E-Pluribus | August 1, 2022
The gender affirmation movement takes a big hit, how school choice encourages and enhances diversity, and wokeness returns to the military.
A round-up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Lisa Selin Davis: The Beginning of the End of 'Gender-Affirming Care'?
At Bari Weiss’s Common Sense Substack, author Lisa Selin Davis writes about some of the recent (and long overdue) setbacks of the gender identity movement. Recent revelations of irresponsible and unethical treatment of gender issues regarding children have led to the shutdown of the Gender and Identity Development Service at the Tavistock Clinic in London. This development and others like it may be indicative of a trend of casting justifiable doubt on the orthodoxy of gender affirmation in the treatment of gender dysphoria and related conditions, especially among children.
In a sign that they may be rethinking the “puberty blockers are safe and reversible” dogma, the Food and Drug Administration, also on Thursday, announced that it was slapping a new warning on puberty blockers. It turns out they may cause brain swelling and vision loss. But for now, the move among American medical associations, health officials and dozens of gender clinics is to double down on the affirmative approach, with the Biden administration recently asserting gender affirmation is “trauma-informed care.”
The American stance is at odds with a growing consensus in the West to exercise extreme caution when it comes to transitioning young people. Uber-progressive countries like Sweden and Finland have pushed back—firmly and unapologetically—against the affirmative approach of encouraging youth transition advocated by some transgender activists and gender clinicians.
Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare released new guidelines for treating young people with gender dysphoria earlier this year. The new guidelines state that the risks of these “gender-affirming” medical interventions “currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases.”
[ . . . ]
Why, when we have the same explosion of teenage girls with complex mental health issues seeking treatment and the same low-quality evidence, is America not following Sweden’s and Finland’s direction? In the United States, there has been only one nonpartisan evidence review, commissioned by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, earlier this summer. It, too, found “insufficient evidence that sex reassignment through medical intervention is a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria.” This report got almost no media coverage, even though some of the low-quality evidence it noted had been written up in major publications as “proof” that cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers decrease the risk of suicide.
Perhaps our own blind spot comes from not having a national, nonpartisan group to create guidelines, and relying on groups like WPATH to do that work. The closest thing we have is a governmental organization called the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which found: “There is a lack of current evidence-based guidance for care of children and adolescents who identify as transgender regarding the benefits and harms of pubertal suppression, medical affirmation with hormone therapy, and surgical affirmation.” Yet many of our medical advocacy organizations, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, promote the affirmative model of care. And that group has been accused of suppressing dissent and refusing to conduct a nonpartisan evidence review, despite pediatricians requesting it.
Read the whole article here.
Ray Domanico: School Choice Fosters Pluralism
While one of the goals of public education has been to extend the promise of America to all, the one-size-fits-all system now divides more than it unites. At City Journal, Ray Domanico explains how a new network of Jewish day schools is a good example of how school choice could utilize the diversity that exists in America and actual strengthen the e pluribus unum ideal on which the country was founded.
America’s public education system arose in the nineteenth century as part of an effort to foster the unum out of the pluribus. In the twenty-first century, however, the values that seem ascendant in public education often impinge on parents’ liberty to shape what and how their children are taught, and at what age particular topics are introduced. At their best, religious schools inculcate values consistent with American civic virtues, such as the dignity of every human life and the respect that our country’s foundational documents afford them. Religious schools can approach these necessary subjects in the context of their centuries-old scriptures and traditions. They can play an important role in helping the nation avoid a culture war over the content of education. Parents will not subject their children to curriculum and policies that run counter to their own expectations of schools and their deeply held religious beliefs.
Three principles at the core of Tamim Academies are relevant to finding a better path forward for American schools. First, as Tamim’s executive director Holly Cohen says: “Tamim’s curriculum contemplates the whole child. It weaves Judaic and general content together with the requisite skills in an environment that embraces the challenge of educating for social-emotional and spiritual growth. Life skills sourced in Jewish tradition are aligned with Common Core standards.” The language Cohen uses is intentional. This particular network is focused on teaching the tenets, history, and practices of the Jewish faith alongside secular subjects. Though steeped in tradition, these schools are also aligned with progressive pedagogy, emphasizing the whole child and a child-centered approach to teaching and learning.
Second, Tamim schools, like other private and religious schools as well as charter schools, are schools of choice.
[ . . . ]
Third, Tamim has adopted the network model so prevalent in the charter school sector and in some enlightened public school districts.
Read it all here.
Jimmy Byrn: What if They Gave a War and Everybody Was Woke?
The Biden administration has reinstituted some of the progressive ideology that the Trump administration had purged from the guiding principles of the U.S. military. Jimmy Byrn writes for the Wall Street Journal that, when it comes to wokeness and recruitment, the military is currently shooting itself in the foot.
On his first day in office, President Biden rescinded a Trump-era executive order banning critical-race-theory training in the military. The changes made by senior commanders were nearly immediate. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated that every military unit conduct a “stand-down” to confront “extremism in the ranks.” The chief of naval operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, added Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist” to his professional reading list for sailors—never mind the book’s endorsement of racial discrimination and its charges that the institutions troops swear to protect are systemically racist.
Added to the mix has been divisive gender activism. The Navy has mandated gender-sensitivity training, and released a video encouraging sailors to closely police the use of pronouns as well as everyday language, declaring that those who fail to comply aren’t “allies” of their fellow sailors. Not only have such measures affected unit morale, according to some service members, they’ve also amounted to a form of antirecruitment for prospective enlistees. The Pentagon is appealing to activists at the expense of those most likely to serve.
[ . . . ]
One of the reasons the military has been among the most trusted institutions in America in recent decades is that it stands apart from the rest of society. It is governed by values such as selflessness, courage, patriotism and sacrifice—not racial discrimination or activist politics. A military that appears to abandon its apolitical role will have a harder time attracting large numbers of warriors and patriots to its ranks. Welcoming woke policies under a warped idea of inclusion may serve to exclude those who are traditionally more likely to serve.
Read it all.
Around Twitter
Nathan Williams, science/history filmmaker for the BBC, National Geographic and PBS, among others, comments on the closure of the Gender and Identity Development Service at the Tavistock Clinic in London mentioned in Item #1 above:




The term “racist” is bandied about rather freely these days, but Yascha Mounk says in Viktor Orban’s case, the shoe fits:



Finally, no comment necessary: