That's the title of Steve Sailer's latest book review, and in a normal country "poison, mutilate, and sterilize" would seem a very odd agenda for a fashionable upper class social craze. But maybe this isn't a normal country we're talking about. The review is of Abigail Shrier's book:
Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
and the review begins:
Nothing exemplifies the madness of our times more than the fervent push since 2013 by therapists, educators, social workers, and journalists to poison, mutilate, and sterilize girls who have self-diagnosed themselves with the novel social-media-transmitted hysteria now known as rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD).
Hence, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier, an op-ed freelancer for The Wall Street Journal, is one of the most valuable (as well as sensible and lively) books of recent years.
If I may put Sailer's implicit thesis--and presumably Shrier's, as well, since I haven't read the book--the current craze seems to have been empowered or, in a manner of speaking, put on steroids (we are talking about powerful drugs, after all) by the internet generally and smartphones in particular. The result is that the current craze is far more contagious than similar past crazes for escaping reality. Here is how that works:
The exact manifestations of mental illnesses tend to be highly specific to their time and place. For instance, nobody has neurasthenia anymore, but 125 years ago it was fashionable. Psychiatrist Edward Shorter has articulated the plausible concept that people with psychological pain go looking for a “symptom pool” that perhaps more or less fits themselves and then adopt whatever label the current culture slaps on it.
Only a vanishingly small number of American teenage girls thought they were boys until the media started hyping transgenderism around 2013. Unhappy pubescent girls shopped online for some explanation of their discontent and found en masse that the hot new one was transgenderism.
It's a bit like hypochodriacs of old poring over Merck's Manual--but it's so much easier now with modern search engines and online forums to offer support and encouragement. Or even, as Shrier says, psychological "seduction."
Perhaps in line with this social diagnosis of mental illness is the fact that this current phenomenon follows on earlier ones and seems to affect the "upper" classes and liberals first:
In Littman’s study, 91 percent are white, 95 percent have at least some college education, and 86 percent are pro–gay marriage ... It’s the new anorexia, another mental illness that traditionally afflicts the daughters of the professional class. Perhaps it has something to do with the upper middle class’s insistence that its daughters grow up to become surgeons, litigators, and military officers?
Sailer goes through Shrier's speculation on specific triggering causes for this current epidemic. One that I found interesting is that rebellious adolescent children of ueber open-minded parents need to push the rebellion envelope ever further to get the desired response--pushback from their parents. He concludes with some signal advice that Shrier offers. Noting that Shrier describes the dire consequences--i.e., "irreversible damage"--that this craze causes, Sailer writes:
Although there is much talk of “gender fluidity,” the transgender mania pushes children toward a future of sexual rigidity and frigidity. ...
The outcome is often sterility. Transgenderism is, in effect, much like the eugenic sterilizations of a century ago, except now people at the top of society are doing it to themselves.
Many traditional cultures have means by which pubescent girls can somewhat de-emphasize their sexuality for a few years until they make their debut in society in their later teens as a lovely young woman ready to be wooed. Maybe what our adolescent girls need is less gender-bending and more gender-pending in which anxious adolescent girls get to escape the social media spotlight until they are more ready. Thus, Shrier’s first piece of advice is:
Don’t Get Your Kid a Smartphone.
From the article you linked:
ReplyDelete“Mr. Watters: . . . And then they finally decided, well, if we could change this cultural notion, if we can move the line in Japan between what is considered to be normal forms of sadness and melancholy to what is considered a pathological form of sadness, we have a lot of money to make. And they very clearly went after this goal.
Roberts: So, this is a sort of combination of moving a cultural definition of what is normal and what needs treatment, and also introducing the notion that the best treatment is a pharmaceutical intervention.”
I stopped watching TV long ago, but even back then you could see this on most TV channels every day. I wondered then how people could become convinced that life's everyday ups and downs were unique to themselves and that a drug could fix it. Now I reckon it's just another version of the big lie; if enough people see this stuff often enough for long enough, some will become convinced. It happened here as well as in Japan.
It seems to me that every trans person who later changes their mind, especially if treatment started while they were under age, would have a sure-fire win in court against everyone involved in making or letting it happen. After all, under-age persons cannot legally buy or consume alcohol or tobacco products; cannot legally vote; cannot serve on juries; cannot do many, many things that “adults” are permitted to do. And yet, we are expected to accept that these otherwise legally incompetent children are competent to make such life-changing and irreversible decisions.
