Trans people aren't allowed to get angry; our gender identities are on the line

From three years ago. Still relevant:

"Policing trans rage seems to have become a major pastime. When trans people become angry, cisgender people use this to "prove" our gender identities are invalid, or as a way of discrediting us. If a transfeminine person gets mad, she's acting too much like a boy. If a transmasculine person gets mad, this apparently proves that his masculine identity is causing bad behavior. And everyone, including non-binary and gender-fluid people, is constantly forced to prove that we're not the unstable menace that transphobes often try to portray us as.

Imagine being addressed with the wrong name or pronoun all the time, and being told that you are a problem just because you want to live your own life. Imagine being aware that your very right to exist is being debated as part of a huge civil-rights battle. And to go with all of that pressure, your reactions are constantly scrutinized for any proof that you're unreasonable, and therefore unworthy to shape your own destiny. That's the awful conundrum facing trans kids right now."

— Charlie Jane Anders, On Transgender Day of Visibility, It's Time to Finally Stop Policing Trans Rage , Teen Vogue, March 31, 2021

Does that make you angry? "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

If not for transphobia, 'what kind of conversations could we be having'?

Three years ago, Charlie Jane Anders wrote this:

"Republican state legislatures seem to be locked in a competition to see which can be the cruelest to trans youths."

(Of course, it's gotten worse since then.)

When a kid comes out as trans, they've already done a lot of self-examination.

"Often, it may appear that trans kids and adults emerge fully formed, like Athena from the brow of Zeus, when in reality we’ve spent endless hours trying to make sense of our selves. The moment we reveal the end result of our self-discovery to the world, we face microaggressions, outright hostility and discrimination."

Of course, there's always more to do. Kids "need time to explore their identities and personalities," so why such "extraordinary scrutiny and intervention from the government"? "It’s beyond heartless to expect young trans and gender-nonconforming people to navigate this challenge while also being the objects of a national outbreak of paranoia."

"Take the North Carolina bill, which would require teachers and other authority figures to spy on young people and report any signs of “gender nonconformity” to their parents or guardians. Even if no teacher ever contacted anyone’s parents, everyone would still be aware that their clothes, hair and habits could be singled out at any time.

“Everybody is under surveillance when we have these restrictive ideas about gender,” says Raquel Willis, a trans activist and writer who founded Black Trans Circles. Even cisgender children and adults would be “boxed out of a human experience, because they are told they have to act a certain way.”

Anders says she wonders: "What kind of conversations could we be having about growing up trans and gender-nonconforming if we didn’t have to argue constantly against a manufactured panic and a wave of authoritarianism?"

"Opinion: We should celebrate trans kids, not crack down on them, Charlie Jane Anders, Washington Post, April 12, 2021.

Cass Review: April 10, 2024

After four years, Hilary Cass produced a review of gender-affirming care for kids in the UK.

Start with these:

The Cass Review: Nothing But Anti-Trans Propaganda: When you thought it couldn't get worse, it did. Z. P.Hopkins, Gender Identity Today, 17 Apr 2024

The UK’s Cass Review Is Already Harming Transgender Young People: Despite finding no evidence of harm, the Cass Review has already led to restrictions on gender-affirming care, while further fuelling transphobic moral panic, Kaylin Hamilton, Prism & Pen, 22 Apr 2024

Erin Reed (Cass Met With DeSantis Pick Over Trans Ban: Her Review Now Targets England Trans Care, April 10, 2024) summarizes:

"Dr. Hilary Cass released a final report commissioned by the NHS, widely expected to target gender-affirming care. The report met these expectations, calling for restrictions on gender-affirming care and social transition, and even advocated for blocking transgender adults under the age of 25 from entering adult care. To justify these recommendations, the review dismissed over 100 studies on the efficacy of transgender care as not suitably high quality, applying standards that are unattainable and not required of most other pediatric medicine. Conducted in a manner similar to the anti-trans review by the DeSantis-handpicked Board of Medicine in Florida, which Cass reportedly collaborated on, the report and its reviews are likely to underpin further crackdowns on trans care globally.

The 388-page report featured 32 recommendations on how transgender care should be conducted within NHS England. It incorrectly claims that there is “no good evidence” supporting transgender care and calls for restrictions on trans care for individuals under the age of 18, although it does not advocate for an outright ban. ...it seemingly endorses restrictions on transgender people under the age of 25, stating that they should not be allowed to progress into adult care clinics."

