IGF CultureWatch

At some point, the fact that young gay kids are feeling pressured to identify as transgender will need to be addressed instead of ignored.

As Debra Soh writes:

“Transgender activism has successfully piggybacked onto the hard-won victories of the gay rights movement. The public understands that attitudes towards gay people were once abhorrent, and they also understand that many interventions aimed at “changing” gay people were unethical. Most empathic people have consequently been persuaded that being transgender is the same, in this regard, as being gay—that it is something that shouldn’t be questioned and is also immutable.

Yet of children who exhibit signs of gender dysphoria, we aren’t yet able to tell who will fall into the category of those who will desist (which is the majority) as opposed to the minority who persist and who would actually benefit from transitioning.”

And then there’s this. As Claire Fox writes:

“The bile that has been heaped on a single journalist for going against the trans activists’ script on the Gender Recognition Act is replicated in academia, political parties, and a whole manner of public institutions. The price for even raising the debate is to be labelled a bigot and to have one’s reputation trashed.”

Julie Bindel writes:

“On reflection, I should have known when I accepted the invitation from Goldstein that trouble would follow. One of the scheduled performers was Reece Lyons, whose poem, “I am a Woman, and I have a penis,” has been viewed 2.5-million times on YouTube. Following my ouster, Reece declared that “the concept of me and Julie Bindel even sharing the same space is, at the very least, debilitating to my mental welfare and to other LGBT members of the audience/line-up.”

From Huffington Post, which skews progressive left. That said, hard to see who is/isn’t most at fault. Downplaying support for marginalized LGBTQ communities such as the incarcerated in favor of marquee cases that gin up fundraising and name recognition seems bad. But making the agenda intersectional to embrace all marginalized communities and progressive causes seems bad for the mission, too.

Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either, writes Yascha Mounk in The Atlantic. But wealth and privilege are.

Mounk also writes:

And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are. With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country.

Delving into the meaning of political correctness, Mounk writes:

In the extended interviews and focus groups, participants made clear that they were concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could lead to serious social sanctions for them.

And this:

It turns out that while progressive activists tend to think that only hate speech is a problem, and devoted conservatives tend to think that only political correctness is a problem, a clear majority of all Americans holds a more nuanced point of view: They abhor racism. But they don’t think that the way we now practice political correctness represents a promising way to overcome racial injustice.

And while on the topic of political correctness:

When "womyn" isn't good enough https://t.co/5t4IpSsBYx

— Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) October 10, 2018

Related: Thou shall not joke about the sacred Facebook holiday. Katie Herzog writes:

Under my status, an old friend’s ex-partner, someone I’d met once, commented that my “privilege was showing.” A surprising (to me) number of my actual friends agreed that my privilege was, indeed, hanging out. … What happened to us? Queer people used to be funny.

Last year on #NationalComingOutDay I got in a tiff over a silly coming out joke on Facebook. When did queers lose the ability to laugh at ourselves? https://t.co/3QoeETGKY8

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) October 11, 2018

Walter Olson posted:

Brown University assistant professor Lisa Littman’s research, subjected to peer review, accepted and published in the journal PLOS One, “explored the reportedly growing phenomenon by which clusters of socially connected teenage girls, some beset by autism spectrum disorder and other mental health challenges, suddenly express feelings of gender dysphoria apparently without having experienced these earlier in life, as is more commonly the case.”

At Quillette.com, Jeffrey S Flier writes:

“Dr. Littman’s preliminary research suggested that this often occurs after heavy exposure to social-media content extolling the benefits of gender transition….[Following criticism by activists on social media and after hearing directly from unnamed individuals] Brown University deleted its initial promotional reference to Dr. Littman’s work from the university’s website—then replaced it with a note explaining how Dr. Littman’s work might harm members of the transgender community….
“Increasingly, research on politically charged topics is subject to indiscriminate attack on social media, which in turn can pressure school administrators to subvert established norms regarding the protection of free academic inquiry. What’s needed is a campaign to mobilize the academic community to protect our ability to conduct and communicate such research, whether or not the methods and conclusions provoke controversy or even outrage.”

More. David E. Bernstein writes:

Establishment voices that are usually raised very quickly at any hint of the politicization of science from right-wing political sources were notably silent. But can you imagine the reaction if the study had been one favorable to, say, same-sex marriage, and the same thing had happened after conservative evangelical Christian activists complained?

Gail Heriot writes, “This reminded me of when I drew the ire of transgender activists two years ago.”

Unintended consequences.

Pretty sure the ROGD study would not have gotten any coverage in mainstream media had trans activists not tried to suppress it https://t.co/Uwgq2DxUXI

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) September 8, 2018