There is no such thing as a ‘trans kid’

It’s time for honesty: the transgender ideology is seriously hurting young people.

One of the great myths of the new, identitarian left is that the transgender movement is the political and spiritual heir to yesterday’s gay-rights movement. It isn’t. At all.

To begin with, the old gay-rights movement did not win the effusive backing of Tories, cops, CofE bigwigs and the entire educational establishment, as the trans movement has.

Stiff Tories were not falling over themselves to institute laws that would heap ‘recognition’ on gay people, as they are today with trans people: see the Gender Recognition Act, an eccentric, reality-defying proposed tweak to the law that would allow anyone to change sex as casually as they change their hairstyle, which is being championed by Theresa May of all people.

Also, the old gay-rights movement agitated against the idea that their sexuality was a mental disorder, as it was horribly defined by American psychologists up to 1972. In contrast, the trans-rights movement craves medical diagnosis, in particular of the mental malaise ‘gender dysphoria’.

Warriors for gay rights demanded autonomy, from medical paternalism, state policing and moral-majority approval; the trans movement seeks these things. It wants validation rather than freedom. State backing rather than state absence. And the approval of every social and cultural institution instead of not giving a fig what these people think.

Most strikingly, where it was a nasty myth that gay campaigners were trying to mislead ‘our youths’, unfortunately the same cannot be said of the trans movement.

That ugly anti-gay prejudice about youth-corrupting ‘queers’, as captured in old black-and-white American public-information films in which handsome teen Chad would be led astray by an ageing pervert, was successfully challenged by gay-rights activists. Because it wasn’t true. The trans movement, though – there is no escaping the uncomfortable fact that trans activists, and their many supporters in the establishment, are leading children astray and could well have a detrimental impact on the lives and futures of the new generation.

Last night Channel 4 aired Trans Kids: It’s Time to Talk. It was a compassionate but critical documentary in which serious questions were raised about the rush to diagnose kids as trans and even to treat them – with puberty-blocking drugs, hormone interventions, and so on (surgery is illegal until adulthood).

It was presented by psychotherapist and author Stella O’Malley. She made the point that when she was young, she was convinced she was a boy. Now, however, she is married – to a man – and has kids. She wondered what might have happened to her if she had been a boy-identifying girl today rather than in the 1980s.

SOURCE




Useless British police provoke vigilante action

WAYNE Dean knew he could not sit by anymore when a friend was battered in his own home by hammer-welding thugs.

It came after a masked axeman had attacked a pregnant woman in a shop raid, and chilling footage emerged of a machete gang rampaging through the street.

No-one was arrested for the attack on his pal and the gang attack footage shocked the nation. Enough was enough.

Feeling West Midlands Police were doing little to help, he took to social media to encourage his community to police itself.

Wayne says: “I wanted to set the group up because crime is getting out of hand, it’s running the area down."

He was stunned when more than 2,000 members, all desperate to work together to keep each other safe, joined his online vigilante community - clearly the issue had struck a nerve.

We Stand Together is one of a growing number of vigilante groups across the UK patrolling their own streets.

Kingshurst residents Wayne, 47, and Tracy Quinn, 48, set up the group and now carry out twice-weekly patrols across the city - the Sun Online joined the pair on one this week. "We're vigilantes with a twist," says Wayne.

The group don't exact revenge or try and solve crimes. They patrol their area in high-vis jackets, knocking on residents' and businesses doors proving reassurance.

When Tracy and Wayne see a crime being committed, or the aftermath of a criminal activity, they alert the online community so anyone else local to that area can come out and assist.

There is no law against the operation of vigilante groups - but police have warned that some techniques used, especially by paedophile hunting gangs, could cross into legally dangerous territory.They can tip off police to crimes being committed due to their network among the comunity, and could perform citizen's arrests - but members of We Stand Determined say they would only do that in extreme circumstances.

They then call the police and await their response – but admit in exceptional circumstances they will try to intervene and issue a citizen arrest.

The areas they patrol include five crime hotspots – Smith’s Wood, Castle Bromwich, Kingshurst, Marston Green and Chelmsley Wood.

In Smith’s Wood there is a rotation of seven officers and seven PCSOs on duty for the area, which at the last census in 2011 had a population of 10,476.

Between October 2017 and September 2018 a staggering 82.98 per cent of reported crime saw no further action taken. One person has been recorded as being sent to prison.

In Chelmsley Wood, with a 2011 population of 12,453 and patrolled by eight officers and four PCSOs, 77.28 per cent of crimes reported there have been shelved with no further action taken.

Although the crime rate for Solihull is currently slightly lower than the average for other areas policed by West Midlands Police, data shows there has been a sharp rise in crime rates between September 2017 and October 2018.

Last month a 78-year-old woman was set upon by three men after they broke into her house and stole her handbag.