The Cass Review, as Reed explains, used the subjective Newcastle-Ottawa Scale to declare that 101 out of 103 studies on gender-affirming care were low-quality, despite "connections between reviewers, Cass, and anti-trans organizations." In this, it resembles the Florida Review.

The Cass Review Buried Trans Youth Perspectives, Evan Urquhart, Assigned Media, May 15, 2024

Like sorry they found 10 detransitioners among the 3000 patients they looked at? Even if the records are spotty it's insane to try and claim the 30-80%(!) rates of desistance that people like to throw around.

— Turbo Duo Lipa (@cambrianera.radical.town) May 15, 2024 at 11:58 AM

Jesse Singal says that "objective" data is needed on whether trans people are OK, mentally and physically.

Also this

Fascinating and necessary analysis of the Cass Report from @gidmk.bsky.social, an epidemiologist who specializes in debunking shoddy science claims. This man is doing the lord's work. open.substack.com/pub/gidmk/p/...

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— Lydia Polgreen (@polgreen.bsky.social) May 10, 2024 at 5:27 PM

Here's the link that's inside the Bluesky post:
The Cass Review Into Gender Identity Services for Children - Part 4. Regret, persistence, detransition, and further mistakes in the Cass review. Gideon M-K: Health Nerd (Substack), May 10, 2024.

Trying to imagine if this were the standard for any other medical care.

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— Matt Goldberg (@mattgoldberg.bsky.social) May 8, 2024 at 4:18 PM

Here's the link that's inside the Bluesky post:
WBUR

Polgreen adds:

The first big boom of transgender medicine of the 1950s-70s ended when a researcher "discovered" that transition might make trans people happier but wasn't making trans people more likely to be "objectively" better members of society: straight, married, employed, etc.

— Lydia Polgreen (@polgreen.bsky.social) May 8, 2024 at 3:33 PM

Cass' version of this might seem kinder and gentler, but remember! People who are not trans are allowed to be unemployed, unhappy, have bad sex, etc, without being pathologized. That's just... life. A trans person should be entitled to the same ordinary unhappiness as anyone else.

— Lydia Polgreen (@polgreen.bsky.social) May 8, 2024 at 3:37 PM

Ask yourself: should a woman only be entitled to an abortion if it makes her more likely to have a job? Or get married? Or have children later? No, of course not. A woman is entitled to have an abortion because her body is her own and she can do what she wants with it.

— Lydia Polgreen (@polgreen.bsky.social) May 8, 2024 at 3:40 PM

"Although “sex-change” surgery was “subjectively satisfying” for the small sample surveyed, the operations they underwent conferred “no objective advantage in terms of social rehabilitation.”" A pretty good summary of this horrifying history: wapo.st/3UAZ5rj

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— Lydia Polgreen (@polgreen.bsky.social) May 8, 2024 at 4:06 PM

Here's the link that's inside the Bluesky post:
Washington Post (subscriber gift link)

"In an interview with NPR, Dr. Cass claimed that transgender individuals' care should be judged by their "employment," rather than their satisfaction with the care received. Later, during an interview with The New York Times, Cass misleadingly stated that she had not been contacted by any lawmakers or U.S. health bodies, despite having met with political appointees of Gov. Ron DeSantis to discuss banning trans care before her report was published."
"Endocrine Society And American Academy Of Pediatrics Respond To Cass, Reject Bans: In recent weeks, the Cass Review out of the United Kingdom has been used to argue for bans on care. The Endocrine Society and American Academy of Pediatrics respond, rejecting such arguments. Erin Reed, May 13, 2024

The Endocrine Society released a statement and pointed out that "they cite over 260 research studies to support their recommendations on transgender care," as Reed summarized.

Reed also pointed out:

"Interestingly, Cass herself advocated against care bans in her most recent New York Times interview released today, where she stated, “There are young people who absolutely benefit from a medical pathway, and we need to make sure that those young people have access,” although she added a caveat that those young people should be forced to consent to research in order to access care, leaving many to question the ethics of such an approach."

How this rhetoric works

"Its like there’s this system of coordinated transphobia where extremists like DeSantis give cover to Britain, who in turn give a formal basis to the ‘critiques’ of the NY Times. And the NY Times, in turn, give Britain the press attention they wanted."
— England’s Trying to Ban ADULT Trans Care After the Cass Report: It was never gonna stop at trans kids, ElizaBeth, Apr 14, 2024

Update: June 2024

Since the Cass Review came out, Cass has (according to Erin Reed) "blamed being trans on pornography and labeled the American Academy of Pediatrics as a "left-leaning organization" due to its support for the medical care of transgender youth."

