“ I was raised to believe in the core principles of the Democratic Party, which includes the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society.l
I wish I could be relaxed. I wish I could just be cool. But this is so obviously not true it’s hard to allow myself past this sentence. I choose to force myself to learn something from this and so I choose to ponder the idea that this sentence is in fact how Democrats view themselves. Perhaps she believes it is true.
Curious. The defining characteristic of the Democrat party, and the reason I left it as a gay man, is because of their heinous distrust of individuality and the need to control others in the false name of the “greater good.” From an almost guttural level I reject any claims of the “greater good” as I know what that really means. It means their greater good at your greater expense.
As a career surgeon, especially, the Hippocratic Oath returns to haunt those who forget it. Always. And it is a shame that medical schools now do not require even reading it, let alone a pledge to follow it.
There is no question in my mind that the surgical manipulation of normally functioning tissue and organs to crate an illusion of something else is fraught. To an extent that also includes purely cosmetic surgery. Just watch a few episodes of “Botched.”
Gender transitioning medication and surgery is a serious matter and one-way street with no good return path.
Minors cannot drink or vote, and cannot sign a surgical consent form for anything else but this.
Pure insanity driven by a political fringe. This will go down in the flames of medical misadventure like no other procedure before or after.
This seems contradictory to me: "For as long as I can remember, I believed in and fought for transgender rights. My peers and I rebelled against the idea of strict gender roles and gender conformity. The old ideas of what a man and woman had to be were outdated and repressive. But we attacked these problems by trying to change the culture, not by irrevocably changing our bodies." If you rebel against strict gender roles, shouldn't you realize that you can retain your biological gender even if you don't fit those gender roles? Isn't it being more true to yourself to be the kind of man or woman you are, rather than try to change your gender?
"But when we started to wise up, it didn’t mean my entire liberal worldview evaporated. If anything, it just reinforced my views."
I had the opposite experience. I started to wise up when my historically happy and non-dysphoric daughter changed her name and pronouns behind my back, aided and abetted by our local Marxist Indoctrination Factory, aka her high school. That started a cascade of "evaporation." My entire leftist worldview was annihilated. From covid to climate change, immigration to abortion, systemic racism to Republicans being branded as mouth-breathing bigots, I woke the fuck up and will never vote democrat again.
That said, I am still tremendously thankful for her blowing the whistle.
Her background, worldview and way of life are the exact opposite of mine. It must have taken agonizing self-reflection to undertake the whistleblowing. It makes me think that the conditions and activities at that clinic were even worse than we can imagine, diabolical. Despite her misguided beliefs, I am almost awestruck by her courage - a heroine who was prepared to face the dreadful wrath of her family, friends, peers, the left-wing and in fact half the country.
The political left in which I spent most of my life has a hard, mean edge these days. I will not soon forget the really outrageous calls for unvaccinated people to be rounded up and exiled from society or banned from hospitals. Noam Chomsky was one of these voices. Never was it deemed pertinent to mention that Pfizer, a company that has previously paid a record-breaking 2.3 billion dollar fine for healthcare marketing fraud, had no liability for its product which also did not prevent transmission. The left’s position was rigid, sanctimonious and frankly stupid. I’ll do my own thinking, thanks! I notice now supposedly progressive journalists fail to examine the subsequent numbers of excess deaths and disability which are appalling and seem to correlate with the vaccine rollout. Intellectually very dishonest.
A well-stated story. I agree with Ms. Reed in her concern for surgery and other medical procedures on minors, and am grateful for her courage in facing the zealots who advocate for those procedures, as well as those calmer people who simply disagree with her (and me).
"The left I know believes that science is real. We accept scientific evidence even if it contradicts our political talking points."
I don't agree with her characterization of the political left, in fact it is the opposite of my own observations, but if the only other choice is the Republican party...well, I'm hoping and praying for better from both in 2024, against all experience and odds. You never know.
If I were to choose sexual preferences for a mother of five, I'm pretty sure "queer woman married to a transman" wouldn't make the top ten because I don't understand it at all. But I would choose "courageous, intelligent, and concerned" as desirable qualities in any parent or citizen, and Ms. Reed seems to have those qualities. I wish her and her family well.
The problem of how to treat gender dysphoria is a medical and psychological problem. The fact that this has been entangled in politics is more evidence that progressive thinking is fundamentally flawed.
As a retired educator, I have seen in the past three years about two dozen students, all who were designated “special ed” In elementary school changer genders. I live in the town I taught in. One high school. That so many young people suddenly changed gender - a few in 6 and 7 th grade, more by 8th grade and the majority by 9th is shocking. The young people I know all came from one elementary school. There are two more in town, so I don’t know about those students. What I can say is the majority of those transitioned students, about 80% came from chaotic homes, with poor life choices constantly on display by their custodial parent or parents. Most of these students were emotionally immature, unable to negotiate even the least bit of frustration, unable to accept basic class rules - when you finish three problems, then you can take a break, and challenging every class expectation with the “but what if...?” Rejoinder. None of these students were designated, on the spectrum of autism. Are they doing better now that they are trans men and women teens? Are they more emotionally mature that they are taking powerful hormones? From what I’ve heard the answer is no. The scattered, disruptive and destructive behaviors have only grown with there troubled humans. Throwing hormone blockers has changed nothing. But it was easier for the parents to say, “see my behavior had nothing to do with my child’s problems. They were born in the wrong body.”
Free Press- once again, thank you for publishing this type of writing- it is so important. I teach family law at DePaul Law School. After Gavin Newsom vetoed a state bill that would have denied parents who opposed gender affirming care a preference for custody in a divorce case, I devoted about a half hour of class to discussing Jamie Reed's initial piece (and the quiet of the media in response until the NYT's piece). Not surprisingly, most students thought parents who deny kids this care are simply bad parents. I make a point to get my students to see both sides although I'm still not sure how many were ultimately convinced. But I will say this--her language about the comparative merit of the Democratic Party is not helpful overall from a societal standpoint- I would gently suggest that Jamie (whom I do admire) read Jonthan Haidt's wonderful book The Righteous MInd so she can understand that good people are on both political sides. And today's problems are largely driven by society's failure to accept this truth.
The best smackdown for this phenomenon I ever saw was the brilliant response to a young woman now embarrassed that she had sleeved out her entire arm with Harry Potter tattoos (because of JKR being a “TERF”):
“It’s almost like making irreversible alterations to your body at a young age is a really bad idea.”
Hello from the other side of the galaxy 👋 where we never gave up our beliefs and right to stand up for at least *some* traditional values, and not go along with illiberal group think that maligns people’s character who don’t agree. I appreciate what she’s doing, and the courage it takes to go against the groupthink around transgenderism.. but, let’s also be honest. When parents who don’t want this stuff normalized, are called “extremists”, and those who don’t go along with every pronoun from here to Timbuktu are called “fascists” and “bigots”, there’s a whole lot more to back up from that just the most extreme parking lot. Kids don’t need this ideology, and that includes a lot more than just the normalization of gender "affirming" surgeries and puberty blockers. With schools already strapped for funding, good teachers, and meaningful academics, this stuff (transgenderism, over-sexualization , decolonization, etc) are what activist teachers are fighting for? Really?! Am I wrong here? Or does anyone else also feel this way?
I am glad she finally blew the whistle. But Ms Reed is the poster child for the anarchy activist. Radical thinking, change for its own sake, violent actions, incomplete rationale. Her good intentions made no sense to start with. Kudos for coming clean, but really, how do you get into such a nonsensical position in the first place?
The Left couches every issue like this. Masks, vaccine mandates, abortion, trans, anti-capitalism, climate change, BLM, Hamas, etc. It's all wild-eyed "sky is falling" brinkmanship.
Politics may have replaced religion for them, but they are no less zealous or factually baseless.
If we are to judge people, one key metric would be the extent to which their actions and advocacy have improved the lives of their fellow human beings.
On that metric, Jamie Reed would clearly rate top marks.
“ I was raised to believe in the core principles of the Democratic Party, which includes the willingness to sacrifice one’s individual needs for the good of the collective society.l
I wish I could be relaxed. I wish I could just be cool. But this is so obviously not true it’s hard to allow myself past this sentence. I choose to force myself to learn something from this and so I choose to ponder the idea that this sentence is in fact how Democrats view themselves. Perhaps she believes it is true.
Curious. The defining characteristic of the Democrat party, and the reason I left it as a gay man, is because of their heinous distrust of individuality and the need to control others in the false name of the “greater good.” From an almost guttural level I reject any claims of the “greater good” as I know what that really means. It means their greater good at your greater expense.
As a career surgeon, especially, the Hippocratic Oath returns to haunt those who forget it. Always. And it is a shame that medical schools now do not require even reading it, let alone a pledge to follow it.
There is no question in my mind that the surgical manipulation of normally functioning tissue and organs to crate an illusion of something else is fraught. To an extent that also includes purely cosmetic surgery. Just watch a few episodes of “Botched.”
Gender transitioning medication and surgery is a serious matter and one-way street with no good return path.
Minors cannot drink or vote, and cannot sign a surgical consent form for anything else but this.
Pure insanity driven by a political fringe. This will go down in the flames of medical misadventure like no other procedure before or after.
This seems contradictory to me: "For as long as I can remember, I believed in and fought for transgender rights. My peers and I rebelled against the idea of strict gender roles and gender conformity. The old ideas of what a man and woman had to be were outdated and repressive. But we attacked these problems by trying to change the culture, not by irrevocably changing our bodies." If you rebel against strict gender roles, shouldn't you realize that you can retain your biological gender even if you don't fit those gender roles? Isn't it being more true to yourself to be the kind of man or woman you are, rather than try to change your gender?
"But when we started to wise up, it didn’t mean my entire liberal worldview evaporated. If anything, it just reinforced my views."
I had the opposite experience. I started to wise up when my historically happy and non-dysphoric daughter changed her name and pronouns behind my back, aided and abetted by our local Marxist Indoctrination Factory, aka her high school. That started a cascade of "evaporation." My entire leftist worldview was annihilated. From covid to climate change, immigration to abortion, systemic racism to Republicans being branded as mouth-breathing bigots, I woke the fuck up and will never vote democrat again.
That said, I am still tremendously thankful for her blowing the whistle.
Her background, worldview and way of life are the exact opposite of mine. It must have taken agonizing self-reflection to undertake the whistleblowing. It makes me think that the conditions and activities at that clinic were even worse than we can imagine, diabolical. Despite her misguided beliefs, I am almost awestruck by her courage - a heroine who was prepared to face the dreadful wrath of her family, friends, peers, the left-wing and in fact half the country.
The political left in which I spent most of my life has a hard, mean edge these days. I will not soon forget the really outrageous calls for unvaccinated people to be rounded up and exiled from society or banned from hospitals. Noam Chomsky was one of these voices. Never was it deemed pertinent to mention that Pfizer, a company that has previously paid a record-breaking 2.3 billion dollar fine for healthcare marketing fraud, had no liability for its product which also did not prevent transmission. The left’s position was rigid, sanctimonious and frankly stupid. I’ll do my own thinking, thanks! I notice now supposedly progressive journalists fail to examine the subsequent numbers of excess deaths and disability which are appalling and seem to correlate with the vaccine rollout. Intellectually very dishonest.
A well-stated story. I agree with Ms. Reed in her concern for surgery and other medical procedures on minors, and am grateful for her courage in facing the zealots who advocate for those procedures, as well as those calmer people who simply disagree with her (and me).
"The left I know believes that science is real. We accept scientific evidence even if it contradicts our political talking points."
I don't agree with her characterization of the political left, in fact it is the opposite of my own observations, but if the only other choice is the Republican party...well, I'm hoping and praying for better from both in 2024, against all experience and odds. You never know.
If I were to choose sexual preferences for a mother of five, I'm pretty sure "queer woman married to a transman" wouldn't make the top ten because I don't understand it at all. But I would choose "courageous, intelligent, and concerned" as desirable qualities in any parent or citizen, and Ms. Reed seems to have those qualities. I wish her and her family well.
The problem of how to treat gender dysphoria is a medical and psychological problem. The fact that this has been entangled in politics is more evidence that progressive thinking is fundamentally flawed.
As a retired educator, I have seen in the past three years about two dozen students, all who were designated “special ed” In elementary school changer genders. I live in the town I taught in. One high school. That so many young people suddenly changed gender - a few in 6 and 7 th grade, more by 8th grade and the majority by 9th is shocking. The young people I know all came from one elementary school. There are two more in town, so I don’t know about those students. What I can say is the majority of those transitioned students, about 80% came from chaotic homes, with poor life choices constantly on display by their custodial parent or parents. Most of these students were emotionally immature, unable to negotiate even the least bit of frustration, unable to accept basic class rules - when you finish three problems, then you can take a break, and challenging every class expectation with the “but what if...?” Rejoinder. None of these students were designated, on the spectrum of autism. Are they doing better now that they are trans men and women teens? Are they more emotionally mature that they are taking powerful hormones? From what I’ve heard the answer is no. The scattered, disruptive and destructive behaviors have only grown with there troubled humans. Throwing hormone blockers has changed nothing. But it was easier for the parents to say, “see my behavior had nothing to do with my child’s problems. They were born in the wrong body.”
Free Press- once again, thank you for publishing this type of writing- it is so important. I teach family law at DePaul Law School. After Gavin Newsom vetoed a state bill that would have denied parents who opposed gender affirming care a preference for custody in a divorce case, I devoted about a half hour of class to discussing Jamie Reed's initial piece (and the quiet of the media in response until the NYT's piece). Not surprisingly, most students thought parents who deny kids this care are simply bad parents. I make a point to get my students to see both sides although I'm still not sure how many were ultimately convinced. But I will say this--her language about the comparative merit of the Democratic Party is not helpful overall from a societal standpoint- I would gently suggest that Jamie (whom I do admire) read Jonthan Haidt's wonderful book The Righteous MInd so she can understand that good people are on both political sides. And today's problems are largely driven by society's failure to accept this truth.
The best smackdown for this phenomenon I ever saw was the brilliant response to a young woman now embarrassed that she had sleeved out her entire arm with Harry Potter tattoos (because of JKR being a “TERF”):
“It’s almost like making irreversible alterations to your body at a young age is a really bad idea.”
Hello from the other side of the galaxy 👋 where we never gave up our beliefs and right to stand up for at least *some* traditional values, and not go along with illiberal group think that maligns people’s character who don’t agree. I appreciate what she’s doing, and the courage it takes to go against the groupthink around transgenderism.. but, let’s also be honest. When parents who don’t want this stuff normalized, are called “extremists”, and those who don’t go along with every pronoun from here to Timbuktu are called “fascists” and “bigots”, there’s a whole lot more to back up from that just the most extreme parking lot. Kids don’t need this ideology, and that includes a lot more than just the normalization of gender "affirming" surgeries and puberty blockers. With schools already strapped for funding, good teachers, and meaningful academics, this stuff (transgenderism, over-sexualization , decolonization, etc) are what activist teachers are fighting for? Really?! Am I wrong here? Or does anyone else also feel this way?
I am glad she finally blew the whistle. But Ms Reed is the poster child for the anarchy activist. Radical thinking, change for its own sake, violent actions, incomplete rationale. Her good intentions made no sense to start with. Kudos for coming clean, but really, how do you get into such a nonsensical position in the first place?
"....a showdown between the right and left"
The Left couches every issue like this. Masks, vaccine mandates, abortion, trans, anti-capitalism, climate change, BLM, Hamas, etc. It's all wild-eyed "sky is falling" brinkmanship.
Politics may have replaced religion for them, but they are no less zealous or factually baseless.
A long journey begns with one step. She has far to go.
Five kids, but she’s gender confused? How does a transman husband impregnate?
If we are to judge people, one key metric would be the extent to which their actions and advocacy have improved the lives of their fellow human beings.
On that metric, Jamie Reed would clearly rate top marks.