It says something about our society that we are here.
@DFinley
Delete"It says something about our society that we are here."
Or...that they are there...
:-)
That quote was from a link within your link. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/122490928
ReplyDeleteYes. Thanks. Insightful.
DeleteGive it another 5-10 years and you'll see the blowback from the gender morphia craze. Even the old school tranny's are telling these people to get off their lawn.
ReplyDeleteSelf loathing girls rebelling against the messaging of being feminine and guys that can't get girls trying to become girls bidding for social click acceptance is never going to hold up. The real issue is they can't get their online persona to translate into real life so their flailing.
On the flip side... In the farming world I should now be able to register a steer in heifer class shows and make bank.
Also, due to the DOJs current civil rights pushes, going forward, I will be identifying as a bottle nose, female, lesbian, dolphin from africa... Take me seriously or else.
LOL!
DeleteHad just read Sailer’s article at Taki’s Magazine before coming here. As usual, he does a good job of informing as he works toward his analysis.
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy seeing the male commenters’ takes on these articles. They often reveal that they either didn’t read or failed to comprehend the subject article and what its author was putting forth.
I don’t remember Sailer’s saying a word about “self-loathing girls”. I read about fear.
Sailer also did a good job of explaining the male-to-female Late Onset trannies who are an entirely different breed of cat, having nothing whatsoever to do with these young girls.
I have been thinking about this overnight and wondering about the numbers of young girls who have actually fallen into this trap and gone for this radical change. I would guess that probably not many have. Are there reliable stats anywhere?
ReplyDeleteComing from a woman’s POV, I don’t see this becoming the rage like wearing Goth makeup or dying one’s hair purple.
Even Sailer tells us that it is white upper class kids. Is this pathology something that is limited to them? And perhaps only a relative few?
"I have been thinking about this overnight"
DeleteSorry! :-)
What made me think were the comments up the line about this somehow representing our society. I believe that the core of our society is not falling into this. Wouldn’t even think about it. Sailer makes it pretty clear that this is a niche thing and he describes the niche.
DeleteI read a bit by an actress called Emma somebody who is now an actor called Elliott. Her rambling about how important it was for her to have “top surgery”. Ever curious, I looked it up. It’s breast removal. Her self-dramatization dwelt on only what a positive thing this was for her. Really, really important. Liberating. (From what?) I’ve known women who have had to have mastectomies due to cancer and the surgery is not a walk in the park nor is the aftermath - which may go on for some time. So we have in Emma/Elliott a common everyday masochist. I don’t see her starting a craze for this...
While it's undoubtedly true that plenty of kids--no doubt the majority--latch onto this as rebellion or attention grabbing and only go a small way, there's also undoubtedly major money in the pharmaceuticals. Our fatass governor is heavily invested in that aspect. In fact, his whole family--which gave us Obama--is heavily invested in making money of this craze.
DeleteAs for this being only a niche or not representing American society, I disagree. While those who go all the way will always be a small minority, the level of tolerance for all manner of socially harmful behavior has risen steadily. That's what the steady leftward move of the Dem party is very much about. That sets a tone. The fact that this niche--middle to upper class white girls--are allowed to set the tone with goofy craze after craze, also says something about America's decadence. That the "core" is willing to tolerate and even support the niche and to cancel anyone who speaks out loud against this speaks loudly.
DeleteIf I ever run for President it will be on a simple 3 point platform. Mandatory capital punishment for anyone who has ever, while a public official or employee, or employee of a media corporation, or medical doctor, 1) advocated for a lockdown, 2) knowingly had a financial, sexual-romantic or marital relationship with a member of the Chinese Communist Party, and 3) willfully performed an elective medical or surgical procedure to sterilize or mutilate a minor, or transport a minor outside of the United States for the purposes of the carrying out such operations.
ReplyDeleteAs extreme as this sounds, by 2024 the backlash against COVID madness, trans tyranny, and the conquest and enslavement of Hong Kong and Taiwan by the PLA will make it a Reagan 1980 scale winner of a platform.
Re. all this loony s**t from the leftists - they'll be lucky to get any tolerance. Acceptance is not in the cards.
ReplyDelete0311