Health Secretary Victoria Atkins claims that the Cass Report shows that “fashionable cultural values” have become more important than “evidence, safety, and biological reality” in modern society. However, the Cass report only finds 10 desisters out of 3499 trans people whose cases were reviewed. That seems to be good evidence that practitioners are not pushing care on unwilling people. Moreover, the report does not have good evidence that safety of patients is being compromised. The report also recommends spending a lot of money to make gender-affirming care available in more clinics. For using the report to push her own ideas, even when the report seems to point the other way, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins gets a Twit Award. PinkNews has this story.
The New York Times has been criticized recently for running opinion pieces which are critical of gender-affirming care, and which seem to use questionable research. This week, David Brooks cites the Cass Report in an opinion piece, calling Dr. Cass, “the kind of hero the world needs today.” Yet, and we just noted, she raises concerns about the lack of double-blind studies while using studies which are not double-blind to support her findings. Dr. Cass’s report finds only 10 patients who quit gender-affirming care, not some huge number of desisters. For turning Dr. Cass and her team into heroes, David Brooks gets a Twit Award.. His opinion piece is at the New York Times website.
An opinion piece in the right-leaning National Post also talks of the Cass Report, saying that the rise in teens seeking gender-related care is evidence of a “social contagion.” That term is actually from the work of Dr. Lisa Littman, a sociologist, not a medical doctor. She gathered her data by talking to parents who hang out at anti-transgender social media platforms, where they reinforce each other’s opinions. Yet, she generalizes her results to include patients with supportive parents. For bringing bad evidence into the debate, the National Post gets a Twit Award.
The National Review has an article about a transgender high school student, Alex Ye, who was arrested for allegedly plottiing to do a school shooting. While we do not condone planning or committing school shootings, we have a problem with an article that deliberately misgenders and deadnames a transgender person. For obsessing in a hatred of transgender people, the National Review gets a Twit Award.
Drenda Keesee is a pastor, a right-wing extremist, and a Republican candidate running unopposed for a seat on the county commission in Knox County, Ohio. She has written a book about a conspiracy to push transgenderism on your children. She goes a step further and claims, “These children’s souls are at stake. . .demonic spirits are attacking them, and satanic hordes are infiltrating them and even possessing their bodies.” Of course, she has no solid evidence that there is demonic possession going on, but that does not stop her from insisting that her opponents must be possessed by demons. For rushing to a very questionable conclusion (even priests who are called in to perform exorcisms confess that nearly all reports of demonic possession are false claims), Drenda Keesee gets a Twit Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story.
A bill which would make it a felony to “recruit” transgender youth has made it out of the Tennessee state Senate. For seeing a conspiracy among your political enemies, and for punishing people for political beliefs which differ from yours, the Tennessee Senate gets a Twit Award. This story comes from Erin Reed.
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Category: Transgender Opinion
