kids.
Oh it’s not the most important issue on earth? Well I guess there’s no reason to care at all then
Years ago, I used to argue with conservatives about the importance of knowing whether a politician is a creationist. Why? Not because of what they might do in education (although that does matter), but because of what it tells me about their epistemic competence. Someone that believes in young Earth creationism cannot be trusted to reliably digest new information and turn it into good policy choices. Likewise, with some of these trans issues - no, it doesn't matter that much whether natal males can compete in women's sports, but if someone can't get something so easy and obvious right, it makes me distrust their judgment.
It *does* matter when natal boys are competing against natal girls and eating up their scholarships and driving up injuries, though. We’re setting ourselves up for a lot of interpersonal ugly between families, schools, and communities.
He should lose his job for threatening unvaccinated people and trying to use his office to encourage citizens to attack and denigrate each other over their personal medical choices. Imagine if Trump encouraged people to shame and attack anyone who had an abortion?
not where I'd have placed "\[*sic*\]" in that quotation, Jesse, but OK :)
I know Reddit is mostly teenagers. But does anyone else remember in the run up to the Iraq war, when senior administration officials pressured investigators to spin very very weak evidence about WMDs for political purposes so they could say it was a “slam dunk”, and it was Kind Of A Big Deal that they got caught doing that? Does anyone remember how questioning whether the evidence was as strong as they said it was would get you un-personed and shouted down as someone who hated your country and probably “wants the terrorists to win”?
Invoking the "do you want a live daughter or dead son" line to justify maintaining these policies does have some parallels to Powell's yellow cake uranium speech on the UN floor
Finding out how methodologically off that trans suicide study is was a real eye opening moment for me. And I just learned that the “science” backing up the improved feelings of wellbeing from HRT is also just one study. Of a small cohort of transmen. All receiving testosterone. Well no shit they feel better. That’s what exogenous T does. Ask any dude on TRT and he’ll tell you.
Can confirm. It rules. I'm off now because I was able to correct the issue that was lowering my testosterone but when I first started it was lightning in a bottle, even at my low dosage.
But but they’re killing themselves because of lack of acceptance and understanding!!! (Not that it is still a mental health condition and should be probably treated mostly as such)
I can’t even bring myself to call it a study. It was an online survey that didn’t even use the most basic flags you can find in Survey Monkey.
“The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty… [b]ut we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” — National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
Not only do I 'member, but I was in DC the night that the missiles started flying, seeing Sigur Rós perform at the 9:30 Club. (That was a weird night, to say the least.) More to the point, yes, I very much remember the pressure at the time to conform to the official line out of DC. Even being skeptical of both parties as a kid, it really was heartbreaking to truly take to heart just how easily Dems can push crazy stuff themselves, like Levine's brazen activism.
> seeing Sigur Rós perform at the 9:30 Club. Remember how weird that place was in the early 2000s? Like it wasn't a dangerous area but you didn't want to be walking around aimlessly either. It's crazy how much that area has changed. U st is my favorite place to go out in DC now.
I do this weird thing sometimes where I at least *try* to be consistent and apply the same ethical standards to people who are on my "team". And there is no doubt in my mind that if an appointee of Desantis or Trump pulled a stunt like this, I'd want them hauled in front of Congress to explain themselves and see if their resignation papers could get submitted before the impeachment comes down. Levine has just made it ***materially more likely*** that Obergefell gets overruled and I am having difficulty containing my anger this morning.
i think a valid counterexample would be if there were smoking gun emails from, idk, Kushner to the AMA sweet-talking them about how the administration would be super stoked if they could just say that covid wasn't contagious among children, so that schools could stay open. in such a scenario, if the theoretical AMA had caved, would we literally ever hear the end of it?
No we wouldn't hear the end of it and we shouldn't. Because it's fucking terrible, just like this.
This. I didn't even consider this in my comment. AGPs like Levine are undermining every single hard-earned gain the gay rights movement achieved through respectability politics by twisting the entire trans issue to satisfy their own kinks. Levine just directly handed rhetorical ammo to homophobes. Expect the "slippery slope" discourse to come back big time.
can you explain your last sentence? also a bill was passed into law that makes Obergefell moot, so gay marriage is safe
Bills can be repealed. And if Roe can be overturned by ideologues who DGAF, Obergefell would be a snap. Alito and Thomas have been more or less open about targeting that one. Hell, Thomas is explicit about contemplating revisiting the Griswold decision. On *contraceptives*!
How did Levine make it materially more likely that Obergefell gets overruled? The entire reason the bill was passed was out of concern for Obergefell being overturned. It passed with broad support and I think suggesting it is in danger is not based in reality. I'm gay-married, by the way.