"Last month, a handful of members of the RANZCP, some of which are notable figures in anti-trans activism in the country, wrote a letter to the organization stating that they had “serious concerns” about gender affirming care for transgender youth. They pointed to the Cass Review as justification for their concerns. The top signature on the letter is that of Jillian Spencer, who stated in an interview that she was fired for “being a danger to trans and gender-diverse children.” Now, the college has responded.

In a response posted to the RANZCP website, the college announced that the Cass Review is one of "a number of reviews,” and that it rejects the call for a “government inquiry” into trans care in the countries it represents. It further states that transgender care should be “patient centered” and individualized to a patient’s needs. Lastly, it expresses a full support for transgender youth and rejects claims that being transgender is a “mental health condition”..."

Another International Medical Org Rejects Cass Recommendations On Trans Youth Many of the largest medical and psychological organizations have rejected the Cass Review's recommendations on trans youth. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists is the latest. Erin Reed, June 14, 2024

Reed continues: "Conservative Women and Equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch, admitted that 'gender critical' individuals were placed in health roles to facilitate the Cass Review — a mechanism remarkably similar to how Florida’s review led to the banning of care in the state, borrowing from DeSantis’ strategy."

Update: July 2024

Hilary Cass Repeats Transphobic Talking Points, Again, Alyssa Steinsiek, Assigned Media, July 3, 2024

Yet people are still saying no one is listening to J.K. Rowling?

The UK just banned puberty blockers, what would more engagement with her ‘concerns’ even look like

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— Michael Hobbes (@michaelhobbes.bsky.social) Jun 24, 2024 at 5:56 AM

Did the New York Times Call the Cass Report Fake? Its surprisingly good, ElizaBeth, Medium, August 20, 2024

Revealed: Over 200 Transgender patients have been refused hormone care by GPs, QueerAF, Medium, October 19, 2024

Previously, in 2023

Last year: The Myth Of "Low Quality Evidence" Around Transgender Care, Erin Reed, August 8, 2023

Here, Reed pointed out that "Gender-affirming care isn't unique in this regard. Some studies suggest that over 90% of medical care lacks "high-quality evidence" as classified by the GRADE system." That medical care might involve "individualized approaches," be justified by "observational evidence," or be ethical given that "withholding treatment would be considered unethical." Again, lots of medicine is like this — not just care for trans people. "No one labels gallbladder surgery as 'experimental," Reed says, even though there's no high-quality evidence for it if you ask GRADE.

Reed continued:

"Mischaracterizing the evidence around gender affirming care as 'low-quality' is a deceptive practice that relies on a layman understanding of the term. There is no level of evidence that will ever be acceptable to those seeking to ban gender affirming care, as controlled trials where trans youth are put through conversion therapy or denied medication are not ever going to ethically happen - especially given suicide risks among this patient population."

Kaylin Hamilton wrote that "literature reviews commissioned by the ongoing Cass Review into gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and similar reviews which were used as justification for the ban on gender-affirming care in Florida, all attempt to discredit the evidence base for gender-affirming care (at least partly) on the basis of these two issues," namely, "a lack of consideration for social factors and a comorbid approach to the relationship between gender dysphoria and mental illness."
— Gender Affirming Care isn’t a Panacea: We need to change the way we talk about — and research — the relationship between gender dysphoria and mental illness, Kaylin Hamilton, Substack, May 8, 2023

"If you’re in the UK, trans and your GP has refused you adequate care around your hormones get in touch with Dr Tlaleng at the UN who is collecting evidence for show down with the government in December.
Under Special procedures
spsubmission.ohchr.org"
Mrs Schwarzski, Bluesky, October 11, 2024

Not even an inch of let up on transphobia from Labour. Add meeting and sympathising with a group of wildly transphobic nurses, insisting on implementing Cass in full, and progressing with a review on adult healthcare apparently predicated on Cass’s expressed concerns.

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— Ethel Weapon (@lousadzak.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 7:17 PM

It continues not to be about sports

As Chase Strangio explains on an Instagram reel:

"This now-deleted comment was posted from the official account of NYC’s Community Education Council, District 2. Last month, the Council voted 8-3 to advance an anti-trans resolution. They claim they aren’t making schools less safe for trans kids but this is what they post publicly from their government account. At core, they want a world without trans kids and they are making that clear."

