Author Archives: Stephen Henry Miller

The Scarlett Johansson Transgender Brouhaha

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More. Business Insider reports (or, rather, prints a GLAAD press release as news):

“Scarlett Johansson’s announcement, together with the transgender voices who spoke out about this film, are game changers for the future of transgender images in Hollywood,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said. “Hollywood changed how Americans understand gay and lesbian lives, and TV is starting to do the same for transgender people with authentic transgender portrayals being major hits with critics and audiences. The film industry has a real opportunity to do the same.”

Related: Business Insider deletes opinion column defending Scarlett Johansson, and columnist resigns:

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The Jim Jordan Accusations

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Rep. Jim Jordan, head of the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House, is under attack by the left (here’s the Vox account) because before his political career, when he was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State, he did not report that the team doctor had sexually fondled male student wrestlers during physical exams and that the doctor had joined wrestlers in the showers. There were also accusations that “voyeurs” had engaged in locker room sexual activity while the team trained and showered.

Jordan said he didn’t know about the inappropriate activity, which has only recently become public.

I wonder, however, if Jordan had known about and reported this alleged behavior to the authorities, whether the left would be accusing him of having promoted a homophobic witch hunt at Ohio State.

More. The New York Times reports:

One wrestler denied the allegations entirely, saying that the accusers were “seeing dollar signs.” Others wrote that they had never witnessed or heard of [the doctor] acting inappropriately.

But [a public relations firm] also sent along a statement from one wrestler who wrote that in the locker room, there were “definitely inappropriate things that in my opinion were pretty disgusting going on all around us,” and another who wrote that he had been abused by [the doctor] and never told anyone but his father.

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A Solid, Safe Choice

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Trans Teens and Controversy

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From The Atlantic cover story:

[O]ther resources, including those produced by major LGBTQ organizations, place the emphasis on acceptance rather than inquiry. The Human Rights Campaign’s “Transgender Children & Youth: Understanding the Basics” web page, for example, encourages parents to seek the guidance of a gender specialist. It also asserts that “being transgender is not a phase, and trying to dismiss it as such can be harmful during a time when your child most needs support and validation.” Similarly, parents who consult the pages tagged “transgender youth” on glaad’s site will find many articles about supporting young people who come out as trans but little about the complicated diagnostic and developmental questions faced by the parents of a gender-exploring child. …

Some LGBTQ advocates have called for gender dysphoria to be removed from the DSM-5, arguing that its inclusion pathologizes being trans. But gender dysphoria, as science currently understands it, is a painful condition that requires treatment to be alleviated. Given the diversity of outcomes among kids who experience dysphoria at one time or another, it’s hard to imagine a system without a standardized, comprehensive diagnostic protocol, one designed to maximize good outcomes.


More.

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Mission Creep

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More. On HRC’s overheated response to the public-sector unions and mandatory dues collection case, I’m reminded of this, via Politifact: “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” FDR wrote. “It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.”

FDR felt that compensation for federal employees should be set by Congress and the president, not through bargaining with unions, since public service as part of government is different from working for a profit-driven private enterprise. That policy was changed by JFK and ever since Democrats, who receive massive funding from public-sector unions, have put government workers’ interests ahead of taxpayers’.

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