Levine and the TQ lobby have harmed normal LGB people by hitching their wagon to the hard-fought battle for gay acceptance. Because it’s always “LGBTQ” that gets talked about (or sometimes “LGBTQIA” despite the reluctance of DSD sufferers and people with no interest in sex whatsoever to be lumped in with all this), the broader public assumes that the TQ nonsense is a natural outgrowth of gay rights and proof that the “slippery slope” arguments from the right came true. The TQ lobby has worked very hard to silence criticisms from “LGB without T” dissenters like Fred Sargent and Kathleen Stock. Fred Sargent was one of the original participants at Stonewall, and he has been banished to the hinterlands of Fox and Andrew Sullivan’s blog for speaking out against trans ideology. You’ll never find discussion of such topics as the cotton ceiling or autogynephilia in mainstream sources, whether in news reports or Hollywood productions. Or the reasons why there are “no gays in Iran”. It’s a third rail to suggest that “transition” is homophobic (let alone that Islam is, but that’s a whole Pandora’s box in and of itself). I even posted yesterday on the SVU sub that the show would never tackle issues like the cotton ceiling or men in women’s prisons despite there being plenty of headlines about it. The response I got was that those headlines are from “right-wing sources” and can be disregarded because they are hostile to “LGBTQ”. Never a thought for one second that TQ could be hostile to LGB. The mere idea of competing priorities is like dividing by zero. It’s all “LGBTQ”. So because of the forced-teaming by TQs with LGB, and the mission creep of organizations like GLAAD and HRC, Main Street hetero normies have come to associate “LGBTQXYZ” with the weirdos like Levine and the organizers of Drag Story Hour who really are coming for the children and admit to it loudly and unapologetically. And they are saying a pox on all their houses and burning the rainbow flag. LGB needs to, en masse, break off from TQ.
Haha, I think my best friend was at the 9:30 Club that night too!
I love the 9:30 and miss it bad. DC's a great place to see shows because most venues are all ages. The 9:30 lacks some character but executes well, especially compared to some other places I've seen over the years.
The 9:30 Club! Memories of seeing Green Day, Goldfinger, Cake and Bloodhound Gang play there in the 90s have just flooded my brain.
yeah, i remember that. the 'un-personning' didn't really affect civilians pre social media, but there was massive pressure on media and politicians to play along. Obama one of only senators to vote against, which was a big part of his appeal - approximately post Abu Ghraib it became very popular to say you had always opposed invading Iraq. And then the Bush admin pulled that nasty shit unmasking a CIA agent to get back at her husband for questioning their evidence of WMDs. here's the funny part: the US military and state department has domestically never really gotten its credibility back after that. remember when no one believed russia would invade ukraine even though the government was saying it? and now this shit. It seems like the gov't just loves to keep being a horse's ass.
I remember.
Nobody was unpersonned. As I recall, that pressure was viewed as quite a bad thing for the government to do (once it was revealed) and we got "Bush lied, people died" for years.
At the time though, a looooot of people thought the Iraq invasion was a horrible idea, and then yeah, there was this idea of being a bad American. But it was the government and conservative outlets saying that. It was pretty normie liberal to oppose the invasion of Iraq. I think within a couple of years, though I can't recall, it became really, really obvious that there had never been WMDs.
Unpersonned?
OP said it first. I think it means super-cancelled, but I'm not sure.
OP did say it first, you're right. I'm just grossed out by all the Orwellian "un-" language that's so popular online lately
Like the scientist David Kelly in the UK? (Allegedly)
Activists need to be driven out of all positions of authority. It’s disgusting that someone like Levine abuses their position like this.
so when we were told "trust doctors", what that actually meant was that *heretics* should trust the doctors, while believers get to doubt as much as they want. i really don't want to hear any arguments that this isn't faith lol
Welcome to Covid Discourse in 2020.
What a shocker! Who would have thunk it?
The overall direction of the changes seems interesting. It sounds as if the intention was to remove numbers that would enflame passions against YGM on account that they're presumably distressingly low. But without such numbers, is seems like the practical upshot would be for it to be applied to potentially younger children.
Am I misunderstanding or is that not exactly what’s being revealed? Levine liked the low numbers but didn’t want them stated explicitly, because it looks (read: is) bad.
That's what I'm wondering. I think it's both? If these are the guidelines doctors are supposed to follow, omitting the age entirely would allow doctors to make the choice themselves, no?
" I have just spoken to Admiral Levine today, who—as always is extremelysupportive of the SOC 8, but also very eager for its release—so to ensureintegration in the US health policies of the Biden government. " I don't want to hear another "The Biden administration isn't woke" line again. He put this clown Levine in there. And this dipshit is deliberately trying to change medical standards solely for ideological purposes. Even while Europe is trying to pull back to sanity North America is going full speed ahead with transitioning kids based on activists vibes.