What happened? "In response to the simple suggestion that trans students be given the opportunity to attend school and participate in activities alongside their peers," New York's Community Education Council District 2 (CEC2) left an online public comment:

"True compassion means not letting children self diagnose their own medical condition. It means letting effeminate boys grow up and find out that they are just gay and having their male genitals intact. It means addressing underlying mental health issues and autism that radical gender medical practitioners ignore that still lead to suicide after 'gender affirming care.' It means not engaging in human experimentation on children that's banned by the Nuremberg Code with unproven sterilizing, mutilating & permanent hormonal & medical castration treatment and surgery. True compassion means teaching and supporting kids to love themselves as they are and letting them grow up unharmed."

In other words, the topic was basic educational inclusion for kids who are trans, and the adults on the Community Education Council immediately began talking about the children's genitals and hormones.

These same councilmembers, Strangio says, have previously claimed to be "just asking questions about girls in sports," not opposing trans kids.

"But here's the thing," Strangio says. "The discourse around trans inclusion in sports always leads to this place." The position ends up being that trans people should not exist nor have healthcare. "Ultimately, their end goal is to push an agenda that eradicates us."

Strangio's action item: "We are organizing to show love and solidarity for trans students and to fight this Moms for Liberty-affiliated council. Join us on May 2nd at 6:30, MS 131, 100 Hester Street, NY. Wear white."

In February 2024, a Republican member of the Utah board of education, Natalie Cline, posted to Instagram questioning a 16-year-old girl basketball player. The girl was subsequently "targeted by threats and online abuse, and had to be given police protection," according to The Guardian. Cline "backtracked and apologised," the Guardian says, yet continued to foment transphobia, both for this girl and for others, with these words: "She does have a larger build. It is normal to wonder if people are what they say they are, because of the push to normalise transgenderism in our society." No. It is absolutely not normal for members of the state board of education even to "wonder" if a 16-year-old girl might be a boy, much less to post to social media publicly suggesting that.

I also direct you to my article: "Oh, It's About Sports, Is It?". It's a 14-minute read on Medium, and I gave you the unpaywalled friend link.

This is not about sports:

Michael Phelps unfortunately hasn’t supported trans people even though he is literally a genetic mutant. One example of many: Phelps’ body produces half the normal amount of lactic acid during exercise. That means he feels far less fatigue than most people. His cis ass should learn solidarity.

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— Sage 🏳️‍⚧️ (@trans.bsky.social) Aug 1, 2024 at 2:28 PM

The IOC has had rules about trans athletes & hormone levels for 20 YEARS (since 2004) that are regularly updated. If someone is competing in the Olympics, they’ve already met MANY standards that already exist. So maybe stop speculating on athlete’s genitals ya fuckin weirdos ✌️

— Susan Bridges (@susanlbridges.bsky.social) Aug 1, 2024 at 3:10 PM

My controversial position is that if the Times is going to keep covering controversies around sex and gender its editors and reporters should check and make sure they're not wrong about literally the most basic fact about sex chromosomes

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— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca.bsky.social) Aug 1, 2024 at 1:39 PM

Frantically revising the piece to come up with new ways to be wrong

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— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca.bsky.social) Aug 1, 2024 at 3:01 PM

[Bluesky]

"The 2024 Music City Open, a notable event in the Disc Golf Pro Tour, faced a significant disruption when the competition was temporarily suspended due to a terroristic threat on Saturday. The threat...targeted transgender athlete Natalie Ryan..."

Terrorist threat stops Nashville disc golf tournament with transgender player, Christopher Wiggins, The Advocate, April 25, 2024

Read up on the Before “Moms For Liberty,” There Was “Daughters of the Confederacy” by Fay Wylde. That's a 7-min read with a friend link too.

The future of women’s sports is at stake at San Jose State, but trans athletes aren’t the problem, Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov 19, 2024

---

"I am more worried about how sports threaten children than how people wrongly think trans players could possibly hurt sports."
Anti-Sports (Warrior Culture) but Pro Trans and Intersex Rights in Sports! by Damien AtHope | May 27, 2022

---

It's vital to remember that sports are a means to an end for the people most actively working to hound trans girls from school athletics. Are you really going to tell me with a straight face that AF&F is filing this litigation because they care about the rights of women? archive.ph/gZfmb

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— Jessica Kant (@jessdkant.bsky.social) December 21, 2024 at 10:31 PM

And then the lawsuit alleges that in a competition where the fastest time wins, they discriminated by declaring the person with the fastest time the winner.