In recent weeks police have appealed for help with a suspected car burglary, an attempted break in, an attack on an Asda security guard and four arson attacks in these areas.

Walking the streets of Birmingham, Wayne and Tracy seem unafraid of their surroundings, and are more concerned with knocking on doors to make sure residents felt safe.

Ivan, who was checked in on by the pair, told us: “It’s a good thing to have people like this around. Usually we don’t open our door after tea time. “It’s nice to have good people out there.”

One elderly man tells us the nights where he lives in Birmingham could be bad, but said his safety was increased with groups like We Stand Determined enforcing safety in that area.

One worker for Norwich Express in Marston Green, who asked not to be named for fears over her safety, revealed just a week before men had come into the shop armed with guns demanding the till be emptied before they jetted away in a stolen car.

And in a nearby Nisa Local shop, a member of staff claimed an unknown man who had been relentlessly shoplifting over the last four weeks – with a lack of police action seemingly allowing him to walk away freely and pop back whenever he needed more.

Kanlesh Patel says: “The police don’t want to know about anything under one hundred pounds worth of stuff. “They think it’s not worth pursuing. It’s getting worse because even the criminal knows these facts. “They’ll do it in front with you, with no shame.”

Vigilante groups – once the staple of Wild West movies – are springing up as a response to the feral thugs causing widespread misery.

SOURCE






New York Times Reveals Painful Truths About 'Sex Change' Surgery
    
In Sunday's New York Times, Andrea Long Chu writes a heartfelt and heartbreaking op-ed on life with gender dysphoria. Titled “My New Vagina Won’t Make Me Happy,” the op-ed reveals painful truths about many transgender lives and inadvertently communicates almost the exact opposite of its intended argument.

Next week, Chu will undergo vaginoplasty surgery. Or, as Chu puts it: “Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months.”

Will this bring happiness? Probably not, but Chu wants it all the same: “This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to. That shouldn’t disqualify me from getting it.”

Chu argues that the simple desire for sex-reassignment surgery should be all that is required for a patient to receive it. No consideration for authentic health and well-being or concern about poor outcomes should prevent a doctor from performing the surgery if a patient wants it. Chu explains: “No amount of pain, anticipated or continuing, justifies its withholding.”

This is a rather extreme conclusion. Chu writes: “Surgery’s only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want.”

This is quite a claim. And we’ll come back to it. But as the op-ed builds to this stark conclusion, Chu reveals many frequently unacknowledged truths about transgender lives — truths that we should attend to.

Sex Isn’t ‘Assigned,’ and Surgery Can’t Change It

First, Chu acknowledges that the surgery won’t actually “reassign” sex: “My body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain.”

Sex reassignment is quite literally impossible. Surgery can’t actually reassign sex, because sex isn’t “assigned” in the first place. As I point out in “When Harry Became Sally,” sex is a bodily reality — the reality of how an organism is organized with respect to sexual reproduction.

That reality isn’t “assigned” at birth or any time after. Sex — maleness or femaleness — is established at a child’s conception, can be ascertained even at the earliest stages of human development by technological means, and can be observed visually well before birth with ultrasound imaging. Cosmetic surgery and cross-sex hormones don’t change biological reality.

People who undergo sex-reassignment procedures do not become the opposite sex — they merely masculinize or feminize their outward appearance.

Gender Dysphoria Is Deeply Painful

Second, Chu acknowledges the deep pain of gender dysphoria, the sense of distress or alienation one feels at one’s bodily sex:

Dysphoria feels like being unable to get warm, no matter how many layers you put on. It feels like hunger without appetite. It feels like getting on an airplane to fly home, only to realize mid-flight that this is it: You’re going to spend the rest of your life on an airplane. It feels like grieving. It feels like having nothing to grieve.

‘Transitioning’ May Not Make Things Better, and Could Make Them Worse

Third, Chu acknowledges that “transitioning” may not make things better and could even make things worse. Chu writes: “I feel demonstrably worse since I started on hormones.” And continues: “Like many of my trans friends, I’ve watched my dysphoria balloon since I began transition.”

Indeed, as I document in “When Harry Became Sally,” the medical evidence suggests that sex reassignment does not adequately address the psychosocial difficulties faced by people who identify as transgender. Even when the procedures are successful technically and cosmetically, and even in cultures that are relatively “trans-friendly,” transitioners still face poor outcomes.

Even the Obama administration admitted that the best studies do not report improvement after reassignment surgery. In August 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid wrote: “[t]he four best designed and conducted studies that assessed quality of life before and after surgery using validated (albeit non-specific) psychometric studies did not demonstrate clinically significant changes or differences in psychometric test results after [gender reassignment surgery].”

What does that mean?

