It was ten, maybe fifteen years ago, when I saw the ad in our lobby asking for volunteers to join the community group. I figured it would be a chance to meet my neighbours and to help find ideas to improve our community. The only one anywhere near my age was Christine. In our first meeting, the current president took an instant dislike of her. I have never seen someone hate someone else so fast. He announced it was him or Christine in the group. We both took the attitude of, oh well, his choice. That was definitely a “you problem”. Then he left. Immediately everyone else left too because “it just wouldn’t be the same without him”. Talk about welcome to the group! Christine and I persevered and worked on a bunch of ideas. A newsletter, a blog… we started looking into community gardens and spent an afternoon with an animal enforcement agent looking at dog turds in varying states of decay. The property manager claimed all the dog waste had been picked up the day before. We looked at a piles of waste that were growing mould and called his bluff.
The two of us clicked. Each time we were together we laughed and joked around. Then we added each other on Facebook. It wasn’t Facebook’s fault, I just got a chance to see a different side of her. A side that believed in con-trails, micro-chipping unsuspecting civilians, and poisoning vaccines so “Big Pharma” could sell more medication. Even then I could have probably ignored the posts except she was determined to have me see the light and not be a sheep. So she started tagging me in various articles and wouldn’t stop.
Once she sent me an article that had me raising my eyebrows so much I was surprised they weren’t on my scalp. But every claim it made had a credit, complete with a link. And, well, I always check the links. Then I was just plain sad. Every single link went to a paper that completely disagreed with the shared article.
Every. Single. One. Of. Them
They knew their audience. Those self proclaimed lions who were so much smarter than the sheep who refused to see the truth. They knew those “lions” would never click the links. That they would blindly follow anything the alternate media told them. Spoon fed by people selling them expensive crystals, space mushrooms, and coffee enemas (pro tip, it’s supposed to go in the opposite end).
And misinformation continues to tumble through our lives. From mis-attributed quotes to AI art being passed off as the real deal (sometimes to the point of being sold as real), most of that internet flotsam is easy to research. But many don’t. They trust the person who shared the information with them (who trusted the person they got the information from), or they’ve heard it before so many times that it’s been hammered in as true, or they simply don’t have the time or energy. And most of the time the info doesn’t really matter. I mean Plato is very much past the point of caring if someone else had one of his quotes attributed to them. But sometimes it matters so very much and the consequences can be life threatening.
I can’t remember exactly when it started, a year or so ago(ish), but suddenly everyone who supported transgender children (or any of the rest of the LGBTQIA2S spectrum) was a groomer, which showed that a whole whack of people have no idea what “groomer” actually means. It felt awful having those accusations thrown at me but I’ve dealt with bullies before so didn’t back away. Obviously I wasn’t alone. Their campaign was patently not working so whomever has been sharing the misinformation changed tactics. Suddenly they’re there for the children… watching out for them. They know what’s best for trans and queer children even over and above their parents, which is doubly ironic considering their rallying cry is “it’s my job to raise my children… you can’t teach them age appropriate sex ed and real, quantifiable proven history and science”. And what’s best for the children is absolutely no medical attention regarding transgender issues at all. Besides, all the multiple studies done over the past few decades are apparently wrong.
An article popped into my curated list of news. I guess the AI caught that I’m interested in queer issues and missed that I’m not interested in anti-queer issues. The writer, an Alberta endocrinologist named Dr. Roy Eappen, is another “I know best for the children and much better than their parents” type of guy. He is also pretty damn transphobic although I’m not entirely sure he knows this. Eappen proudly supports the “Do No Harm” organization, right down to placing their contact information at the end of his article. I went and took a peek.
The group, Do No Harm, started out with good intentions as an anti-racism organization then quickly devolved into, as Wikipedia put it, a “group that opposes gender-affirming care and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in medicine and medical education. The group assists state legislatures in attempts to ban gender-affirming care for youth.”
