Moynihan’s hobo disaster KMW, disinformation queen, stops by for a few, tells us how she broke her kneecap KMW: The Fifth is staffed by crotchety scare-mongering old dudes (Ed. - This is disinformation) So why *is* KMD the disinformation queen? Wait, what does “disinformation” even mean??
I emailed the gents recently to say I respect their reluctance to enter the transgender fray but that I wanted them to consider that parents of neurodivergent kids can't afford to ignore it. I have long been noticing a huge overlap between trans identity and autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression. This was purely anectdotal, but I felt there was something there.
In the weeks since I sent my email, holy shit. The Tavistock book is alleging that 97.5% of the kids seeking hormonal or surgical treatment had autism, depression or other relevant mental health concerns. The Dutch Protocol had NO youth patients with diagnosed mental health conditions (beyond dysphoria). None. If you had autism or depression, you were excluded. Yet somehow the clinical application of the protocol is the reverse of the experimental research protocal -- MOST if not all of the kids have comorbitities.
Then came the Wash U/St. Louis Children's Hospital Whistleblower piece on thefp.com, which certainly got my attention. That is the hospital where my own autistic children have received their psychiatric care for years. If these lawsuits end up revealing physician names, I will no doubt know them, and they could be the very same professionals that have spent time alone with my children to afford them privacy, something I trusted them not to abuse. But if the whistleblower is to be believed, there was frequent cross referring between gender clinic and pediatric psychiatry division, and reluctant parents were bullied into consent by the spectre of suicide. This could have happened to any of my children. And the hospital has doubled down, they are not going to observe the moratorium that has been recommended to them.
So gentlemen of the Fifth, thank you for not sidestepping it this time. This is a huge story, it's not just silly culture war shit. This is impacting journalism, education, medicine and government institutions. This ideology IS in fact a religion, as one of you pointed out, and it's grown too large to be ignored, because it appears the most vulnerable victims of it are kids like mine who would love to grasp at a magical solution to all their problems of feeling lonely, awkward, depressed, etc.
Since the other side is constantly bringing up genocide, I would counter that while genocide is a ridiculous word to use in this debate, it would be more apt from the gender critical point of view. Mengele himself could never have dreamt up an ideology that not only sterilizes mentally ill children and adults, but actually convinces them to voluntarily ask for this treatment. And when it goes horribly wrong (see Lois Hole) then Canada will gladly offer them MAID.
I have an autistic child and I have also noticed the overlap. Thank you for this comment - this issue is certainly on my mind as this child is beginning puberty.
...but decided against it because I thought there's probably no point, as I think the Venn diagram between listeners of TFC and readers of The Free Press probably intersects a great deal. But I think posting it now is relevant, as I think this may be the driver behind the NYT letter that the gentlemen (and Moynihan) were discussing after KMW left. I think there's a lot more people like this who are thinking of coming forward with their own horror stories, and the activist groups are trying to get out ahead of it. "Don't you dare go looking under rocks, NYT staffers, or you will be exiled by your co-workers!" I'm sure the activist groups are pushing out emails as fast as they can to friendlies in journalism and elsewhere to put up a firewall and fast.
I saw where over half of the students recently polled at Cambridge University identify as LGBT+. While it's hard for me to imagine it could possibly really be that high in any random sampling of people, I'm happy that they feel free to explore their sexuality and identities as part of the great journey of self discovery that is life. I extend said happiness to adolescents as well. The permanence of surgical and/or medical treatments for trans or sometimes gender fluid youth is scary to me because of the potential for consequence that can't be undone. I think ideologues on both sides of this issue who continually drown out any attempt by non-fucking-insane people to advance the relevant issues in a productive manner are entirely undeserving of a seat at the grown-ups table, yet they're the ones who principally seem to be weighing in. I hope more people like the woman in that story speak up.
