Boys and Girls

Andrew Doyle writes: >>Of all the absurdities of the culture war, perhaps the most egregious is the normalisation of the…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, January 15, 2025

As the Post-Millennial reports, the bill amends Title IX to read:

It shall be a violation of subsection (a) for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates an athletic program or activity to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls. … [Sex under the amendment] shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth. …
Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prohibit a recipient from permitting males to train or practice with an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls so long as no female is deprived of a roster spot on a team or sport, opportunity to participate in a practice or competition, scholarship, admission to an educational institution, or any other benefit that accompanies participating in the athletic program or activity.

Odds & Ends

We’re seeing more indications that the smug, elitist, soft authoritarianism known colloquially as “woke” finally may be receding, leaving it its wake a legacy ranging from lost rights to freedom of speech and equal treatment under the law, to civil disasters, some deadly. Turns out, for instance, that replacing merit and ability as hiring and promotion metrics with identity group “equity” doesn’t work out so well.
But key constituencies on the left, including the LGBTQ+ progressives who dominant what was once the movement for gay and lesbian legal equality and social acceptance (what a quaint idea!), remain committed to the woke ideology in all its critical race and critical gender glory.

Maybe her primary goal should have been preparing the LAFD to fight fires. Adam Lehrer at The Scroll reports: >>In 2022,…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, January 8, 2025


And this:


Added: GLAAD comes out full force against ending woke censorship at Facebook. The group has long favored silencing voices it disagrees with.

Hopes and Warnings for 2025

Andrew Doyle’s wish list for 2025 includes “a complete ban on puberty blockers” and that “we need to stop basing public…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Friday, January 3, 2025


Clearly, the fight to protect gay kids will heat up this year, with the LGBTQ+ left all-in on promoting transitioning for gender-nonconforming kids, most of whom we know would otherwise go through puberty and recognize themselves as gay. Here are a few worthwhile recent posts on this struggle.

Jesse Singal writes: >>It’s very strange to deny the possibility that social transition may alter a child’s…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, December 31, 2024

And:

Matt Margolis writes: >>A user on X accused [J.K. Rowling] of having a “hateful focus on trans kids” and declared it…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Monday, December 30, 2024

An interesting idea:

The “Our Duty” Substack argues that “transgender ideation” is a better term than “gender dysphoria”: >> Terms like "…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Monday, December 23, 2024


And worth repeating:

Ben Appel writes: >>The problem with all of this—besides the fact that it’s insane—is that the vast majority of the…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Saturday, December 14, 2024

Why Minors Should Not Be Put on Puberty Blockers

Ben Appel puts it on the line in this excerpt from his newsletter:

Ben Appel writes: >>The problem with all of this—besides the fact that it’s insane—is that the vast majority of the…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Saturday, December 14, 2024


Click above for his full article, which is well worth reading.


Expect more sad stories such as this on about detransitioners who recognize they are gay, not trans:

LGBT Courage Coalition and LeAnne Owen write: >>Born in 1975, just six years after me, [detransitioner Corinna Cohn's]…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, December 17, 2024


Relatedly, worth noting. Wesley Yang writes:

The transgender issue only affects a small handful of people directly. But it’s more important than any other cultural issue, with the widest implications. All those who scoff at my single-minded focus on it are wrong.
It touches on every aspect of American political economy and knowledge formation, every aspect of its manners and mores, every aspects of American character formation, and is the linchpin of the Therapeutic Statism that is the new secularized pseudo-theology at the foundation of institutional America’s warrant to rule.
Any understanding of this issue that does not credit its overarching importance is profoundly defective.

More on Supreme Court Skrmetti Hearing

Andrew Sullivan posted this comment regarding the Supreme Court hearing on whether a state can ban sex-change procedures…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, December 10, 2024


Well worth listening too:

Another excellent panel discussion that includes several organizers of the Supreme Court rally against transitioning…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, December 10, 2024


LGBTQ+ activists say this doesn’t happen:

The New York Post reports: >>Clementine Breen, now 20, filed a medical negligence lawsuit against Dr. Johanna…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Saturday, December 7, 2024


Here’s hoping.