A population of patients is suffering so much that they would submit to amputations and other radical surgeries, and the best research the Obama administration could find suggests that it brings them no meaningful improvements in their quality of life.

Suicide Is a Serious Risk

Fourth, Chu acknowledges a struggle with suicide ideation: “I was not suicidal before hormones. Now I often am.”

In 2016, the Obama administration acknowledged a similar reality. In a discussion of the largest and most robust study on sex-reassignment, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid pointed out, "The study identified increased mortality and psychiatric hospitalization compared to the matched controls. The mortality was primarily due to completed suicides (19.1-fold greater than in control Swedes).“

These results are tragic. And they directly contradict the most popular media narratives, as well as many of the snapshot studies that do not track people over time. Indeed, the Obama administration noted that "mortality from this patient population did not become apparent until after 10 years.”

So when the media tout studies that only track outcomes for a few years, and claim that reassignment is a stunning success, there are good grounds for skepticism.

The Purpose of Medicine Is Healing

This brings us back to Chu’s argument that “surgery’s only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want.” What should we make of it?

Why should a doctor perform surgery when it won’t make the patient happy, it won’t accomplish its intended goal, it won’t improve the underlying condition, it might make the underlying condition worse, and it might increase the likelihood of suicide? Chu wants to turn the profession of medicine on its head, transforming a medical doctor into nothing more than “a highly competent hired syringe," in the words of Leon Kass.

Unfortunately, Chu isn’t alone. Many professionals now view health care — including mental health care — primarily as a means of fulfilling patients’ desires, whatever those are. Kass explains:

The implicit (and sometimes explicit) model of the doctor-patient relationship is one of contract: The physician — a highly competent hired syringe, as it were — sells his services on demand, restrained only by the law (though he is free to refuse his services if the patient is unwilling or unable to meet his fee). Here’s the deal: For the patient, autonomy and service; for the doctor, money, graced by the pleasure of giving the patient what he wants. If a patient wants to fix her nose or change his gender, determine the sex of unborn children, or take euphoriant drugs just for kicks, the physician can and will go to work — provided that the price is right and that the contract is explicit about what happens if the customer isn’t satisfied.

This vision of medicine and medical professionals gets it wrong. Professionals ought to profess their devotion to the purposes and ideals they serve. That’s what makes them professionals, and not just service providers. Teachers should be devoted to learning, lawyers to justice under law, and physicians to "healing the sick, looking up to health and wholeness.”

Healing is “the central core of medicine,” Kass writes — “to heal, to make whole, is the doctor’s primary business.”

But Chu’s vision of medicine turns the doctor into someone who merely satisfies desires, even if what is done isn’t good for a patient. Chu writes:

I still want this, all of it. I want the tears; I want the pain. Transition doesn’t have to make me happy for me to want it. Left to their own devices, people will rarely pursue what makes them feel good in the long term. Desire and happiness are independent agents.

Sound medicine isn’t about desire, it’s about healing. To provide the best possible care, serving the patient’s medical interests requires an understanding of human wholeness and well-being. Mental health care must be guided by a sound concept of human flourishing.

Our brains and senses are designed to bring us into contact with reality, connecting us with the outside world and with the reality of ourselves. Thoughts and feelings that disguise or distort reality are misguided, and they can cause harm. In “When Harry Became Sally,” I argue that we need to do a better job of helping people who face these struggles.

Misrepresentations of My Work

Chu also takes issue with me:

Many conservatives call this [gender dysphoria] crazy. A popular right-wing narrative holds that gender dysphoria is a clinical delusion; hence, feeding that delusion with hormones and surgeries constitutes a violation of medical ethics. Just ask the Heritage Foundation fellow Ryan T. Anderson, whose book ‘When Harry Became Sally’ draws heavily on the work of Dr. Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist who shut down the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins in 1979 on the grounds that trans-affirmative care meant ‘cooperating with a mental illness.’ Mr. Anderson writes, ‘We must avoid adding to the pain experienced by people with gender dysphoria, while we present them with alternatives to transitioning.’

Of course, I never call people with gender dysphoria crazy. And I explicitly state in the book that I take no position on the technical question of whether someone’s thinking that he or she is the opposite sex is a clinical delusion. That’s why Chu couldn’t quote any portion of my book saying as much.

Throughout the book, I point out that the feelings that people who identify as transgender report are real — they really feel a disconnect with their bodily sex — but I also acknowledge the fact that those feelings don’t change bodily reality. I recognize the real distress that gender dysphoria can cause, but never do I call people experiencing it crazy.

I repeatedly acknowledge that gender dysphoria is a serious condition, that people who experience a gender identity conflict should be treated with respect and compassion, that we need to find better, more humane and effective, responses to people who experience dysphoria.

Nevertheless, Chu claims that I am engaged in “‘compassion-mongering,’ peddling bigotry in the guise of sympathetic concern.”

