#Lisa Selin Davis

[outstanding-quotes]

Most of us want to live in a society where we do feel like we owe something to one another, paying in collectively and withdrawing individually as needed. We just haven’t figured out what, or how much, or how to fund it.

Lisa Selin Davis, Housewife

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Lisa Selin Davis

Published: Apr 11, 2024

A long-awaited report out this week found that medical professionals in the UK who advocate for gender transition in children are misguided ideologues.

Written by British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, The Cass Review, which is nearly 400 pages and took more than four years to compile, comes to the following conclusions:

Thousands of vulnerable young people were given life-altering treatments with “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” 

“It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population, but the evidence found did not support this conclusion.”

“Social justice” ideology is driving medical decision-making, and “the toxicity of the debate” has created an environment “where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views.”

Activists insist the science on this matter is settled, but Cass’s tone recalls a stern British nanny calmly explaining to unruly children how to get their room in order. She shows us that everything about this issue is unsettled, and unsettling. For instance, she notes that “social transition”—when very young children assume other gender identities—is an “active intervention” that may set youths on a path to medical transition. And it may even make gender dysphoria worse.

The review, commissioned by England’s National Health Service, comes after more than a decade of whistleblowing by clinicians at the country’s Gender Identity Development Services, or GIDS, which was established in 1989 (but mostly off the radar for its first 20 years, because few children and families sought its services). 

These whistleblowers detailed how kids were fast-tracked to medication while a culture of fear grew around raising any concerns, even as demand for youth gender medicine exploded. Eventually, the NHS decommissioned GIDS and hired the neutral, no-nonsense Cass to detail what went wrong and what to do right moving forward.

Her report made the further damning conclusions:

Clinicians “are unable to reliably predict which children/young people will transition successfully and which might regret or detransition at a later date.”

A disproportionate number of patients were “birth registered females presenting in adolescence. . . . a different cohort from that looked at by earlier studies.”

Many parents feared their children had been medicalized by professionals who didn’t take other difficulties into account, “such as loss of a parent, traumatic illness, diagnosis of neurodiversity, and isolation or bullying in school.”

There is a lack of strong evidence to show that puberty blockers “may improve gender dysphoria or overall mental health.”

The majority of gender-dysphoric patients in early studies found that their symptoms desisted during puberty, with most coming out as gay or bisexual later.

Cass notes that “for most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.” She supports expanding the treatment to regional, holistic centers, essentially ending the specialist gender clinic model. That treatment should be based on unbiased psychological care, and robust and consistent evaluation tools must be developed so reliable evidence can finally be gathered. 

This final report—and an interim one Cass issued in 2022—echoes what a number of Western nations, such as Finland and Sweden, have found when they reviewed their own youth gender services. It also underscores what we see in the United States: poor quality research, an unstudied population, and detransitioners traumatized by the treatment they received.

Today, red states are banning the medicalization of gender dysphoric youth, while some blue states have declared themselves medical sanctuaries for minors seeking transition. Medical associations—from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the American Psychological Association—continue to support the “affirmative” model criticized by Cass in her report. 

In her review, Cass directly addresses the 9,000 young people who have moved through gender treatments via the NHS, stating bluntly: research “has let us all down, most importantly you.” 

The U.S. needs to form a truly bipartisan commission that looks at the evidence regarding youth gender medicine. As things stand now, we will continue to be stuck in a perpetual culture war, with parents and distressed kids paying the price.

[ncttcday]

books i read in 2025

recapping my reads of this year, organized in order in which i read them. you can see my reviews on my goodreads and storygraph

1. cultish: the language of fanaticism - amanda montell // 4.0⭐️// read jan 6

2. twisted lies - ana huang // 0.5⭐️// read from jan 7 - jan 13

3. the hidden staircase: nancy drew mysteries #2 - carolyn keene // 3.0⭐️// read from sep 23, 2022 - jan 14, 2025

4. the bungalow mystery: nancy drew mysteries #3 - carolyn keene // 4.0⭐️// read from jan 14 - jan 15

5. first lie wins - ashley elston // 4.0⭐ // read feb 28

6. the covenant of water - abraham verghese // 3.0⭐️ // read from mar 2 - mar 6

7. summer romance - annabel monaghan // 5.0⭐️ // read from mar 7 - mar 8

8. one of us knows - alyssa cole // 4.0⭐️ // read from mar 8 - mar 9

9. thank you for listening - julia whelan // 5.0⭐️ // read from mar 9 - mar 10

10. housewife: why women still do it all and what to do instead - lisa selin davis // 3.5⭐️ // read from mar 10 - mar 11

11. nora goes off script - annabel monaghan // 3.0⭐️ // read from mar 18 - mar 31

12. immortal longings - chloe gong // 2.0⭐️ // read from apr 23 - apr 27

13. summer reading - jenn mckinlay // 2.5⭐️ // read from apr 21 - apr 28

14. spectacular - stephanie garber // 2.0⭐ // read may 5

15. malibu summer - libby gill // 3.0⭐ // read from apr 28 - may 6

16. this is how you lose the time war - amal el-mohtar // 5.0⭐ // read may 6

17. the paradise problem - christina lauren // 4.0⭐ // read from may 6 - may 7

18. vera wong's unsolicited advice for murderers - jesse q. sutanto // 4.0⭐ // read from may 8 - may 9