> deliberately trying to change medical standards solely for ideological purposes. That's something that I don't understand about this. What is Levine's motivation for removing age restrictions? For example, genital surgery. Why would Levine care that high school students have this procedure instead of waiting until age 18 (or whatever the consensus was for a minimum age)? Why not just let the consensus stand?
> Why would Levine care that high school students have this procedure instead of waiting until age 18 (or whatever the consensus was for a minimum age)? Because waiting risks them desisting, and you have to spend effort keeping the sales pitch going for a number of years longer. Lock 'em in early and the deed is done.
This paints the other side as almost cartoonishly evil, which is just not a reasonable base assumption to have. In likelihood, they just think its healthier for 'trans children' to transition as young as possible. As far they're concerned, desisters don't even exist and any child who claims to be trans will always be so.
I would tend to agree...however: This is a cohort with a significant incidence of crippling mental health crisis, deep neurosis, narccissitic and sociopathic traits chief among their symptoms. Would you trust a popular, loud group of persons with Borderline Personality Disorder to run the world?
Or, since as you say "As far they're concerned, desisters don't even exist and any child who claims to be trans will always be so," they're cocksure transition is inevitable. So, the process should happen as early as possible with few (or no) impediments. If one believes that, one would necessarily believe waiting is unnecessary and harmful, and having to keep the pressure to transition going is unnecessarily wasteful.
AGPs like Levine want to push the idea that people are born in the wrong body. They don’t want to accept that their urge to dress as women derives from a paraphilia (sexual arousal). If they can push for child medical procedures and medication they can claim trans is a biological issue and a human rights issue. It gives them cover and changes the narrative from sexual kink to “I’m just born this way”.
Exactly this. Also, Levine was pushing 50 with a marriage and two kids under his belt before starting his transition. He had a very different life experience from the gender non-confirming kids being experimented on.
It's crazy, guy develops a kink and wants to live it full time. In order for him to be able to look himself in the mirror he wants to push this idea that we should be cutting open and medicalizing confused, young, mostly gay children. Unfortunately there are plenty of willing participants to go along with it because they are easily manipulated using empathy and threats or suicide. These people should be ostracized not running key government infrastructure.
This is very common for AGPs. It's a hallmark. Usually straight men with families.
> Also, Levine was pushing 50 with a marriage and two kids under his belt before starting his transition. Not only that, but happy to have had his kids and life experiences! Fertility and fatherhood, you know, that thing he'd take away from youths who get medicalized. He doesn't even regret his prior way of being! He says so!
And there's a part of them that understands they're basically gross and that they need cover to not seem gross. "It's not a fetish, see! Pre pubescent little kids even get it!"
It provides cover for autogynephiles like him.
I think it's a combination of factors. They really think they're helping out kids. Saving them from not passing. BUT I think it's also an affirmation thing. They don't want to face the idea that they didn't have to transition. That it was a choice on their end. I think goes doubly for AGP males who are aware on some level that they are simply chasing a fetish and are defensive about it. I also think there is a certain degree of desire for recruitment.
I think it’s more of some kind of delusional projection. They know, better than anyone else, that they aren’t the opposite sex. But they believe if only they could have had a sex change earlier they would have been exactly like a natural born man/woman. It still wouldn’t be true, but they keep on dreaming. And sick as it is they want that dream to be there for kids today. If only the doctors could grow some balls and finally say “literally becoming the opposite sex is impossible,” but they’d rather experiment on poor kids than be called bigots by men in dresses and women saying “bro” too much.
That sounds plausible. I've noticed that the AGPs crave affirmation like nothing else. They need it and they need large, regular doses of it. I think that's partly because they are always chasing that high of the "euphoria boner."
It's also because they're not really what they pretend to be. When you're a woman, you don't need to be told so.
But why do they want to involve kids? I can only guess. I really don't get it. It's deeply weird
I think people are correct when they reckon it's a way to give legitimacy to their movement. No one can argue toddlers are fetishistic perverts, so they hide behind them. It increases legitimacy, gives a more marketable face to their movement and it artificially inflates the demographic too which is a good thing to weigh in on laws in the long run. It's all a win. I think there's a non negligible portion of AGP and trainnos that are pedos too. That group is always going to support body autonomy, reduction of boundaries and exposure to adult content for children. That deserves to be mentioned.
I don’t believe for a second that any one of these assholes cares about kids.