For the record, Chu never contacted me regarding my research or my book. Nor did the Times contact me to verify any of the claims made about me in the op-ed. Indeed, this is the second time The New York Times has published an op-ed with inaccurate criticisms of me and my book.

Americans disagree about gender identity and the best approaches to treating gender dysphoria. We need to respect the dignity of people who identify as transgender while also doing everything possible to help people find wholeness and happiness.

That will require a better conversation about these issues, which is why I wrote my book. And it’s presumably why Chu wrote this op-ed. Now is not the time for personal attacks and name-calling, but for sober and respectful truth-telling.

Chu may regard me as a “bigot,” but I regard Chu as a fellow human being made in the image and likeness of God who is struggling with a painful and dangerous condition. As such, Chu deserves care and support that will bring health and wholeness — not the on-demand delivery of “services” that even Chu acknowledges are unlikely to make life better and may make it very much worse.

SOURCE





Six in ten Asian-born Australians experience racism in accessing housing, survey finds

It is typical of a Left-leaning newspaper like the SMH to blame everything on racism.  If you believed Leftist media outlets, you would think Australia rivals Nazi Germany for racism.

As it happens, I usually have both Chinese and Indian tenants so I suppose I can talk with some immunity from a charge of racism.

The first thing to note is that the data is highly suspect. Online surveys tend to be answered by those who have a dog in the fight concerned.  Much lower and differently distributed examples of discrimination could be expected from a representative survey.  So the findings below are essentially rubbish from beginning to end.

From my involvement in the matter, what is actually happening is dislike not of the race of a tenant but the inability to communicate well with people who have poor English. And East Asians find English very difficult to learn.  I am sure that Asian speakers of Australian English would rarely find difficulty.

I put up with poor English because I have found Chinese to be otherwise exceptionally good tenants.  Indians are more diverse but usually have passable English and I like their generally cheerful attitudes.  Indian English is the de facto national language of India so Indians have little difficulty in adapting to Australian English


When it comes to access to housing in Australia, the playing field is far from even.

Our recent research has found that race matters. Many Australians experience racism and discrimination based on their cultural background.

This is particularly the case for Asian Australians. They experience much higher rates of racism across a variety of everyday settings, but particularly when renting or buying a house.

An online national survey of 6001 Australians measured the extent and variation of racist attitudes and experiences. We examined the impacts of where Australians are born and what language they speak at home on their experiences of racism.

Our research revealed that if you were born overseas, or if your parents were born overseas and you speak a language other than English at home, you are likely to have many more experiences of racism than other Australians. Racism is experienced in a variety of settings –workplaces, educational institutions, shopping centres, public spaces and online.

Survey participants born in Asia were twice as likely as other Australians to experience everyday racism. In fact, 84 per cent of these Asian Australians experienced racism.

For those born in Australia to parents who were both born in an Asian country, rates of racism were just as high (86 per cent).

If you speak an Asian language at home, your experiences of racism are also likely to be high. Speakers of South Asian and East Asian languages experience racism at alarming rates – 85 per cent and 88 per cent respectively. Those who speak Southwest/Central Asian and Southeast Asian languages experience rates of discrimination (79 per cent and 78 per cent respectively) similar to those for all participants of a non-English-speaking background (77 per cent).

Anti-Asian housing discrimination

Published findings for New South Wales and Queensland in the 1990s revealed that 6.4 per cent of Australians reported having experienced ethnic-based discrimination when renting or buying a house. Our recent national study has found this proportion has increased dramatically. In recent years, 24 per cent of Australians have experienced housing discrimination.

As with the broader pattern of everyday racism, Asian Australians are feeling the brunt of housing discrimination. Almost six in ten (59 per cent) Asia-born participants in our study experienced racism in accessing housing. This compares to only 19 per cent of non-Asian-born participants.

Asia-born respondents were also more likely to report frequent experiences of housing discrimination. Some 13 per cent reported these experiences occurred “often” or “very often”. This is more than three times the average exposure of non-Asian-born Australians.

In particular, participants born in Northeast and South/Central Asia are more frequently exposed to racism in housing. And 15 per cent and 16 per cent respectively reported housing discrimination occurred “often” or “very often”. This compares to only 9 per cent of those born in Southeast Asia.

The survey also found that if you have two Asia-born parents you are highly likely to experience such racism (44 per cent). Similarly, if you speak a language other than English at home (especially an Asian language), you are more likely to experience housing discrimination (45 per cent).

South Asian language speakers (e.g. Hindi, Tamil, Sinhalese) experience housing discrimination at a much higher rate of 63 per cent. The rate for East Asian language speakers (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean) is 55 per cent. Only 19 per cent of English-only speakers had the same experiences.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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