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— Jessica Kant (@jessdkant.bsky.social) December 21, 2024 at 10:39 PM

On TV/lit fans identifying with the fictional villain

Spotted this on fictional villains:

"Traditionally, the majority of our cherished sociopathic antiheroes in TV and film have been men. Think Tony Soprano, Walter White, Patrick Bateman, Dexter Morgan, Don Draper. I’ve always found it difficult to love mob movies and series: Despite being ostensibly about the horrors of brute violence, “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas” and all the rest have a singularly passionate fanbase that seems to really have fallen in love with their central villains.

This is a notion the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum has labeled the “bad fan,” a viewer who misses the critical lens through which a character is presented and instead goes all-in on identifying with them. She traces this dissonance back to Norman Lear’s “All in the Family,” the groundbreaking satirical sitcom of the 1970s whose bigoted lead character Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, spawned, despite Lear’s intentions, genuine fans of the character’s behavior, those “who shared Archie’s frustrations with the culture around him, a ‘silent majority’ who got off on hearing taboo thoughts said aloud.”

"Opinion: It’s time to change the way we think about sociopaths," Sara Stewart, CNN, April 20, 2024

The idea is, you're not necessarily supposed to identify with the villain. The author might be trying to show you something about the villain, but even if that information is delivered from the villain's perspective, that doesn't mean the author hopes you'll identify with the villain's personality or choices.

I wrote a book about fictional eunuch villains called Painting Dragons.

See also my old blog post: How literature teaches us to be better people

U.S. Interior Dept BLM rule prioritizes conservation and clean energy

From today's Washington Post article:

"For decades, the federal government has prioritized oil and gas drilling, hardrock mining and livestock grazing on public lands across the country. That could soon change under a far-reaching Interior Department rule that puts conservation, recreation and renewable energy development on equal footing with resource extraction.

The final rule released Thursday represents a seismic shift in the management of roughly 245 million acres of public property — about one-tenth of the nation’s land mass.

* * *

'We oversee 245 million acres, and every land manager will tell you that climate change is already happening. It’s already impacting our public lands,' [Bureau of Land Management director Tracy] Stone-Manning said during a Washington Post Live event last year. 'We see it in pretty obvious ways, through unprecedented wildfires.'"

— The U.S. just changed how it manages a tenth of its land: The Interior Department rule puts conservation and clean energy development on par with drilling, mining and resource extraction on federal lands for the first time, Maxine Joselow, Washington Post, April 18, 2024

Democrats and Republicans are different on conservation policy:

The Antiquities Act is a "1906 law that gives presidents the unilateral power to protect federal lands with natural, cultural and scientific values. Eighteen presidents, Republican and Democrat, have used the law to designate 161 national monuments." The Biden administration has a "goal of conserving 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030, known as 30x30." Meanwhile, "Project 2025, the 920-page policy blueprint that dozens of right-wing organizations compiled to guide Trump should he win reelection in November, specifically calls for repealing the Antiquities Act." (HuffPost, May 9, 2024)

👏 “A lot of nature conservation is a long game. You plant a tree, you're not going to in your lifetime see that it reached its full potential. But within three months of that river being re-wiggled the salmon were spawning in that one kilometre stretch for the first time in over 150 years”

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— Stephen Frost (@sfrost.bsky.social) September 28, 2024 at 1:31 AM

Uri Berliner's fact-free complaint that NPR is too liberal

From an article by Larry Jaffee I learned that,

"on April 9, NPR journalist Uri Berliner published on The Free Press — a repository of anti-trans coverage that champions detransitioners, founded by former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss — his complaint that his employer has been overridden by liberal bias. The Free Press states it’s “#1 on Substack,” the same platform on which Erin Reed publishes.

In short, Berliner believes a woke culture at NPR in recent years has transformed the outlet to its detriment."

Berliner had also spoken on an episode of Bari Weiss's Honestly podcast.

One diagnosis by Jamelle Bouie (Bluesky 1): "aging white journalist intensely resentful of younger colleagues of color who are getting acclaim and recognition he desires — many such cases" (Bluesky 2): "the anti-woke hysteria in journalism is about jobs and status, not standards"

Another by IDtheMike (Bluesky): "I finally read the Uri Berliner essay, and it's just an old guy looking for reasons to vote for RFK Jr who happens to have worked at NPR for 25 years. In short, he's losing his marbles and diagnosing his paranoia as a conspiracy by NPR. It's sad."

The New York Times reported credulously on Berliner's appearance: "NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias."