I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise since they started out as “a group [that] was formed to “[protect] patients and physicians from woke healthcare””
Isn’t it funny how racism, sexism, and queerphobia all travel together like the three muskateers. A little bundle of hate all wrapped up in self-righteousness.
And Dr. Roy Eappen, is in the thick of it. His article is so smarmy and written in such an unctuous tone that I wanted to reach through my monitor and give him a good shake. He started off by praising his province of Alberta and the premier Danielle Smith for the common sense and science she has shown by protecting children from invasive and irreversible medical procedures. I understand that taking hormones changes the body. But know what else causes irreversible changes? Puberty. For an example of puberty and how the body changes, I give you my son Colin (not literally though, just metaphorically). You’d have to remove him and 18 computers from his apartment and, well, nobody’s got time for that.
When Colin was a child everyone from store clerks to bus drivers to, well, as I said everyone, assumed Colin was female. Even with a crew cut and wearing a Tonka shirt I’d get, “What a sweetie! She’s so pretty! What’s her name?” Which made telling them “Colin” that much more awkward. Now he’s a massive 6ft1in man, complete with a huge, curly beard. I doubt anyone mistakes him for a girl these days. That’s what puberty does and it’s irreversible for the most part, unless you can afford plastic surgery and a lot of electrolysis.
Eappen states that, “Last month the World Health Organization (WHO) declined to issue guidelines for transgender procedures for children on the grounds that “the evidence base… is limited and variable when it comes to longer-term outcomes”. He gleefully announces that “limited and variable” must mean they think there’s no proof that medical intervention helps and that some children suffer. I think that’s a huge stretch and since I have Google I can go to the WHO’s website myself and see what they have to say.
The WHO (and I can’t be the only one whose mind goes to the rock group first) has much to say about transgender children and teens and, as far as I can tell, none of the words were “limited and variable”. For starters, this is what they have to say about transgender (or gender incongruent) children:
Gender incongruence of childhood is characterised by a marked incongruence between an individual’s experienced/expressed gender and the assigned sex in pre-pubertal children. It includes a strong desire to be a different gender than the assigned sex; a strong dislike on the child’s part of his or her sexual anatomy or anticipated secondary sex characteristics and/or a strong desire for the primary and/or anticipated secondary sex characteristics that match the experienced gender; and make-believe or fantasy play, toys, games, or activities and playmates that are typical of the experienced gender rather than the assigned sex. The incongruence must have persisted for about 2 years. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.
I also found this quote about how “gender-affirmative health care can include any single or combination of a number of social, psychological, behavioural or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” and this one:
Gender Incongruence of Adolescence and Adulthood is characterised by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to ‘transition’, in order to live and be accepted as a person of the experienced gender, through hormonal treatment, surgery or other health care services to make the individual’s body align, as much as desired and to the extent possible, with the experienced gender. The diagnosis cannot be assigned prior the onset of puberty. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.
Eappen moves on to other statistics regarding transgender teenagers while claiming that people who support trans teens are, in fact, homophobic, which is so ironic because judging by my friends, a whole swathe of the trans community are gay, lesbian, or bi/pan. I know that isn’t an official double blind study. I also know I’ve seen it mentioned quite a few times (or umpteen dozen if you want numbers). Eappen claims that two thirds of boys who started out as transgender ended up as gay and that clinicians at England’s main treatment centre (which has since been closed) joked that puberty blockers were “transing the gay away”. Sadly the information regarding that study is behind a paywall and one solitary article was the only one reporting on it. He pontificates that “about 80% of all children who believe themselves to be transgender eventually come to terms with their sex without surgical or pharmaceutical attention” following that up with, “the worst thing we could do is prevent them from discovering who they really are by pushing them down the road of irreversible medical interventions”.
