Culture: February 2019 Archives
My battle with the transgender thoughtpolice - spiked
An interview with psychotherapist James Caspian, whose research into transgender detransitioning was spiked by his university.
"The young women that I had been hearing from said they had been drawn into trans as a kind of a movement. Many of them had discovered trans on the internet. They would spend hours online with a community of people that welcomed them. It seemed exciting, it offered promise as something that could resolve their considerable difficulties. But of course it didn't. Then when they detransitioned, that community rejected them....
"I was on the board of the psychotherapy regulator when [the Memorandum of Understanding on conversion therapy] was being broadened and I was asked to advise on it. When I read it, I realised immediately that it was dangerous. It was influenced by trans activists who wanted to prevent any questioning of self-declared trans identity.
"I persistently advised that the wording should make it clear that some people detransition or regret transitioning. I wanted to make it safe for therapists, doctors and social workers to work with people who wanted to reverse their transition. Under the terms of the Memorandum, as it stands, they could be struck off their professional register. It would prevent professionals working ethically and safely with anyone who wanted to detransition.
"One doctor I know made a huge list of reasons as to why people went to him and presented as trans. The whole issue is very complex and multi-layered. But the idea that there can be any psychological reasons for cross-sex identification, which seems to be the most obvious explanation, is the one that is most rejected by trans activists. And so we're not supposed to talk about that."
Feminists Screaming about 'Transgenderism,' Their Own Demon Child
}Let's take a trip down Bad Memory Lane. For approximately three decades, the prevailing feminist doctrine was 'gender neutrality' theory; it held that the sexes are the same except for the superficial physical differences, therefore raising boys and girls the same way will result in their being identical beneath the skin. This was embraced so radically that, as iconoclastic feminist Camille Paglia once related, feminists would corner her on college campuses in the '70s, glaring, and swear that hormones didn't exist and that even if they did, they couldn't possibly influence behavior.
"Though I never believed it, I was accosted with this theory as a teen and young adult, as many of you no doubt were. It was convenient for feminists. After all, convince people of the sexes' sameness, the thinking (feeling?) goes, and there can be no justification for keeping women from traditionally male arenas....
"When I used to work with kids, I encountered an 11-year-old boy who, it came out, supposed the women's mile record should be better than the men's; another lad of about the same age believed that the performance gap between the sexes was 'very slight.' In this vein, Sportscience News reported in 1997 that 'a pre-Olympic poll of 1,000 adults last May found that 66 percent of Americans believe "the day is coming when top female athletes will beat top males at the highest competitive levels" (Tharp, 1996).'
"This is serious dislocation from reality. Note here that the 800-meter-run record for 14-year-old boys is better than the women's world record; that Australia's national women's soccer team, then ranked fifth in the world, lost a 2016 scrimmage to an under-15 boys' team 7-0; and that, more or less, this reflects the general intersex performance gap. But, again, the illusion is convenient for feminists. I mean, if women would equal men athletically but for discrimination, we'd better kick the opportunities and funding for them into high gear, right?
"That is, it was convenient -- until that desired effect had a side-effect. It's another corollary: if the sexes' athletic performances aren't very different to begin with, and if women are destined for parity, what's the big deal about MCW competing in "women's" sports?...
"No, not everyone believes the above. But enough do -- because of feminist brainwashing -- to sorely weaken the opposition to MCW in women's sports."
Carol Burnett: 'Cleverness' in Entertainment is Becoming Extinct | Intellectual Takeout
"Funny is funny. I dare anyone to look at Tim Conway and Harvey Korman doing the dentist sketch, which is more than 40 years old, and not scream with laughter. But I am kind of bored of producers saying, 'It's got to be edgy.' Edgy is fine -- I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination -- but what's wrong with a good ol' belly laugh? I miss that. A lot of comedy today is so fast -- it's like: "Boom! Boom! Boom!" -- because they think people can't pay enough attention. Barry Levinson [who wrote for The Carol Burnett Show before becoming a director] and Rudy De Luca wrote one of my favorite sketches. It was called "The Pail," and in it, Harvey is my psychiatrist and I'm having a session with him. It takes about five or six minutes into the sketch until we got our first laugh, but it built and built and built, and the punch line was great. It's about a girl who was traumatized by a bully in the sandbox when she was 6 years old, and he stole her little pail -- and it turns out the psychiatrist was the bully. It is absolutely hysterical, but it took all that time to build. Today the suits say, 'It's got to be fast.' So I think some of the writing isn't good anymore. Now sitcoms sound like they've been written by teenage boys in a locker room."