On April 12, NPR suspended Berliner without pay for five days (which it revealed on April 16) on the basis that he violated NPR's policy by not seeking approval to appear in another news outlet. He was warned that another violation would result in his termination. Berliner resigned from NPR the morning of April 17.

Berliner's essay had "angered many of his colleagues, led NPR leaders to announce monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, and gave fresh ammunition to conservative and partisan Republican critics of NPR," as David Folkenflik wrote for NPR.

Folkenflik continued:

"Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR's new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network. Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year. Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization."

He added: "Several NPR journalists told me they are no longer willing to work with Berliner as they no longer have confidence that he will keep private their internal musings about stories as they work through coverage."

As Parker Molloy describes it:

"Berliner, a senior business editor and reporter, argues that NPR lost conservative listeners in recent years, making vague accusations about biased coverage and an unsupported claim that the organization “tell[s] people how to think” — something that would have benefitted from even a single example.

As one Democratic House staffer noted on X (fka Twitter), few of Berliner’s claims held up to scrutiny. Whether claims about NPR supposedly ignoring “Russiagate” stories that made Democrats look bad (they didn't), claims about NPR not covering Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 (they did), or claims about NPR brushing off the “lab leak” theory of the COVID-19 origin (they didn’t) — these simply didn’t hold up to light scrutiny."

For more info, Molloy recommends:

“The Real Story Behind NPR’s Current Problems” (Slate, Alicia Montgomery, 4/16/24) “Uri Berliner dragged NPR. What now?” (The Night Light, Joshua Johnson, 4/10/24) “How my NPR colleague failed at ‘viewpoint diversity’” (Differ We Must, Steve Inskeep, 4/16/24)

Jon Becker says (Bluesky): "I have now read responses to Uri Berliner by 3 current and former NPR employees (Joshua Johnson, Steve Inskeep, and Alicia Montgomery). They are all very strong critiques and fact checks. But, nobody who reads The FP will see them. I wish I knew how to solve that problem."

Judd Legum gives this history:

"In 2020, Bari Weiss quit her job as an editor and writer at the New York Times editorial page in a huff. In her public resignation letter, Weiss argued that she was forced out because the paper had become 'illiberal' and her more conservative beliefs made her 'the subject of constant bullying by colleagues.'

In January 2021, Weiss launched a newsletter, Common Sense, with her partner, Nellie Bowles. Weiss billed Common Sense as the antidote to 'cancel culture'...

In 2022, Common Sense rebranded itself as The Free Press to reflect its growing ambitions. It now reportedly employs about 30 people and generates millions in revenue annually.

* * *

Ironically, as Weiss cashes in on her critique of "cancel culture," The Free Press has become a central part of a sophisticated right-wing ecosystem that seeks to tear down anything and anyone who diverges too far from their ideology."

Judd Legum, "The real cancel culture," Popular Information, May 13, 2024

That, Legum says, is what the Berliner performance was about. He says Berliner's formulaic narrative — I'm a lifelong open-minded liberal, but my employer has leaned too far to the left and is no longer open-minded — is typical for the free press.

---

I can provide another example:

"[Nellie] Bowles, meanwhile, has spent an entire career writing to an audience many times larger than mine— first at the San Francisco Chronicle, then the New York Times and more recently at The Free Press. She is, like all of us, concerned about other people’s opinions, but I suspect mostly if those people have fancier bylines and larger social media followings than myself. It’s that specific group’s knee jerk progressivism and intolerance to “heterodox” thinkers that serves as Morning After’s origin story. You see, Bowles once toed the elite liberal media party line (she cites such bonafides as supporting universal healthcare, attending a Verso Books/The Nation party and drinking an I’m-with-her-icane the evening of the 2016 election), but that was before the book’s titular “revolution.” After the summer of 2020, Bowles began reporting on woke excesses like the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle and the speaking order at Democratic Socialists of America conferences. She fell in love with a self-proclaimed apostate, the Times writer turned Free Press founder Bari Weiss. Her old friends grew more annoyed with her new opinions, so she, in turn, grew less generous towards theirs.

* * *

You want to know what really got me? Remember that cancellation essay? The one that earnestly considered the human cost to a politics of in-group signaling and performative cruelty? That appears at the end of the book, after Bowles has spent pages upon pages being, well, performatively cruel to people with whom she disagrees politically. She doesn’t technically engage in a cancellation, if only because the only people she criticizes by name have long been anti-woke punching bags (former San Francisco prosecutor Chesa Boudin, Black Lives Matter founder-turned-millionaire Patrisse Khan-Cullors, “Characteristics of White Supremacy” author Tema Okun), but there’s a clear pattern as to which characters, over the course of the book, are offered a sympathetic read and which ones merely appear as barely-two-dimensional, origami paper villains."