It’s that high because “queer” is meaningless except to signify that you’re something other than straight (and therefore lame). And if you’re a gal who occasionally wears loose jeans and a plaid shirt, you are now “gender-nonconforming.” The youths are embracing the gender stereotypes of their great-grandparents.
I've heard Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss both comment on that before, and I suspect they're right in thinking that many of the purple-haired, queer-identified folk in heterosexual relationships are likely "going through a phase" or doing so out of solidarity. I'm fine with that because I remember what it's like to be young and feel happy that they can feel free in this regard to figure themselves out. If they're straight, I suspect that's the conclusion they'll eventually arrive at. If not, that's cool too. Neither one is a good criterion for evaluating what kind of person someone is.
Look for David Sedaris on YouTube coming out as straight because he is tired of all the rebranding. He mentioned a woman who said she was queer because she was tall. Calling yourself queer is a way to minoritize yourself.
I get the feeling that some of that stuff is intentional as well. I've also heard the same has been done with intersex people, who have absolutely nothing to do with gender identity, yet get dragged into the conversation nonetheless. I've also noticed that what seems like an outsized portion of what falls under the umbrella of "trans rights" could more precisely be called "trans women's rights". Efforts to create open categories in sports get called transphobic, but an open category would actually create opportunities for trans women to participate who, in spite of the effects of taking male hormones, still aren't a match for athletes who were born male, and thus wind up being excluded.
I’m surprised when the sports topic comes up a middle distance runner named Caster Semenya isn’t part of the conversation more. She’s an intersex woman from South Africa that is legally female, has been all her life, but has XY chromosomes and high levels of naturally occurring testosterone. She was forced to undergo sex testing after she won a world championship in 2009 and has not been allowed to compete in the 800m since. It doesn’t seem fair or right for her. I’m really not sure how this story fits in with all the trans stuff but it at least has some overlapping qualities and shows fairness in women’s sports has been dealing (poorly) with similar things as the trans issue for well over a decade.
I think what has been happening for years is that the trans activists have done their level best to drown out any non-fucking-insane voices. If you're smart, you stay away from this issue. Look at what happened to Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog. Their careers were humming along nicely and then they walked into a buzz saw. Everyone normal is terrified to speak up. The right wing nutters are able to speak out about because they weren't going to get cancelled by their own side.
I have my own little moment where I saw how bad the climate is. I was at a nursing in-service about five years ago, and the presenters were from Pittsburgh Children's Hospital gender clinic. After about five minutes, it became clear that these people didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. I asked the doctor about the poor quality of outcome studies, and she conceded "Yes, but we have to do something!" This is not how it works! You don't just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
The woman in the audience sitting next to me physically moved her chair away from me, and there was a little commotion as most of the people around me followed suit. I suddenly felt like a leper. I don't think I've ever been shunned like that before. It was insane.
Medicine and STEM were supposed to be the last bulwarks against this nonsense. There are too many examples to cite to show how they've failed,. I'm definitely sorry to hear about your personal experience, but I commend you highly for speaking up in the first place.
It seems particularly alarming that they would present what's obviously ideologically driven to an audience with the credentials to scrutinize it, yet no one would out of the climate of fear to openly assert a dissenting opinion. The self-identified allies willing to accept the weakest arguments fancy themselves as good people advancing a just cause but the result ends up being a flyer whose photocopies have been photocopied 500 times but proofread none. Advancing bad arguments to prove to yourself what a good person you are seems incredibly self-serving and anti-intellectual. Acting as if there isn't diversity of opinion among trans people seems like a denial of individualism, which seems like a rather insidious and potentially dangerous viewpoint.
That is astonishing. I keep wondering how many are true believers versus those who block out the questions in their head because it’s too costly to go against the grain.
I don’t see how this is considered progress. The whole civil rights fight in the context of non-heterosexual people has been to preach acceptance of whoever you may be. The current fashion is that if you are “non-conforming” to your physical body, you must chemically/physically alter it until it does conform to whatever your feelings may be at the time. Then, and only then, can you find happiness. In other words, rather than exploring who they are, these kids are exploring what gets them the most attention. The incentive is weighted towards increasing your victimhood, which is ultimately bad for both the individual and the larger society.
Great point! I wonder about that Venn diagram as well, but given yesterday's episode I'll post something I also shared on the B & R site.
This conversation with Lois Hole will gut you as she discusses why she is applying for assisted suicide after a botched/failed MTF transition--and it raises all sorts of scary questions about the brave new world to the north. The kind of SJW language is mine, but I think it accurately reflects the kinds of conversations about trans issues raise if we do consider what a robust intersectionality could offer. Lois (a charming, intelligent, and funny speaker) talks about how her voice as a First Nations person was often silenced by TRAs (mostly white and privileged in her words). She worries that adoption of Two Spirit by the LGBT community is a kind of cultural appropriation and goes so far as to see the rapid spread of gender affirming care/gender ideology among First Nations children as a kind of sterilization/reassertion of similar motives that resulted in the horrors of the Indian Residential Schools.
I'm still processing (reeling) from her story--and her pain. She feels she must die because she cannot get help for the painful complications from her surgery due to ideological capture of the health care service. It's truly heartbreaking.
The fact that after I was prepping for a course lecture the next day on eugenics in 1920s popular culture made everything she said all the more poignant--when we think of some of the troubling policies of Trudeau et. al around the world about these issues. We all remember Margaret Sanger, Jack London, etc. as prominent supporters, but I always forget that even the likes of W. E. B. Du Bois and Helen Keller were also supporters. You put that with the Yale professor's thoughts on suicide for the elderly in Japan, and you cannot help but shudder!
The only thing I could do after that day was drown my sorrows in Napa Cab and listen to TFC for a little bracing sanity!
I follow Lois on Twitter and seeing her arrive to this decision is heartbreaking. The TRA who were surely there to cheer on another convert are nowhere to be found now that Lois needs help. Inconvenient truths and all that.
With love and respect, I wonder if the NYT letter, discussed at length in this ep, makes the lads wonder if they’ve been, for lack of a better word, lax in not talking more about transmania before now. Believe me, I find it all tiresome too, but there’s no denying that it’s an issue that won’t soon go away.
Moynihan's favorite Matt Yglesias actually had a really good trans-related piece earlier today. Last paragraph sums it up well:
"Progressives like to think of themselves as being on “the right side of history” when it comes to social and cultural controversies, and tend to see solidarity on trans issues as a natural successor to supporting gay marriage and the Civil Rights Act. There is a long tradition of cultural conservatives warning that the newest liberation movement is “going too far” and being proven wrong. There is also a very long tradition of pathologizing girls and young women who don’t conform to patriarchal definitions of femininity. Progressives normally think the pathologizers are on the wrong side of history. And I think there is some reason to believe that at the intersection of clinicians who want to maximize their customer base, pharmaceutical companies that are happy to have new customers, left-wing institutions prioritizing allyship over analytical rigor, and a robust culture of anathematizing anyone who says the “wrong” thing on this topic, we are now in a new era of medicalizing teen girls’ discomfort with patriarchy while downplaying what appears to be a widespread youth mental health crisis."
Also, that was some "Get in the Ring"-level vitriol from Welch. Love it.
I would add that we are stigmatizing the natural awkwardness that comes with puberty, thus thrusting a mental illness diagnosis upon someone at a time in their lives when they're most receptive to hearing it.
Well, he smokes Marlboros and swears like Tonya but has a bum knee and loves Disneyland, like Nancy, so it's tough to say. I can confidently affirm, however, that Matt Welch is the Oxana Baiul. 🏅
I always save them for my subway rides. I'm pretty sure people on there think I'm a lunatic because I just stand there giggling to myself. Little do they know that I just witnessed Mr. Michael C. Moynihan, Esq., call the future president's dad a batty boy.
Definitely not. I usually keep an episode or two in reserve for optimal listening pleasure, and also so I can better tolerate waiting for the next episode to be released.
I clicked on 20 some NYT articles from today’a issue (long time cranky subscriber), and not one was written by anyone on that list. Who tf are these people?
So I just finished reading 'Days of Rage' by Bryan Burrough. The thread that runs through all of the people whom the author chronicles is that each person seemed to believe that America was on the cusp of a violent revolution, and that they, along with whatever very small group of rag-tag misfits they could cobble together, would be the match that set that gasoline on fire. In fact, what seemed to extinguish their dreams of toppling America was usually the realization after some number of bombings that no one else was signing up to join them (that is, if they didn't accidentally blow themselves up first, or wind up in jail).
Reading the book, it was initially hard to understand the mindset of members of Weather or the SLA. And then I hear stories like the one chronicled on TFC, where a British group puts out a list of 'disinformation' sites, paid for with American tax dollars, that's really just a political litmus test. And while I'm not going to around building pipe bombs or robbing banks in the name of some 'revolution', I think I can see how otherwise reasonable people start to lose their shit and think "I've got to do something."
BTW, that book shows up several times on the TFC book list, which is what inspired me to read it. As a Gen Xer product of the public school system, that period in American history is definitely my weakest. There were a lot of fucking bombings back then! It's one of those rare books where I feel like the writing got better and more engrossing as it went on.
Also recently finished and enjoyed “Days of Rage.” If you haven’t read Paul Berman’s “Power and the Idealists,” I would highly recommend. It addresses similar themes very compellingly. Heard Douglas Murray reference it several years ago and couldn’t put it down. Impossible to keep up with the volume of smart people and their smart books. Need some TFC-branded stimulants along with the reading list.
THANK GOD THE NYT LOCATED THEIR BALLS AT LAST!!!!! This is very, very promising news. That’s all these institutions have to do: Let the kids kick n scream and calmly say, We hear you, but...No.
Funny, on the previous podcast when they brought up who could be a replacement host and who we'd like to see more of, my first thought was, "Katherine Mangu-Ward, the answer is always Katherine Mangu-Ward"(and not just for my artificial hair color fetish). Lo and behold the very next day I get my wish! That's almost spooky.
I think it was another podcast I was listening to where they talked about how much money a store loses when they have to lock something up. It's the second to last resort tactic for them, with the last move being to shut your doors.
I love Angry Matt!
Matt's angry rant was amazing. Loved it.
$1000, motherfuckers!
I want him to get angry enough to record another Cassingle with frequent intermittent pauses for wine gulping. How do we score more of THAT guy?
Just mention online schooling.
I emailed the gents recently to say I respect their reluctance to enter the transgender fray but that I wanted them to consider that parents of neurodivergent kids can't afford to ignore it. I have long been noticing a huge overlap between trans identity and autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression. This was purely anectdotal, but I felt there was something there.
In the weeks since I sent my email, holy shit. The Tavistock book is alleging that 97.5% of the kids seeking hormonal or surgical treatment had autism, depression or other relevant mental health concerns. The Dutch Protocol had NO youth patients with diagnosed mental health conditions (beyond dysphoria). None. If you had autism or depression, you were excluded. Yet somehow the clinical application of the protocol is the reverse of the experimental research protocal -- MOST if not all of the kids have comorbitities.
Then came the Wash U/St. Louis Children's Hospital Whistleblower piece on thefp.com, which certainly got my attention. That is the hospital where my own autistic children have received their psychiatric care for years. If these lawsuits end up revealing physician names, I will no doubt know them, and they could be the very same professionals that have spent time alone with my children to afford them privacy, something I trusted them not to abuse. But if the whistleblower is to be believed, there was frequent cross referring between gender clinic and pediatric psychiatry division, and reluctant parents were bullied into consent by the spectre of suicide. This could have happened to any of my children. And the hospital has doubled down, they are not going to observe the moratorium that has been recommended to them.
So gentlemen of the Fifth, thank you for not sidestepping it this time. This is a huge story, it's not just silly culture war shit. This is impacting journalism, education, medicine and government institutions. This ideology IS in fact a religion, as one of you pointed out, and it's grown too large to be ignored, because it appears the most vulnerable victims of it are kids like mine who would love to grasp at a magical solution to all their problems of feeling lonely, awkward, depressed, etc.
Since the other side is constantly bringing up genocide, I would counter that while genocide is a ridiculous word to use in this debate, it would be more apt from the gender critical point of view. Mengele himself could never have dreamt up an ideology that not only sterilizes mentally ill children and adults, but actually convinces them to voluntarily ask for this treatment. And when it goes horribly wrong (see Lois Hole) then Canada will gladly offer them MAID.
GREAT comment.
Seconded
I have an autistic child and I have also noticed the overlap. Thank you for this comment - this issue is certainly on my mind as this child is beginning puberty.
Same
Although I think autism diagnosis is confounded by socioeconomic status, "race," and the family's culture war stances.
So I was going to post this after the last episode, because I think they came out about the same time:
https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids
...but decided against it because I thought there's probably no point, as I think the Venn diagram between listeners of TFC and readers of The Free Press probably intersects a great deal. But I think posting it now is relevant, as I think this may be the driver behind the NYT letter that the gentlemen (and Moynihan) were discussing after KMW left. I think there's a lot more people like this who are thinking of coming forward with their own horror stories, and the activist groups are trying to get out ahead of it. "Don't you dare go looking under rocks, NYT staffers, or you will be exiled by your co-workers!" I'm sure the activist groups are pushing out emails as fast as they can to friendlies in journalism and elsewhere to put up a firewall and fast.
I saw where over half of the students recently polled at Cambridge University identify as LGBT+. While it's hard for me to imagine it could possibly really be that high in any random sampling of people, I'm happy that they feel free to explore their sexuality and identities as part of the great journey of self discovery that is life. I extend said happiness to adolescents as well. The permanence of surgical and/or medical treatments for trans or sometimes gender fluid youth is scary to me because of the potential for consequence that can't be undone. I think ideologues on both sides of this issue who continually drown out any attempt by non-fucking-insane people to advance the relevant issues in a productive manner are entirely undeserving of a seat at the grown-ups table, yet they're the ones who principally seem to be weighing in. I hope more people like the woman in that story speak up.
It’s that high because “queer” is meaningless except to signify that you’re something other than straight (and therefore lame). And if you’re a gal who occasionally wears loose jeans and a plaid shirt, you are now “gender-nonconforming.” The youths are embracing the gender stereotypes of their great-grandparents.
I've heard Andrew Sullivan and Bari Weiss both comment on that before, and I suspect they're right in thinking that many of the purple-haired, queer-identified folk in heterosexual relationships are likely "going through a phase" or doing so out of solidarity. I'm fine with that because I remember what it's like to be young and feel happy that they can feel free in this regard to figure themselves out. If they're straight, I suspect that's the conclusion they'll eventually arrive at. If not, that's cool too. Neither one is a good criterion for evaluating what kind of person someone is.
Look for David Sedaris on YouTube coming out as straight because he is tired of all the rebranding. He mentioned a woman who said she was queer because she was tall. Calling yourself queer is a way to minoritize yourself.
Ha! I remember him saying that too. 😂
I mostly agree, but there’s a conflation of queer and GNC with trans by some activist organizations that confuses normies, I think deliberately.
I get the feeling that some of that stuff is intentional as well. I've also heard the same has been done with intersex people, who have absolutely nothing to do with gender identity, yet get dragged into the conversation nonetheless. I've also noticed that what seems like an outsized portion of what falls under the umbrella of "trans rights" could more precisely be called "trans women's rights". Efforts to create open categories in sports get called transphobic, but an open category would actually create opportunities for trans women to participate who, in spite of the effects of taking male hormones, still aren't a match for athletes who were born male, and thus wind up being excluded.
I’m surprised when the sports topic comes up a middle distance runner named Caster Semenya isn’t part of the conversation more. She’s an intersex woman from South Africa that is legally female, has been all her life, but has XY chromosomes and high levels of naturally occurring testosterone. She was forced to undergo sex testing after she won a world championship in 2009 and has not been allowed to compete in the 800m since. It doesn’t seem fair or right for her. I’m really not sure how this story fits in with all the trans stuff but it at least has some overlapping qualities and shows fairness in women’s sports has been dealing (poorly) with similar things as the trans issue for well over a decade.
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/sports/2021/2/28/caster-semenyas-fight-is-for-all-women-lawyer-says
I think what has been happening for years is that the trans activists have done their level best to drown out any non-fucking-insane voices. If you're smart, you stay away from this issue. Look at what happened to Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog. Their careers were humming along nicely and then they walked into a buzz saw. Everyone normal is terrified to speak up. The right wing nutters are able to speak out about because they weren't going to get cancelled by their own side.
I have my own little moment where I saw how bad the climate is. I was at a nursing in-service about five years ago, and the presenters were from Pittsburgh Children's Hospital gender clinic. After about five minutes, it became clear that these people didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. I asked the doctor about the poor quality of outcome studies, and she conceded "Yes, but we have to do something!" This is not how it works! You don't just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
The woman in the audience sitting next to me physically moved her chair away from me, and there was a little commotion as most of the people around me followed suit. I suddenly felt like a leper. I don't think I've ever been shunned like that before. It was insane.
Medicine and STEM were supposed to be the last bulwarks against this nonsense. There are too many examples to cite to show how they've failed,. I'm definitely sorry to hear about your personal experience, but I commend you highly for speaking up in the first place.
Yeah, I chronically have a case of the fuck-its! It's a liability at times.
We need Billy Joel to step up and create a new curriculum. "Don't go changin' just to please me... I love you just the way you are!"
It seems particularly alarming that they would present what's obviously ideologically driven to an audience with the credentials to scrutinize it, yet no one would out of the climate of fear to openly assert a dissenting opinion. The self-identified allies willing to accept the weakest arguments fancy themselves as good people advancing a just cause but the result ends up being a flyer whose photocopies have been photocopied 500 times but proofread none. Advancing bad arguments to prove to yourself what a good person you are seems incredibly self-serving and anti-intellectual. Acting as if there isn't diversity of opinion among trans people seems like a denial of individualism, which seems like a rather insidious and potentially dangerous viewpoint.
That is astonishing. I keep wondering how many are true believers versus those who block out the questions in their head because it’s too costly to go against the grain.
I don’t see how this is considered progress. The whole civil rights fight in the context of non-heterosexual people has been to preach acceptance of whoever you may be. The current fashion is that if you are “non-conforming” to your physical body, you must chemically/physically alter it until it does conform to whatever your feelings may be at the time. Then, and only then, can you find happiness. In other words, rather than exploring who they are, these kids are exploring what gets them the most attention. The incentive is weighted towards increasing your victimhood, which is ultimately bad for both the individual and the larger society.
I don't either. This activism seems regressive for everyone involved.
Yes 🙌
Great point! I wonder about that Venn diagram as well, but given yesterday's episode I'll post something I also shared on the B & R site.
This conversation with Lois Hole will gut you as she discusses why she is applying for assisted suicide after a botched/failed MTF transition--and it raises all sorts of scary questions about the brave new world to the north. The kind of SJW language is mine, but I think it accurately reflects the kinds of conversations about trans issues raise if we do consider what a robust intersectionality could offer. Lois (a charming, intelligent, and funny speaker) talks about how her voice as a First Nations person was often silenced by TRAs (mostly white and privileged in her words). She worries that adoption of Two Spirit by the LGBT community is a kind of cultural appropriation and goes so far as to see the rapid spread of gender affirming care/gender ideology among First Nations children as a kind of sterilization/reassertion of similar motives that resulted in the horrors of the Indian Residential Schools.
I'm still processing (reeling) from her story--and her pain. She feels she must die because she cannot get help for the painful complications from her surgery due to ideological capture of the health care service. It's truly heartbreaking.
The fact that after I was prepping for a course lecture the next day on eugenics in 1920s popular culture made everything she said all the more poignant--when we think of some of the troubling policies of Trudeau et. al around the world about these issues. We all remember Margaret Sanger, Jack London, etc. as prominent supporters, but I always forget that even the likes of W. E. B. Du Bois and Helen Keller were also supporters. You put that with the Yale professor's thoughts on suicide for the elderly in Japan, and you cannot help but shudder!
The only thing I could do after that day was drown my sorrows in Napa Cab and listen to TFC for a little bracing sanity!
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/calmversations/id1447774150?i=1000595947524&fbclid=IwAR2SwlMpqaiTtiMzC5gLbVQu4kzGZpeKQ2-XF0ppEm7iI_NCIPN0UbriK_0
I follow Lois on Twitter and seeing her arrive to this decision is heartbreaking. The TRA who were surely there to cheer on another convert are nowhere to be found now that Lois needs help. Inconvenient truths and all that.
With love and respect, I wonder if the NYT letter, discussed at length in this ep, makes the lads wonder if they’ve been, for lack of a better word, lax in not talking more about transmania before now. Believe me, I find it all tiresome too, but there’s no denying that it’s an issue that won’t soon go away.
Moynihan's favorite Matt Yglesias actually had a really good trans-related piece earlier today. Last paragraph sums it up well:
"Progressives like to think of themselves as being on “the right side of history” when it comes to social and cultural controversies, and tend to see solidarity on trans issues as a natural successor to supporting gay marriage and the Civil Rights Act. There is a long tradition of cultural conservatives warning that the newest liberation movement is “going too far” and being proven wrong. There is also a very long tradition of pathologizing girls and young women who don’t conform to patriarchal definitions of femininity. Progressives normally think the pathologizers are on the wrong side of history. And I think there is some reason to believe that at the intersection of clinicians who want to maximize their customer base, pharmaceutical companies that are happy to have new customers, left-wing institutions prioritizing allyship over analytical rigor, and a robust culture of anathematizing anyone who says the “wrong” thing on this topic, we are now in a new era of medicalizing teen girls’ discomfort with patriarchy while downplaying what appears to be a widespread youth mental health crisis."
Also, that was some "Get in the Ring"-level vitriol from Welch. Love it.
I would add that we are stigmatizing the natural awkwardness that comes with puberty, thus thrusting a mental illness diagnosis upon someone at a time in their lives when they're most receptive to hearing it.
Preach.
Agree on both counts! ❤️❤️🫰
Good piece by Jonathan Chait about the NYT letter. I’m so disappointed to see names I know on that signatory list. What insane trash https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/nytimes-letter-trans-gender-youth-accountability.html
Ugh
I know some of them personally and have hung out with them. I’m with Matt. I never want to run into them again.
I haven’t seen them since the pandemic so whole new world! There was zero hate in their hearts for the NYT back then.
"Nothing is real, and everything you say is killing people," wow, that really sums it all up. I would buy the sticker or the t-shirt!
Justin Amash, the Jeff Gillooly of podcasters.
So is Nick Gillespie the Tonya?
Well, he smokes Marlboros and swears like Tonya but has a bum knee and loves Disneyland, like Nancy, so it's tough to say. I can confidently affirm, however, that Matt Welch is the Oxana Baiul. 🏅
Great. Now I have an image of Matt in spandex like Will Arnet in Blades of Steel!
Am I the only person who saves the podcast for later so I can listen all at once ?
I save the best for when I’m making dinner 🙌🏼
I like to listen while I'm cooking dinner, but some episodes need a N---a Warning so I know to listen on my headphones
I always save them for my subway rides. I'm pretty sure people on there think I'm a lunatic because I just stand there giggling to myself. Little do they know that I just witnessed Mr. Michael C. Moynihan, Esq., call the future president's dad a batty boy.
I listen when I run, and I'm sure people think I'm a lunatic, laughing and talking to myself as I run past them in the woods.
The exact same scenario here: "Of COURSE that only happens on Twitter, Kmele!"
I like to listen on the ride home. I fall asleep listening to the sweet voices, then rewind when I get off and re listen
You sound like a dangerous driver. But so as to not end on a negative note, I do like that we're all sharing.
I ride the subway so sometimes it’s dangerous. Also Moynihan is 100% correct
I love how you went straight to "Yeah, Jmac just casually admitted to randomly crashing into everything on the commute". Thanks for the laugh you two.
Definitely not. I usually keep an episode or two in reserve for optimal listening pleasure, and also so I can better tolerate waiting for the next episode to be released.
Smart!
I like to listen while I workout. I even almost always skip Second Sundays so I can have the episode for later.
The trick with Second Sunday is to drink heavily during it so that by the time the episode comes out, it'll feel all-new.
I get so lost in the comments that when I re-listen a lot of it is new to me!
I clicked on 20 some NYT articles from today’a issue (long time cranky subscriber), and not one was written by anyone on that list. Who tf are these people?
🤣
So I just finished reading 'Days of Rage' by Bryan Burrough. The thread that runs through all of the people whom the author chronicles is that each person seemed to believe that America was on the cusp of a violent revolution, and that they, along with whatever very small group of rag-tag misfits they could cobble together, would be the match that set that gasoline on fire. In fact, what seemed to extinguish their dreams of toppling America was usually the realization after some number of bombings that no one else was signing up to join them (that is, if they didn't accidentally blow themselves up first, or wind up in jail).
Reading the book, it was initially hard to understand the mindset of members of Weather or the SLA. And then I hear stories like the one chronicled on TFC, where a British group puts out a list of 'disinformation' sites, paid for with American tax dollars, that's really just a political litmus test. And while I'm not going to around building pipe bombs or robbing banks in the name of some 'revolution', I think I can see how otherwise reasonable people start to lose their shit and think "I've got to do something."
BTW, that book shows up several times on the TFC book list, which is what inspired me to read it. As a Gen Xer product of the public school system, that period in American history is definitely my weakest. There were a lot of fucking bombings back then! It's one of those rare books where I feel like the writing got better and more engrossing as it went on.
I need to read that
Also recently finished and enjoyed “Days of Rage.” If you haven’t read Paul Berman’s “Power and the Idealists,” I would highly recommend. It addresses similar themes very compellingly. Heard Douglas Murray reference it several years ago and couldn’t put it down. Impossible to keep up with the volume of smart people and their smart books. Need some TFC-branded stimulants along with the reading list.
Hey Kmele, Red Box cities don't have locked-down drug stores. Just sayin'.
Nice callback!
San Francisco and NYC have Redboxes. Kmele has probably never lived anywhere that wasn't close to a redbox
He's in utter denial about Redbox ubiquity.
THANK GOD THE NYT LOCATED THEIR BALLS AT LAST!!!!! This is very, very promising news. That’s all these institutions have to do: Let the kids kick n scream and calmly say, We hear you, but...No.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Funny, on the previous podcast when they brought up who could be a replacement host and who we'd like to see more of, my first thought was, "Katherine Mangu-Ward, the answer is always Katherine Mangu-Ward"(and not just for my artificial hair color fetish). Lo and behold the very next day I get my wish! That's almost spooky.
Made it an entire 45 seconds before this went entirely off the rails. Excellent start.
I think it was another podcast I was listening to where they talked about how much money a store loses when they have to lock something up. It's the second to last resort tactic for them, with the last move being to shut your doors.
Interesting!