Gender Ideology

No matter election outcomes, presidential executive orders, and the ebbing support for the “woke” agenda among the general public, the medical establishment — epitomized by the New England Journal of Medicine — continues to push DEI ideology in medical school admissions policies. A recent advocacy article in the NEJM pledges fervid fealty to DEI, primarily focusing on gender ideology. From, “Facing Political Attacks on Medical Education — The Future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Medicine” (citations omitted): In recent years, the United States has seen an onslaught of legislation aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education, including medical education. Although these legislative actions are often construed as focusing only on race, they also explicitly or implicitly target members of Read More ›

The execrable gender ideologue Admiral Rachel Levine is no longer in government. That’s great news in the long run for children with gender dysphoria, because the new administration wants to actually protect these disturbed minors. Accordingly, President Trump today signed an executive order protecting such children from being subjected to often irreparable body-altering “gender-affirming care.” From the order, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation:”

Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.

Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.

Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.

Excellent.

The tide is really turning against the gender ideologues who advocate experimenting on the bodies of children as a supposedly “medically necessary” treatment. Now, Italy’s National Bioethics Committee has recommended substantially ending the use of puberty-blocking drugs as a “treatment” for childhood gender confusion. From the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine’s press release: Excellent. If the government follows the advice of its bioethics commission, Italy will join a burgeoning list of countries — which includes the U.K., France, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France, and Denmark actively taking steps to end the madness. Once the execrable Admiral Levine is out of office as Trump reenters the presidency, I expect the U.S. to follow suit. That will leave the American medical establishment and a short Read More ›

San Francisco was once a conservative city. Oh, sure, it had its bohemian side. The Beats of the ’50s were at home in North Beach, and Harry Bridges, the suspected communist who served for years as head of the longshoremen’s union, had a definite influence. But for the most part, San Francisco was well within the cultural mainstream. Indeed, the city was so staid that the Republican Party’s nominee for mayor won landslides in 1955 and 1959, and the GOP nominated the archconservative Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate from the Cow Palace in 1964.

Then, San Francisco changed. Radically. In 1964, the University of California, Berkeley, a few miles across the bay, became the center of the “free speech” movement. Civil rights and then militant anti–Vietnam War advocacy found great sympathy. The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became a hippy haven and the focus of a growing drug culture. The gay-rights movement sprang energetically out of the Castro District, and the once predominately Italian working-class neighborhood was transformed into a radical front of the sexual revolution. By the 1980s, the term “San Francisco values” — wielded by conservatives to describe the cultural and political radicalism of the Bay Area — had turned the city into something of a national joke.

Over the years, policies enacted by the city’s ever more extreme progressive leaders slowly destroyed San Francisco. I lived in and around the city for almost 25 years, starting in 1992, and saw the decline happen in real time. It broke my heart.

It is increasingly clear that there is little scientific basis for administering puberty blockers to gender-dysphoric youth. Consequently, many European countries have now effectively banned their use outside of official studies. Now, the New Zealand Ministry of Health has similarly found that there is a “dearth” of evidence supporting blocking normal adolescence in youngsters who feel that their gender is different from their sex. The New Zealand study reviewed all the literature on the question published before September 30, 2023. In other words, it was a study of the findings of published studies. First, it found that studies claiming that puberty blockers helped ease depression were of very poor quality. From “Impact of Puberty Blockers in Gender-Dysphoric Adolescents” (my emphasis): Impact of puberty blockers on Read More ›