I have to wonder how many of those children simply gave up on being heard and eventually said what they knew the adults they’re communicating with want to hear. And how many of those children transitioned as adults. I also want to know where he got that information from. Eighty percent is a really freaking large amount. So I searched some more found this bit of information from the American Academy of Pediatrics:
The overall rate of retransition was 7.3%. An average of 5.37 years (SD = 1.74 years) after their initial binary social transition, most participants were living as binary transgender youth (94.0%; Table 2). Included in this group were 4 individuals (1.3% of the total sample) who retransitioned twice (to nonbinary then back to binary transgender). Some youth (3.5%) were currently living as nonbinary, including one who had retransitioned first to cisgender then to nonbinary. Finally, 2.5% were using pronouns associated with their sex at birth and could be categorized as cisgender at the time of data collection, including one who first retransitioned to live as nonbinary. Similar percentages were observed when examining the 291 youth who were in touch with the research team in the past 2 years (Table 2), when examining only those 280 youth who had not begun puberty blockers at the start of the study (Table 3), or if we examine only the 200 youth who had gone at least 5 years since their initial transition (Table 3).
That’s so far removed from what Eappen said I find it hard to believe they’re in the same galaxy. Eighty percent versus 2.5%. I mean I’m bad at math but not that bad! Unless he got that information via Tavistock, which was closed due to shoddy record keeping among other issues. In case you’re curious about Tavistock I found this bit of information through an article by Hannah Barnes from BBC’s Newsnight:
In March 2022, an independent report commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service found that the type of care provided at Tavistock was, quote, ‘Not safe or viable as a long-term option for the care of young people with gender related distress.’ It also found that the center had not used customary control measures that are typically in place when new treatments are introduced. Nor had the centre collected consistent data on its patients and treatments.
As for the trans girls in his study, how about did that go? Did the two thirds of the teens simply shrug their metaphorical shoulders and say, “Welp, I guess I’m gay.” That’s a huge amount of teenagers simply changing their minds. Where are all the other studies confirming this? And why are those birds chirping? Maybe it’s the chirping heard when everything else is silent. Maybe his confirmation bias study is the only one.
But, seriously, the reason why that study had so many subjects detransion is because every subject that they lost track of were counted as detransitioning. Shoddy paperwork does not mean your subjects are cisgender. And yet people still act like it’s trustworthy, like Eappen. It’s been shown that intelligent people are more likely to believe fake information because they know they’re smart and are positive they can spot the erroneous or misleading information. Here’s a short video about it:
I had almost finished collecting the information for this post when an article popped up in my newsfeed. An article about Nex Benedict. Nex, who used they/them pronouns at home and he/him pronouns at school, was a 16 year old non-binary student. He’s been described as intelligent and a straight A student, a talented artist, and an animal lover (especially his cat Zeus).
Oklahoma is a transphobic state. They’ve currently got 54 bills that try to restrict the LGBTQIA2S community with healthcare, being included at school, and the freedom to express themselves. They’ve already created a bathroom ban, forcing everyone into the washroom of their assigned gender at birth. Which is why Nex and his friend were heading into the women’s washroom. He was in a school disciplinary course (detention) along with three teenage girls he really didn’t know and they were mocking him and his friends for their clothing choices. When the girls entered the washroom, Nex spashed them with his water bottle and they proceeded to dogpile him and beat the shit out of him. Right up to bashing his head several times on the concrete floor. He blanked out for a bit. The school has pointed out that all the students walked to the nurses office under their own power several times, neglecting to mention that Nex walked there like he was inebriated and walking a roadside sobriety test. Then he and his friend were given a two week suspension, the girls received an “undisclosed punishment”.
Nex’s grandmother wanted to press charges against the girls for their unwarranted and brutal attack. She was told not to bother because Nex was the instigator and would be the one blamed. Because a bit of water is equal to beating someone to a pulp. If it was here, she’d be able to press charges. There however, it’s like a couple of four year old’s fighting in the living room, crying for their Mom because “he started it”. Sometimes it doesn’t matter a whit who started it. It’s what happened during and after that counts.