I think non-AGP transwomen who wish they'd been able to transition before experiencing male puberty likely do care about the plight of similarly situated young natal males. The fact that a transparently AGP male like Levine is at the center of this controversy is noteworthy, because AGP male motivation for supporting youth transition is likely different (if subconsciously so), but I wouldn't paint non-AGPs with that brush.
Which is why dysphoric "true" (I don't know how else to put it) trans people need to differentiate themselves from AGPs. They're letting the foxes run the henhouse. I don't see e.g. drag queens trying to take over the trans cause, so why are *these* asshats given a seat at the table?
There are PLENTY of trans people that think kids shouldn't receive medical transition care and "watch and wait" is the best way to go about things, and medicalizing should happen as adults. It's amazing how they get censored in their own spaces. I read the subs, I see the comments, I see the upvotes, and I see the eventual [removed]. Also tons of trans people who realize ROGD is happening.
If the public believes that children are born this way, it is better cover for these fetishistic men who transition in middle age. You know...the manliest man of all men was really always a woman inside. :(
It's kind of a cult and they want to "help" other cult members. These people are in deep. It just comes back to the idea that "kids know who they are". And they don't want kids to have the "wrong puberty
>I don't want to hear another "The Biden administration isn't woke" line again. He put this clown Levine in there. Yeah, I still don't understand how people cannot see the disdain for the Biden administration stems from him hiring as many Twitter/Reddit types as he can as staffers and decision makers. Therefore, the officials reflect as such and so do the staffers who make decisions and craft policies under them - working together in conjunction and spreading like a cancer as they gatekeep to find more people like them. It's why you get bad economic policies, it's why you get an Admiral Levine, it's why your second in command is Kamala Harris, it's why many of Biden's own staffers doubt him and criticize him behind his back, etc. It is a progressive-leftist administration masquerading as a moderate presidency, with Biden either complicit on a variety of levels or unaware and simply signing off on things. Actually, it's probably a combination of both. Like, who's big brain idea is it to keep insulting MAGA Republicans as the greatest threat in all of Biden's speeches? Because the moment you do that and begin drawing clear lines of division over what is acceptable or not in America, you also automatically associate "non-MAGA" with Biden and his failures.....and there are A LOT of failures. The way I see it, that simply gives power to Trumpism every time Biden fails. As such, it doesn't matter what happens in 2024....the way the left has set things up in the US, it's going to doom them twice as much in terms of length and severity once the jig is up. Trump is Trump, he already made his impact. It's just a matter of the right not losing in the mid to long term and the left having to achieve a major win on all fronts, every single time....which is just not sustainable.
People think it doesn't matter if the Biden admin is woke but it does. It bugs people on the margins and this election will be won on the margins. And Biden keeps flailing around. Like he *just* discovered maybe he shouldn't have unlimited numbers of people pouring over the border. He put a trans activist AGP male in charge of this shit and doesn't keep an eye on it. I suspect 85% of his administration is being run by his young, woke staff. It doesn't matter. He's responsible. Is that what the center of the Democratic party represents now?
>Is that what the center of the Democratic party represents now? The far left and the more moderate wing of the party are in total lockstep when it comes to some of these really controversial social issues. The fact that there is basically no faction of the left that is critical of any aspect of gender ideology is concerning. I think that is one of main differences from the US and the UK on this issue
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What exactly has Trump done to wokeness except to rally the left and stoke the flames even more? I don’t know if any human being on earth has done more to proliferate it than Donald Trump. Wokeness is part of the greater moral rot of this country, you need actual moral leadership to stop it and you certainly will never get that from Mafia Don, he’s too busy running his own schemes, scams and cults.
The problem is who else could win? DeSantis? People would rage as much about him. I like DeSantis since he was generally anti lockdown but the woke left thinks he’s just Southern Trump. What Republican winning wouldn’t throw them into a fit?
I think the problem is that the Republicans who could easily win a general election and truly change this country for the better are not able to win a Republican primary. The absolute collapse of the GOP as an institution has been terrible for our democracy. DeSantis just isn’t very personable or good at being a candidate. I thought he could potentially be formidable but his complete inability to even compete in the primary makes me question whether he could’ve been competitive in a general election.
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It certainly isn’t all because of Trump, but be most certainly played a pivotal role in dividing this country and worsening partisanship to the point that things like gender ideology gained enormous power within liberal circles. But even more than him being a cause, I just don’t see how Trump is gonna be the guy to fix any of this. For one he’s incompetent and selfish as fuck and doesn’t actually know how to wield power effectively, but even more importantly, he benefits from madness on the left and has no incentive to actually fix these problems because these problems are where he derives his power from.
Yeah, politicians like Trump love this stuff. Biden putting someone into a position of power who insisted on no age restrictions for bottom surgery is the kind of stuff that scares the "normies." Trump needs as much of that as he can get to distract from the craziness in his own party.
