E-Pluribus | June 22, 2023
'Western' medicine, or just modern?; truncate an acronym at your own risk; and the Oscars' DEI rules should win an Oscar.
A round-up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Erica Li: A Pediatrician’s Manifesto for the Modernization of Gender Medicine
While diehard transgender activists pay lip service to “science,” pediatrician Erica Li writes for Colin Wright’s Reality's Last Stand that much of “gender” medicine flies in the face of modern medicine’s norms. Political and social concerns trump reality-based standards and common sense safeguards that govern every other health care field.
Postmodern medicine seems to have a particular foothold in the West, especially in the United States, where it has become institutionalized. It is relatively new but is embedded in multiple American medical societies and medical schools. While it leverages the same technologies as Modern medicine, thereby superficially resembling it, it fundamentally seeks to dismantle Modern medicine’s underlying philosophy. While Postmodern medicine is being propagated across American medical schools through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bureaucracies, nothing exemplifies Postmodernity more than the gender ideology that drives American “gender-affirming” model of care.
[ . . . ]
Strangely, when dealing with gender dysphoria, the pursuit of causality routinely appears to be overlooked, or is regarded as unimportant. Currently, there is no standard distinction between inherent gender identity disorder and secondary gender dysphoria. There is also no objective data obtainable through testing that can disconfirm the transgender diagnosis. Regardless of a teenager’s biological sex, history of family dysfunction or sexual trauma, age of onset of transgender identity, potential social contagion, or autism, the prescribed treatment remains the same—puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
When I attended the 2023 gender symposium co-sponsored by Seattle Children’s Hospital and Swedish, I listened to 7 hours of content dedicated to treatment options, with no time allocated for discussing diagnostic criteria, classifications, or confirmatory testing. In Postmodern medicine, doctors accept a child’s self-diagnosis that provides no insight into cause and prognosis and cannot be disconfirmed, and yet, they still somehow prescribe a high-risk treatment.
This is not normal.
Read it all.
Abigail Anthony: Gay Publication Is Somehow Transphobic Due to an Acronym
Et tu, Pink News? At National Review, Abigail Anthony reports that the publication aimed at the gay community is under fire for daring to publish an article focusing on only the first three letters of the ever-expanding acronym.
Pink News’s horrific crime was sharing a tweet that said “LGB people more likely to experience mental health or substance abuse issues, report finds,” accompanied by a link to an article. The problem was not that it could be interpreted to suggest that self-identified gay people are more prone to mental illness. Rather, omitting the “TQ+” from “LGBTQ+” was exclusionary, divisive, even genocidal.
The publication used the abbreviated “LGB” acronym because the report in question explicitly confirms it did not include self-described transgender individuals: “this report does not present findings for transgender people, non-binary people, or those people with any other identity besides binary male or female, and it does not present findings on sexual identity for adolescents younger than 18.” Therefore, if Pink News had used the full “LGBTQ” acronym, it would have inaccurately portrayed the report’s finding.
But accuracy doesn’t matter to furious activists. They conflate inclusion — originally understood as a modest sense of welcoming — with deserving “representation,” even when they’re completely irrelevant. Some gender-critical groups and individuals occasionally use “LGB” to excise transgenderism from a movement united by sexual orientation rather than self-perception, therefore any use of the acronym is de facto “transphobic.”
One user tweeted, “Its kinda tone deaf to exclude TIQA+ people when the [LGB Alliance] a literal hate group that attacks TIQA+ people exists.” Another user wrote, “I guarantee you trans people also experience the same. There’s no need to separate the two groups, especially when it comes to the struggles we go through.” And yet another user requested new editorial standards, saying “Please use LGBTQIA+ pink news. Don’t encourage division.”
Today, everyone who isn’t straight forms a “community,” yet there are unique and mutually unintelligible sexuality subcategories within that so-called community, but recognizing any distinctions is akin to encouraging hate.
Read it all here.
Kyle Smith: The Empty Signaling of the Oscars’ DEI Rules
Pretending is nothing new for people in Hollywood, and Kyle Smith writes for the Wall Street Journal that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is acting like it cares about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Despite all the hoopla, Smith says it’s just style over substance.
[The Oscars’] new diversity standards aren’t new—they were announced with fanfare in September 2020—and they’re mostly meaningless.
The Oscars’ DEI rules fall into four boxes. Having minority actors in major roles is part of the most absurd box. But if a film checks any two of the boxes, it qualifies. In virtually every conceivable case, back-office studio jobs that have nothing to do with the race, sexuality or disability status of the actors take care of the quotas. One box meekly calls for paid internships and apprenticeships. A film can check the box if either the financing or distributing entity behind it has two such trainees, so long as one is a member of an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. Bring in, say, a gay white man and an Asian woman, pay them, and you’re covered.
Another box that nearly every major Hollywood player will find laughably easy to check is the demand for “representation in marketing, publicity and development.” This means “multiple” executives from such groups as “LGBTQ+” and women. Finding a gay person or a woman in a Hollywood publicity department is about as difficult as locating a Kim or a Lee in a Korean phone book.
This category also mandates “individuals from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups,” but in a company the size of Netflix or Disney, would it really be that hard to find two senior staffers who claim some nonwhite ancestry? Even if all appear to be white, what sort of adjudicating body would investigate? My guess is the Academy will take the studio’s word for it. Hollywood has a long history of being comfortable with mythmaking, known to ordinary people as “lying.” If a cinematographer who looks like Elizabeth Warren claims Cherokee ancestry, would the Academy demand verification? I doubt it.
Read the whole thing.
Around Twitter
Supporting female athletes can be hazardous to one’s career:
Via Steve McGuire of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), here are some disturbing results from a survey of University of Texas-Austin students:
And finally, in honor of Flag Day (yes, it was last week), here’s an interesting development on freedom from Denmark:
