all 10 comments

[–]MarkTwainiac 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

With that title, I'm turned off to watching this. What is meant by "the trans issue shouldn't be political"?

It's political in the most basic sense coz in the US and other countries, legal protections need to be put in place to make it illegal to discriminate against people in employment and housing for identifying as trans or not conforming to sex stereotypes.

It's also incredibly political coz "trans rights" is about trans people and their allies demanding that people who ID as trans (or enby or whatever) be granted rights that no other group now has or will ever get - and further demanding that everyone else in the population give up many of the rights we hold dear. Such as our right to speech, to our own perceptions, to our belief in biology and reality - and for female people, the right to safety, privacy, dignity and peace of mind plus the right to have female only sports.

Obviously I'll have to go watch.

[–]Femaleisnthateful 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Her book is specifically about the mental health of the demographic of young women caught up in the ROGD phenomenon. Her point is that we should be treating this phenomenon as a health issue, but that objective health treatment and responsible safeguarding are being undercut by gender identity ideology that blocks research and non-affirming psychiatric care.

[–]MarkTwainiac 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I know. I read her book the week it came out. I thought it was excellent.

But all the issues she brought up in her book have a political dimension. For example, "health issues."

The definition and nature of what counts as a legitimate "health issue," what constitutes "health care," and who gets access to and prioritized in "health care," have always been inherently political issues. Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA/Obamacare, WIC, vaccinations, HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment programs, eldercare, NIH, NORD As are such issues as parental rights, women's maternity and abortion rights, disability rights, family leave and so on - all are "health issues" that are also very much "political." It's not an either-or.

[–]jet199 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

If you want these things to be called political to help your cause don't be surprised when they are used politically against you also.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you want these things to be called political to help your cause don't be surprised when they are used politically against you also.

Huh? This just comes off as silly. Oxford defines political as

relating to the government or the public affairs of a country; relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics: a decision taken for purely political reasons.

Synonyms for political:

governmental, government, local government, ministerial, parliamentary, party political, diplomatic, legislative, policy-making, constitutional, public, civic, state, administrative, bureaucratic

If you think that health issues and health care are not political, it suggests you really don't know much about how the world works or the history of these matters.

The establishment of universal state health care systems such as the UK's NHS after WW2 was 100% political, the result of political campaigning and the political process. US programs like Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, CHIP, Obamacare/the ACA were set up by politicians in response to political lobbying and pressures. The single most powerful political lobby in the USA today isn't weapons manufacturers and the military industrial complex, it's the health care industry and associated groups (medicine, Big Pharma, insurance, AARP).

"Medicare for all" is a political rallying cry and campaign promise that, thanks to Bernie Sanders, has a basic tenet of many US Democratic politicians' political platforms.

The fight to get abortion legalized in the US was very much political. So was the campaign that women of my generation mounted to convince unions, employers, insurance providers, legislators and government regulators that private health insurance plans and public ones such as Medicaid and Medicare should cover basic women's health care services like Pap smears and mammograms/breast cancer screening. This took decades of hard work and political jockeying.

And it's not all "ancient history" either: Only in 2015 did the US government finally decree that Medicare should cover Pap smears for Medicare recipients age 30-65 (Medicare isn't just for seniors; 16% of people on Medicare are people under age 65 with disabilities). What's more, in the US, legal loopholes allow for some health insurance entirely to exclude coverage for medical devices and drugs women use for birth control, and the medical procedures associated with them (such as diaphragm fittings and IUD insertions). Most plans that do cover medical birth control that women commonly rely on such as hormonal BC pills only pay for part of the cost. And of course, whereas in England, Wales and Scotland - and as of 2019, Northern Ireland too - abortion is provided free by the NHS, in the US women often have to pay all the costs of abortion themselves.

In Griftopia, Matt Taibbi gives an very vivid description of the fights, lobbying and backroom dealmaking that finally culminated in the ACA, aka Obamacare. What happened was as political and politicized as you can get. I highly recommend reading it; it's a great book and Taibbi is an excellent, incredibly astute reporter and thinker.

The trans craze "seducing our daughters" that Shrier details in her excellent book is inherently political. In the US and other countries, laws, rules, regulations and procedures have been put into place that remove standard medical ethical oversight and child safeguarding, with the result that large numbers of girls and young women in these places are having their bodies permanently altered by taking testosterone and puberty blockers and getting surgeries. In the US, girls are getting double mastectomies as early as age 13. Parents' rights to make medical decisions for their minor children are being removed. State child protection authorities in various US states (as well as in Canada, Australia and New Zealand) are investigating and sanctioning parents who are unwilling to socially and medically trans their children; some judges in the US and Canada have ruled that parents should lose custody if they don't "affirm" their children's cross-sex identities and put them on drugs that will leave the children permanently sterile and sexually dysfunctional.

Laws in the US,Canada and elsewhere have been put in place making it illegal for therapists to explore with patients why they wish to be the opposite sex. Legal bans on "gay conversion therapy" have been expanded so as to insure that many gay, lesbian and bisexual people will go trans. Coz "transitioning takes the gay away." Transition itself is the new gay conversion therapy; the only difference is it's been a politically correct new name.

Also, what's with the threatening tone of

If you want these things to be called political to help your cause don't be surprised when they are used politically against you also.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Please do explain exactly what you mean. Thanks.

Finally which "cause" exactly do you mean? Many of us have many causes - and the politics intersects with, and affects, many of them at once.

[–]Archie 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's not that she "wants" them to be political. They are political issues. It's a fact, different political sides have different ideas about those issues. That's true for most if not all of women and health issues, and trans issues as well.

Note that this doesn't mean that there's no right and wrong side. Depending on the issue, there is at least always one side that is less wrong that the other ones.

[–]our_team_is_winning 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

She does support trans for adults with gender dysphoria. So she would still support men in women's sex-segregated spaces.

That will always be thrown in our faces too: men who were so miserable but then "became" women and now they're happy, so why can't we welcome them?

My question remains why these men can't be welcomed in men's spaces as a category of men.

[–]Femaleisnthateful 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

YouTube has already demonetized the video...

[–]EventideSky 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Quite a few 'but what about the men?!?' In the comments when I watched it.

[–]Femaleisnthateful 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Haha. Literally watching this right now. I love Abigail Shrier's interviews. She lays everything out so sensibly and accessibly; it's impossible to accuse her of being militant or transphobic.

I'm glad she's being interviewed on a medium that isn't right wing or conservative as well. I realize she's actually quite conservative as well (though I don't think that term means what it used to), but I never liked to have to point people to Fox News or Candace Owens in order to hear her message.