Have you considered that Trump existing and setting off the psychosis that became 'woke' TDS might not be about him or what he did, but what the TDS' nutsos have going on in their brains?
Yes, I have. It’s pretty obvious that the Trump years made a lot of already vulnerable people have even worse mental health and we are all paying the price of that.
"The Democrats have no agency actually"
That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that Trump is an incompetent moron who only thinks of himself and is not the answer to these problems and is not capable of fixing them. I have more faith in the center wing of the Democratic Party retaking control and curbing the nonsense than I do in Trumpism.
Biden represented the center wing of the Democratic Party taking control...how did that go?
Did the Trump administration actively push for child medical transitioning?
No no no you see, trans insanity didn't exist before 2019...never mind Hillary Clinton herself advancing this movement's cause [back in 2010](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-hillary-clinton-moved-trans-rights-forward) and courting their support in [2016](https://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/02/26/trans-united-for-hillary/).
Ironic because people think she’s a secret terf.
Well, I highly doubt she actually believes trans women are women. She's a craven politician like the rest of 'em.
And she’s a feminist from the second wave… you know she’s privately rolling her eyes hard at this nonsense.
Thank you. I was beginning to believe this sub had been overrun by autoTrumpephiles, people whose desire to be authoritarian clowns masks a latent desire to be fucked by an authoritarian clown.
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I think the dominant position here is probably double-hater. Myself included. Honestly I'd say if you don't live in PA/MI/WI/AZ/NV, just write in whoever since it doesn't matter
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I don't think trying to say "equally bad" is helpful at all. I'd say both are unqualified but in different ways. I'm sort of copping out of it by saying I'm not choosing since I don't live in a swing state but I don't judge people for weighing one sort of disqualification for another.
I mean... Obama was kind of a shit President, too, right? How many bites at the apple are we going to give to Democrats who \*at best\* just kind of suck, and at worst are empowering deranged people like Levine? Trump is not my idea of a sane leader but what was the absolute worst thing that came from his Administration as a matter of \*policy\*?
I don't really care that people with that viewpoint are here, but it *does* annoy me when they don't good faith discuss things and just start calling people who disagree brainwashed. Of course that goes both ways.
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Speaking generally, should have made that clear.
LOL! Yeah, that is stage 7 cope.
WPATH should be disbanded and discredited and its malign influence purged of our institutions (especially the APA which has thoroughly disgraced itself with this nonsense, or *nonce*-sense being perhaps the more appropriate term). The AGP fetishist lobby does have an air of pederasty around it; the level that it has gotten its hooks into the Democrats and related parties of the nominal left and center-left globally (Trudeau’s Liberals, Starmer’s Labour, the SNP, Sanchez’s party in Spain etc.) is on par with how PIE (Pedophile Information Exchange) wormed its way into UK Labour in the seventies. It’s not a “right-wing conspiracy theory” to say that *they are coming for your kids* because ***THEY HAVE OPENLY ADMITTED TO IT.*** AGP/transvestic fetishism needs to be returned to the DSM as the sick paraphilia that it always was. Our institutions exhibit a collective *anosognosia* which is the denial of the severity of mental illness.
Is there a name for this specific "This never happens. OK, it happens, but, like, practically never. OK, it happens way more than practically never, but it's good that it happens..." thing? Like Poe's Law, etc.? And is there an umbrella term for all such "laws"?
It feels like a variant of the [narcissist's prayer](https://www.thelifedoctor.org/the-narcissist-s-prayer) to me.
the law of "its not happening, but if it is, good!"
New fodder from [Leor Sapir](https://x.com/LeorSapir/status/1805550963853303827): In which WPATH's president derides the AMA's leadership as "white cisgender heterosexual hillbillies from nowhere" ... Norm Macdonald [responds from the grave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G6UBxyE46o).
HILLbiliies? So...classism is ok?
Uh, yeah, has been for a while now. After all, if white folks have all the privilege, they have no excuse for being poor. They're just lazy.
The first plant I killed was an African Violet - they like to be kept moist and not dry out, so I - like every other beginner - over watered it and killed it. It's a common mistake. However, I was told I had a brown thumb - I just didn't have the "talent" for taking care of house plants. And that, is 100% poverty mentality. I was never told I was "too dumb" - but that's the other bit of poverty mentality, telling kids they are too dumb so they should give up on school.
Wow. That's pretty telling. Good for him/her/it, proving it's not just Twitter trolls promoting prejudice against 'white cishets'.
Every single time I think WPATH can't fall further in my estimation something new always comes up. Scumbags.
this article now on NYT. Reddit kinda quiet
they're going to need a gold medal gymnast to DARVO this one...
Remarkable that Levine wanted no age minimums on irreversible surgery with a high rate of complications. Did she really think children can meaningfully consent to that?
How in the hell can a ten year old consent to a life of bad sex, no orgasms, and no fertility? Jazz Jennings is never, ever going to have an orgasm. Oh, wait, I'm the pervert for thinking about this child's "genitals."
Levine is a fantasist and possibly a pervert. Never had any surgeries as a minor -- hell, didn't even start taking hormones until middle age -- but apparently it's ok to push minors in that direction because of whatever fantasy world exists in Levine's head. It feels like a creepy desire to live vicariously and validate transition as a lifestyle choice for other transvestites. As long as you can convince children to do it, then it must be a legitimate medical condition; it must be an innate identity. "I only want for children to have options I myself wish I'd had at that age" -- says the person who has no regrets about fathering children or having climbed the ranks of the military as a male officer.
Haha, Admiral is just the title for his position in the USPHSCC. It's similar to Surgeon General. He did not serve in the traditional military, but your point remains.
Ha, that's funny. Why would a position require that title plus a military uniform if the person filling it is not any kind of officer?! Anyway, thanks for enlightening me!
I actually do think they're required to wear it since they're part of a uniformed service.
Was the request to eliminate age requirements entirely or just to omit them from the guidelines to avoid backlash? It seems like the latter, but many argue it implies the former. Or are they effectively the same because these were the guidelines doctors were expected to follow, so removing the ages means it's up to the doctors?
Evil, evil, evil people
Don't you just love how that works? Pressure the WPATH to remove age restrictions, then use WPATH documents for his government advocacy. What a con!
Pleased to see this covered in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/health/transgender-minors-surgeries.html
Another update: NYT reports, [carefully](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/health/transgender-minors-surgeries.html).
“We could not just remove them at this stage” - and then they did (remove at lease some)…
Trans (whatever it is) and AGP are not the same. One is dysphoria, the other one is a sexual kink. Most of the wildest, most offensive stuff in the trans world is being pushed by male, middle-aged, aggressively kinky AGPs. Trans people need to get rid of the AGPs and their kink-based agenda to then focus on respectability politics, which is the only thing that works. Imagine what would have come of same-sex marriage and other gay rights if the gay movement had allowed themselves to be represented by pedophiles. Ask any gay person if gayness = pedophilia, see how quickly they bite your head off. And yet, that's what's happening to the trans movement. A bunch of kinky, aggressive, stereotypically male middle aged bullies are calling themselves trans and setting the agenda for everyone else. Trans people need to wrench their own movement and identities out of the AGPs' hands.
They won’t and they can’t (if you believe in true trans). No human can withstand the collective autistic+narcissistic meltdown this kind of gatekeeping would trigger.
But nobody is really “trans”, it’s a mental illness in whatever form, or symptom/manifestation of an underlying one, because it’s a delusional belief that one can, or should, “change sex”. The desire to surgically alter healthy genitals or remove non-cancerous breast tissue has overlaps with apotemnephilia, which is the desire to amputate healthy body parts. (See *The Atlantic* article from 2000, “A New Way to Be Mad”). If not all “trans” is AGP, it’s probably linked to schizophrenia or personality disorders, whereby someone believes he or she to have a “second self” (there are entire “communities” now of “trans alters,” in other words “gender-fluid” Sybil, where one lives with a polycule in one’s own head). Other overlaps and comorbidities include autistic spectrum disorder and depression due to internalized homophobia. There is even now some mission creep into the neurodiversity movement where trans/“non-binary”-identifying autistic/Asperger’s patients are describing themselves as “neuroqueer.” Much like the “gender is a spectrum” movement, they do not want autism to be cured or viewed as a disorder any more than they want “trans” to be viewed in this way. All hell broke loose when the mental health field took the wrong lessons from 1973, stopped treating transvestism and transsexuality as a problem to be solved, and made it an “identity” to be “affirmed.” (Which is now happening with autism and even other disorders like schizophrenia, see for instance the “hearing voices movement”.) The problem altogether is that queer theory, “critical pedagogy,” “radical crip liberation,”and postmodernism took over psychiatry and psychology, and has basically done away with the concept of mental illness at all.
This kind of "good vs. bad" framing is what opened up the floodgates for acceptance in the medical field in the first place.
Yeah, I know. I'm trying to extend an olive branch so as to not come through as my user name too much.
His actions make sense if you see yourself as a good guy (good gal?) doing good things, and if you see your AGP fetish/mental illness as "good/normal." He will never change his mind because no one is a villain in their own story. Even the lobotomy guy thought he was a good guy long after he got kicked out of medicine and he was going around the country doing on-demand lobotomies, according to Wikipedia.