— "Trying to be curious about an incurious book: An essay (and a letter) written the morning after I read Nellie Bowles' "Morning After The Revolution", Garrett Bucks, The White Pages, May 15, 2024

By the way:

It would be so much braver and more honest if the "politically tribeless tribe" would just admit they want Trump to win — and that they don't really have any major problems with him or anything he's done or promises to do.

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— anthonylfisher (@anthonylfisher.bsky.social) September 19, 2024 at 4:40 PM

---

So, for example:

"Another central component of Berliner's critique is this statistic: "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None." There are a few problems with this. First, Berliner doesn't disclose that there are 662 employees at NPR producing content. It's unclear how or why he selected a subset of just 87 people. Second, in DC, voters have the option of registering as independents. That's how Berliner and other NPR employees who live in DC, like host Steve Inskeep, have registered. Finally, many NPR employees live in places like Virginia, which does not have voter registration by party."

Berliner publicly called out his boss, but "NPR didn't follow the script," Legum notes. Instead, they suspended him. At that point, Chris Rufo stepped in, because (as Legum puts it) "for Rufo, expressing liberal views at any point in your life is a fireable offense." Thus,

"Rufo escalated his attacks on [Berliner's boss, NPR president Katherine] Maher. In an April 24 article published in City Journal, Rufo suggested that Maher was a clandestine CIA operative. Rufo's 'evidence' for this claim is Maher's work for the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a non-profit that observes elections and provides other support for democratic processes and institutions worldwide, and other NGOs. Rufo described Maher as 'a regime-change agent, both foreign and domestic.'"

Again, Legum emphasizes,

"There is a relentless right-wing operation seeking to inflict pain on their ideological adversaries. Some, like Rufo, are the political equivalent of street brawlers, willing to say or do anything to achieve their objective. Others, like Weiss and The Free Press, give the movement a more journalistic and professional sheen. But no one involved is a supporter of free expression or an opponent of cancel culture. Rather, they are the cultural force aggressively pursuing cancellation."

More on 'cancel culture'

Claire Dederer:

The inevitability of monstrousness is a central occupation of the internet, which hums along, fueled by biography —the internet is made of disclosure about ourselves and about other people’s selves. The very phrase “cancel culture” presupposes the privileging of biography—a whole idea of culture built on the fact that we know everything about everyone.

We live in a biographical moment, and if you look hard enough at anyone, you can probably find at least a little stain. Everyone who has a biography—that is, everyone alive—is either canceled or about to be canceled.

Claire Dederer. Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.

The very term “cancel culture” is hopelessly non-useful, with its suggestion that the loss of status for the accused is somehow on a par with the suffering endured by the victim. Stephen Fry’s distance from the past—his assumed enlightenment—allows him to say something to a historical figure [Richard Wagner] that he might not say to someone alive.

* * *

What (miserably) gets called cancel culture is the contemporaneous act of telling someone that the thing they’re doing or saying is, to use Fry’s word, “nasty.” Cancel culture is, from this perspective, the most sensible thing in the world—rather than fantasizing about confronting someone in the past, practitioners of cancellation are confronting someone in the present. And such confrontations should be welcome, right?

* * *

Some people endure shaming, deserved or undeserved, so that some other people can say what happened to them. Instead of accepting that bargain, we make up an insulting and increasingly dumb name—cancel culture…

* * *

The liberal fantasy of effortless enlightenment simply assumes we’re getting better all the time. But how on earth can we improve unless we listen to people saying what’s wrong?

Margaret Sullivan, The power of a single word about media malfeasance (American Crisis, September 7, 2024):

"This weekend, I’m in Austin at the annual Texas Tribune event called TribFest. I’ll be interviewing on stage the CEO and president of National Public Radio, Katherine Maher. A former CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, she’s only been at NPR since March — but it’s been eventful. The following month, as you might recall, a longtime NPR staffer, Uri Berliner, published a blistering critique; he wrote that NPR’s liberal bias and lack of “viewpoint diversity” has damaged public trust. Maher soon became part of the controversy.

NPR’s excellent media correspondent David Folkenflik did a fair-minded job of covering the story at his own workplace — never a fun assignment. Berliner later resigned and went to work at The Free Press, the internet outfit co-founded by Bari Weiss. If my conversation with Katherine Maher is available as a recording, I’ll post it here. NPR has its faults but it does a lot right, including being one of the few remaining news organizations to employ a public editor or ombudsman."