A trip to the hospital led to a diagnosis of a possible concussion then he went to bed early with a headache. And then he died in the living room the following morning. And now his family is bereft and little Zeus will never know what happened to his person.
It’s been a month since Nex died and the toxicology results have yet to be released. The Owasso police department is flopping around like a landed fish. Nex’s autopsy showed no signs of the beating being the cause of his death. Then it was too soon to tell and then a flop back. And now they’re waiting for the toxicology because they feel that “something’s going to be there”.
I read about the education superintendent, Ryan Walters, and his long list of transphobic actions. For example, last year, Walters and the rest of the educational department made a YouTube video to help end “radical gender theory” by talking about a “man” who assaulted a cisgender girl in the women’s washroom, complete with images of a crying little girl. Because nothing tugs on the heartstrings more than a stock photo. But it hit closer to home is when he called Nex’s death a tragedy then immediately went on to tell ABC that he wanted to focus on “the basics of education” and would not play “woke gender games” or back down from a “woke mob”. Feeling kind of like a martyr there Walters? People in his community are mourning Nex and Walters is busy using his death as a platform for his political view. That goes far being insensitive and uncaring.
Another example of his insensitivity is that he hired Chaya Raichik to be part of the Oklahoma Schools Library’s media advisory committee. Raichik has never lived in Oklahoma but she’s got one thing going for her, she created the queerphobic “Libs of TikTok”.
Nex had a teacher who he admired. That teacher, Tyler Wrynn, made a Tik-Tok video in support of queer and gender queer youths. Raichik used her platform to showcase him and similar teachers, stirring up a mob who sent him death threats and called him a “groomer”. He ended up resigning… for supporting his students.
Meanwhile Chaya Raichik agreed that Nex’s death was “horrible” but she also misgendered him, claimed he was mentally ill because he was trans, and stated she wanted to “eradicate gender ideology from public life.” And then there’s some walking piece of human excrement by the name of Tom Woods who, when asked about Nex, stated that he and the rest of the LGBTQIA2S community are “filth”. That’s classy, especially when you’re talking about a dead 16 year old.
These people, these politicians, they don’t seem to realize how badly they’re impacting families and children, ratcheting up the number of suicide attempts and leading to more dead children who felt unheard and unsupported. They talk about “woke ideology” and “woke mobs” and “radical gender theory”. They claim they’re there for the children. They aren’t. They claim they want to put the control back with the parents. And again they aren’t. If they were for the children, they’d ensure they never put any bills in that made a swathe of students feel hopeless. They’d realize that the more rights they take away from trans people, the more confident the general population feels in bullying and harassing the trans people in their lives. He’d realize he’s keeping medical treatments away from children which has been approved by their parents.
And I just opened a new tab to verify some information and the main article was Nex Benedict and how he’d committed suicide. The pathologist agreed there were signs of a brutal beating but it was the overdose that did him in. And I’m done, at least until tomorrow afternoon. I mean this post has taken long enough, especially since WordPress ate my entire, complete previous post and I’ve had to go back to the beginning. But now I need some space.
I’ve been suicidal before and well know the feelings of hopelessness and simply not mattering. It hurts to know he felt the same. That he looked around his world and saw more and more angry people who were against him. A school that rubber stamped approval for the other students to bully him. They even scared away his favourite teacher for supporting him and his fellow trans students. Nex had so much light to give the world and now it’s gone.
And here’s a final quote by someone with a pseudonym of Crystal who works for MSN:
With so much misinformation and panicked language floating around, it is reasonable to be concerned. Everyone wants what’s best for children.
But my suggestion would be that if you have concerns or doubts, why not have a conversation with a friend or loved one who is trans.
And if you don’t have a trans person in your life you can speak to, perhaps you’re not in a good position to have an opinion on trans people’s rights.