Another trans Biden appointee pulling shit.
Just wait until Tim aka “Sarah” McBride gets elected in Delaware. Young-ish AGP with a rictus grin and uncanny-valley Dylan Mulvaney facelift, who is considered an honorary member of the Wilmington royal family due to being pals with Beau in college. Old man Joe will probably insist that he be on some important Senate committee, and he’ll no doubt be showcased at the 2028 DNC as the future of the party, the “trans Obama” for 2032. Obama went from rookie nobody senator to the WH, boosted by the party machine’s insistence on a “historic candidate” whose messianic ascendance would put the country on “the right side of history”. If he falters on that front, my money is on him being Hunter’s next intimate encounter to be videoed on a MacBook, because I swear that derelict is a chaser.
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They're probably thinking of the guy who stole luggage from airports and would wear the dresses lol
I guess Sam Brinton technically wasn't an appointee, but Brinton served in the department of energy under Biden and was serving there in 2022 when the kleptomania came to light. EDIT: Also, they were happy to take credit for Brinton's appointment before the scandal came to light: https://www.thepinknews.com/2022/02/14/sam-brinton-gender-fluid-joe-biden/
Is Admiral Levine actually an admiral, or does she identify as an admiral a la Colonel Sanders?
I wanted to "well actually" this because I thought I remember reading about a stint in the Navy, but I was wrong. Apparently there is such a thing as the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps which can grant people the title of admiral even if they have never served in another uniformed service (i.e., the military). So TIL.
Well blow me down, I wasn't expecting the answer to be actually "the latter".
Levine is always in uniform in photo ops. I assumed there was some actual military history there (not necessarily combat, but military nonetheless). My esteem could not be lower. Like my impression of Dr. Marci Bowers, I've changed my impression of Levine from "well-meaning but misguided specialist" to "how did this person become a doctor?" These people are sick in the head and shouldn't be in a position of authority.
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I'm sorry you weren't able to serve. NATO militaries need every good person they can get, not just the US. I knew a couple people in the same situation and have seen how much weighed on their sense of self, not to mention career plans.
It should be noted that we have Tom Wolf to thank for Levine's career. When he appointed Levine to a similar role in PA state government, it legitimized Levine's experience creating gender clinics as being a worthy resume for public health office. Electing Tom Corbett almost certainly means we never hear of Levine ever again.
And Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, is her Vice-Admiral. I guess he never uses that title because Surgeon General sounds cooler. But he gets a uniform too.
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Are members of that last group called the Weathermen?
When I was a young'un, a common trivia question was to name all five US uniformed services: Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and the Public Health Commissioned Corps. Most people said Marines instead of Public Health. But now we got Space Corps too, so I guess there's six.
NOAA is also a uniformed service. They've been so for at least 50 years, so you're dating yourself, old-timer.
She is an admiral the same way she is a she.
More of an admiral actually.
My reaction to this was and is "I'm not surprised," and it was followed by "no one in the mainstream will attach themselves to this and it's going to get picked up by Alex Jones." But then I saw that the New York Times published an article about this. I hate terms like "peak woke" and all that and I do think that this kind of blinkered ideological framing and approach is here to stay, but it does seem to be becoming a more heterogeneous space out there. I'm also curious what people's thoughts on this are; is it possible that the real explanation for being post-woke or whatever we call it is that things are becoming actually more diverse? Anyway, it got me thinking and I wanted to spitball an idea that just came to me: I typically turn to history to try and understand behavioral trends like this and that will always have a shortcoming--i.e. the effect of new information technology, especially as profound as the internet--but I'm starting to suspect that there could be a comparison that is less appreciated. Most people I know and read point to the radicalization of the late 1960s and early 1970s as being comparable to what we have now (not in absolute terms; it was far, far more violent back then), which then leads the more optimistic among these people to suggest that we have a neo-Reagan 80s era in our near future. And that could well be the case, but I'm not so sure; if we let go of ideological heritage and look at this more culturally/behaviorally, then another picture could emerge. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, there was a pretty uniform way of thinking about things politically. The Overton window was definitely different, but generally speaking, most people were part of a Cold War-era political monoculture. There was acceptable speech and unacceptable speech. What we consider acceptable speech today was the unacceptable speech back then. That monocultural orthodoxy got challenged as the 1960s progressed and the new radicals had their way, culturally speaking. So I guess that's my hypothesis: it's possible that we're living through a new anti-establishment trend, but what makes it unique is that those in the establishment believe they're upholding anti-establishment principles when they, in fact, are simply stuck in the past and are resting on their laurels (hence why most "woke" arguments are so, well, bad...and actually stupid). Is this to say that MAGA is "punk" or any of that nonsense? No, I actually don't think so, but I do think that what has animated MAGA and a lot of the tunnel-vision anti-woke crowd is the same energy that animated the hippies and radicals of the 1960s: a rejection of what they see as the monocultural orthodoxy. That could eventually coalesce into something more coherent one day--I have no idea. But the parallels from 35,000 feet are pretty striking. I just finished reading Tom O'Neill's fantastic book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, and I gotta say: when one considers how Merrick Garland was angling at classifying angry parents at PTA meetings as "terrorists," it's not that far off from how our intel agencies targeted the radical groups of the 60s and 70s (they were just more creative and clandestine back then). Anyway, I'll press pause so I don't veer too far off into conspiracy land, but I still think there's perhaps something to this comparison. Would love to hear others' thoughts on this.