Further reading

On the theme of consequences, may I please direct you to my essay: "When I, A Trans Person, Spoke to a Bioethicist About Consequences: We did not agree, and I was wrong," Jan 7, 2024"

AR gender-affirming care ban: Today, a federal appeals court hears arguments

In 2023

On January 24, 2023, Arkansas passed a drag ban (SB43).

"Senate Bill 43 defines a 'drag performance' as at least one person 'exhibit[ing] a gender identity that is different from the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other accessories that are traditionally worn by members of and are meant to exaggerate the gender identity of the performer’s opposite sex' and singing, dancing, lip-syncing or performing in other ways in front of an audience."
— "Anti-drag legislation passes Arkansas Senate in 29-6 party-line vote": GOP senators say it will shield children; Democrats say it targets transgender Arkansans. Tess Vrbin, Arkansas Advocate, January 24, 2023.

As was previously explained:

"According to the Republican leaders introducing SB43, the bill not only aims to define drag shows exclusively as adult entertainment, but goes as far to define drag as follows:

“Exhibits a gender identity that is different from the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other accessories that are traditionally worn by members of and are meant to exaggerate the gender identity of the performer’s opposite sex.”

"...Bill SB43, although having critics internationally, appears likely to be signed into law by Arkansas’s own Sarah Huckabee Sanders- Donald Trump’s former Press Secretary and now Governor of the state. Other states like Ohio, Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee have signaled their support of the Bill, with lawmakers there implying their intention to adopt it."
— Phaylen Fairchild, "Arkansas Introduces Heinous Anti-LGBTQ Bill Targeting Trans People," January 14, 2023.

In 2024

"A federal appeals court will hear arguments Thursday [April 11, 2024] over Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for minors, as the fight over the restrictions on transgender youths adopted by two dozen states moves closer to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arkansas is appealing a federal judge’s ruling last year that struck down the state’s ban as unconstitutional, the first decision to overturn such a prohibition. The 2021 law would prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18.

The case is going before the full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rather than a three-judge panel after it granted a request by Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin. The move could speed up the case’s march toward the U.S. Supreme Court, which has been asked to block similar laws in Kentucky and Tennessee."
— Federal appeals court hearing arguments on nation’s first ban on gender-affirming care for minors, Andrew DeMillo, AP, April 10, 2024

Related:

Arkansas Supreme Court reinstates rule eliminating ‘X’ option for sex on licenses and IDs, Andrew DeMillo, AP News, June 24, 2024

Learn about Arkansas child custody (in divorce and separation cases).

Bill McKibben: 'Entirely unsurprisingly', it's hot

Please sign up for Bill McKibben's newsletter. Today, he says:

"At the most fundamental level, new figures last week showed that atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—reached new all-time highs last year. Here’s how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the figures:

"While the rise in the three heat-trapping gases recorded in the air samples collected by NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) in 2023 was not quite as high as the record jumps observed in recent years, they were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade.

The global surface concentration of CO2, averaged across all 12 months of 2023, was 419.3 parts per million (ppm), an increase of 2.8 ppm during the year. This was the 12th consecutive year CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, extending the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases during the 65-year monitoring record. Three consecutive years of CO2 growth of 2 ppm or more had not been seen in NOAA’s monitoring records prior to 2014. Atmospheric CO2 is now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels."

"Entirely unsurprisingly, the planet’s temperature has also continued to rise."

— "By the numbers: Sometimes we need to stop and take stock. Bill McKibben. The Crucial Years. April 10, 2024.

Yes, we're using renewable energy sources, but — he says — we need to more than double the pace at which we're making more renewable energy available so that we can replace our use of fossil fuels.

"Methane levels show no “hint of a decline”, and the continued rise is “incompatible” with climate goals, the lead study author tells Carbon Brief." Great in-depth reporting on all things methane by @orladwyer.carbonbrief.org and Yanine Quiroz www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-metha...

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— Giuliana Viglione (@giulianaviglione.bsky.social) September 10, 2024 at 1:09 PM

This should be bigger news: AI is *revitalizing the fossil fuels industry.* Bloomberg called it a "surprising resurgence" in gas-fired power plants when we were on the brink of a transition to clean energy. And big tech has nothing to say about it. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-is-revi...

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— Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant.bsky.social) September 18, 2024 at 1:12 PM