In the U.K. Next June we'll learn if the U.S. Supreme Court will let states here in the U.S. protect gender-nonconforming gay kids by doing the same.

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Thursday, December 12, 2024


This is really so sad:

Ed Driscoll posts at Instapundit: >>ANNETTE BENING SAYS THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD ABOUT HAVING A “TRANS CHILD:” Let’s look…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Gay Activism: New vs. Old

Newer organizations such as the LGBT Courage Coalition and the LGB Alliance USA focus on protecting gays and lesbians — and gay kids — while the intersectional queer ideologues who run the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and other groups threaten the hard-won advances of earlier generations.

More from Ben Appel and the important work that groups like the LGBT Courage Coalition are doing. Ben writes: >>An…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Friday, December 6, 2024

Unfortunately, so many well-intentioned gay people continue to fund the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), thinking it’s the same organization that it was 10 years ago:

Daniel Cameron writes that the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index has steadily increased leftwing demands…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Thursday, December 5, 2024


Also sadly, local/regional LGBTQ+ groups are often no better, pushing gender-confused gay kids onto the trans train. Increasing, LGBTQ+ = anti-gay.

Supreme Court Weighs State Law Banning Child Sex-Change Procedures

The 'trans the kids' left is already howling and a ruling isn't expected until June. Meanwhile, Biden-appointed Justice…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, December 4, 2024

Ben Appel writes: >>Now, instead of making more space for gender-nonconformity, we’re medicalizing it. Instead of…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, December 4, 2024


Here’s Ben Appel’s speech at the rally outside the Supreme Court:


And this:


Unbelievable, and absolutely believable:

Saving Gay Kids

At issue: whether Tennessee and other states should be allowed to ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Saturday, November 23, 2024


Ironic, isn’t it:

LeAnne Owen writes: >>Alabama—where progress usually moves slower than Sunday traffic after church—just helped make the…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, November 26, 2024


As we await next year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on state laws blocking so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors (including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, removing girl’s breasts and castrating boys), some state court’s are upholding laws passed by state legislatures banning these procedures:

Missouri Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter has issued a sweeping ruling upholding the state’s ban on sex-change…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Trump ‘Anti-Gay’?

Supposedly "anti-gay" president-elect nominates a gay guy married to a man to lead one of the most important departments in the federal government.

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Saturday, November 23, 2024


What LGBTQ+ activists often mean when they say Trump is “anti-gay” is that he favors banning child sex-change procedures and opposes biological boys who identify as female competing in girls sports.

Trump’s support for excluding transgender people from the military is more complicated and as of this writing it’s unclear what his administration will propose. However, what progressive media isn’t reporting is that just as people with diabetes who use insulin are generally not allowed to join the U.S. military (in part because they’re dependent on a medical regimen that would be unavailable if they were deployed in combat areas), so, too, there are practical issues concerning transgender personnel with a life-long dependency on cross-sex hormones.

Defense Secretary-nominee Pete Hegseth argues that, in particular, those who join the military and then seek to transition medically, at the government’s expense, can’t be deployed and should receive medical discharges.

Transmen and transwomen who have chosen to keep their original genitalia pose other familiar challenges, such as women service members sharing intimate spaces (including barracks and showers) with biological males who identify as women.

These are issues that need to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as “transphobic” or falsely equated with the former ban on gay and lesbian service members.


And this:

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Friday, December 6, 2024

And on it goes…

At age 16, Laura Becker says she “learned about the concept of ‘gender identity’—a discovery (if that is the right word)…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Thursday, November 21, 2024


When one parent wants to trans their child, and the other parent wants to save their child from life-long medicalization, bodily mutilation, sterility and the inability to experience orgasm as adults, guess who woke judges side with:

Via The Distance: A Minnesota father faces prison for objecting to his child's mother transitioning their daughter…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Wednesday, November 20, 2024


Worth repeating:

Sam Harris writes: >>I want to be very clear about this: I have no doubt that there are real cases of gender dysphoria,…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Tuesday, November 12, 2024


Plus:

At WokeSpy, Josh Slocum writes: >> I was born in 1974, and grew up before it occurred to any sane person that a child…

Posted by IGF CultureWatch on Friday, November 8, 2024