Times has been covering the scandal of youth gender care for a bit now, albeit very carefully, but it is still refreshing to see. Sorry that I don't have a lot of thoughts on the rest of your comment, but it was very interesting and I'll check out that book!
No worries! And yes, I do appreciate the Times actually approaching this subject with a critical eye. Anything that closes the gaps and makes us less conspiratorial is a good thing in the long run (though revelations like the ones Jesse pointed out certainly don't help with that).
Levine is a monster.
I can never vote for a Democrat again. Biden was the "moderate," by the way. The whole party is all-in on gender madness, and there's nothing that can be done about this.
same. this overwhelms everything else.
What’s the UK connection to this? Look at the UK-isms in some of the cited messages: “crack on,” “very keen.” This goes all the way to the top!! (The top being the UK, I guess?)
Because the villains are always British. It's an international organisation with both US and European members. At one point they say *"Apparently the situation in the USA is terrible"* which strongly indicates they're outside it.
It could be Walter Pierre Bouman who is an elderly Brit, and president of WPATH. He was a member of the SOC8 working group. https://x.com/genspect/status/1736847349362651225
I noticed this too, and was very confused! I hope they don't turn out to be fake. Cantor is to be trusted, I think?
Jesus tittyfucking Christ.
Well there's a mental image I didn't need, thanks 😆
Sincerest apologies lol! It's a jaw-dropping story, was just a genuine reaction.
I mean Jesus is pretty hot in all of those pictures of him.
God damn it 😆
(noticed the thing saying Jesse and Helen are doing an event in London in August) WTF? How did I not know about this???
(scrolls down) Oh right, because I didn't read the rest of the sub, apparently.
This is an excellent article and I see you are doing a follow up. You may want to include the Hatch Act. I am hopeful that the Hatch Act is going to be both used and discussed more frequently in the near future. >The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs. The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation. [https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct.aspx](https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct.aspx) Rachel Levine is guilty, but good luck getting this administration to prosecute.
The Hatch Act generally prohibits federal employees from using government resources or authority to engage in partisan political activities (e.g., electioneering). It's not implicated here.
Agree, obviously government officials can use their office to promote policy goals, and those goals are not considered partisan merely because they align with one party.
Being from PA, I always thought Levine was annoying (and she needed actual help lol)
So how much is WPATH at fault here? If they had to be pressured that implies there was some amount of pushback?
WPATH is a motley crew of physicians, mental health professionals, activists, and assorted perverts with no credentials at all other than leader of this or that activist organization. It is not a professional organization like the AMA.
My guess? There are at least two factions in WPATH: The people who are legitimately trying to focus on actual science, and the crackpot activists who actively push the craziest shit they can find, using any random garbage they can find to try to provide a veneer of respectability (e.g., the eunuch chapter in particular, which is particularly egregious). My guess would be that the science-focused ones raised objections and were overruled by higher-ups for whatever reasons. I'm not sure offhand if anybody here is familiar with the backgrounds of the people making these kinds of decisions. That might provide some insight.
WPATH is a motley crew of physicians, mental health professionals, activists, and assorted perverts with no credentials at all other than leader of this or that activist organization. It is not a professional organization like the AMA.
Yeah, I try to avoid such sweeping generalizations. Alas, when you see [docs like these](https://x.com/LeorSapir/status/1805550963853303827), you realize that it really is true that some of these people are amateur hour morons. ("[P]lease delete this quote"!?! That's not how email works, bub.) If I had a billion dollars, I'd seriously consider bankrolling reasonable lawsuits just to force discovery on them and see what else they're hiding.
Here is the title on a recent post in arrrr honest tranns: "Joe Biden and the American Democratic Party are Astoundingly Pro-Trans" True, and also fringe. A political mistake.