19. kill her twice - stacey lee // 3.0⭐️ // read from may 9 - may 30

20. crying in h mart - michelle zauner // 5.0⭐️ // read from may 30 - jun 23

21. a novel love story - ashley poston // 3.5⭐ // read from jun 23 - jun 24

22. the wedding people - alison espach // 5.0⭐️ // read from jun 24 - jun 26

23. atmosphere - taylor jenkins reid // 5.0⭐ // read from jun 26 - jun 30

24. dead romantics - ashley poston // 2.5⭐️ // read from jun 30 - jul 2

25. the roughest draft - emily wibberley & austin siegemund-broka // 2.0⭐️ // read from jul 4 - jul 7

[medusasbush]

read april 2024

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and the flip-flop, flippy flip flop and ass bitches.

Unlikable Women Like Me: On Being a “Bitch”

How therapy-speak ‘processed’ its way into pop-music

This is not a COWBOY CARTER review

Elon Musk Didn’t Want His Latest Deposition Released. Here It Is.

Which Kirsten Dunst movie are you?

Who needs state surveillance when we're willingly surveilling each other?

When Everyone's the Main Character, We're All Alone.

Optimization Will Not Save You

Terror & Mundanity In A Makeup Bag: On beauty products, local politics, and Palestine.

I Have My Father’s Eyes and His Temper Too: A Personal Commentary on Mainstream Media’s Portrayal of Father-Daughter Relationships

Why Women Pay the Price for Caring for and Understanding Men

Wife Sentences: Lisa Selin Davis’s confused history of homemakers

Sex Positivity Was Fake, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone

The Myth of Writer's Block: and the importance of shutting the fuck up

The Tyranny of Stans

Exposed Bra Straps Exposed: Post-feminism, Mean Girls the Musical and the lore of visible bra straps.

what can we expect from friendship?

On Finding the Freedom to Rage Against Our Fathers

Don’t Call it Girlhood

Romance & Rivalry By Proxy: When vicarious experiences deliver the dollars.

Is It Ok To Dislike Children?

What Does Your Bookshelf Say About You?

‘Monkey Man’: Welcome to the Action-Movie Pantheon, Dev Patel

The problem with fan studies: Are we entrenching stan culture instead of dissecting it?

maybe we should all call our friends more

Ambiguity & Delusion: Lessons Learned From Pop Culture Worship

An Academic F*ck You to Chip Wilson's Fatphobia

Just call it jihad

[amatsuki]

There is nothing suspicious—or particularly gendered—about a desire to rest. But if we can sympathize in this respect with women who are drawn to the housewife fantasy, then we must also address the housewife’s immature side: her refusal of responsibility in the public sphere. The housewife lifestyle abandons the struggles of feminist advancement, community building, justice, and political engagement. It trades them for insularity, callowness, and superficial self-regard.

And here we return to Davis’s initial characterization of housewifery’s appeal: “I might have liked to hitch my wagon to someone, confident that he loved me enough that I could be comfortable in a state of financial dependency,” she writes. This desire to be taken care of, to be loved in a way that obviates responsibility, is not a fantasy of a marriage. It is a fantasy of a return to childhood. She’s not looking for a husband; she’s looking for a parent.

[hearthmistress]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book review by Moira Donegan of Lisa Selin Davis’s dubious book on housewives and the modern tradwife.

Specifically:

But if Davis is loyal to anything, it is the aggressively equivocal notion that women should pursue their own desires and shouldn’t have to ask whether those desires challenge or reaffirm the subordination of women. This approach is sometimes called “choice feminism.” By its logic, all choices—no matter their motivations or outcomes—must be judged the same.

The ways tradwives co-opt progressive language (especially regarding capitalism/anti-capitalism) to promote essentially capitalist and conservative ideas:

But Housewife quickly progresses to twentieth-century America. This great jump through time conveniently allows Housewife to largely skip over the advent of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. This might have proved more fertile ground: the definition of “housewife,” after all, relies on a stark divide between the home and the workplace that is historically quite recent: for most of human history, these were one and the same. It was only the advent of industrial capitalism that divided work from home—and, despite Davis’s forays into speculation about cavemen, it was only the Industrial Revolution that led to the Victorian idea of “separate spheres,” and the subsequent invention of the housewife. Davis misses an opportunity to seriously examine the work of women she calls “militant housewives,” like the African American activist Fannie B. Peck, who organized the National Housewives League in 1933 to encourage Black women to patronize Black-owned businesses—a pointed politicization of women’s consumer power. A serious historian might dwell on these connections between the ideology of gender and the needs of capital, and many have. Davis doesn’t.

For years, this was the bargain that feminism struck with heterosexuality: give us our rights in the public sphere and we will not infringe upon men’s entitlements in the private one. It was never a tenable arrangement; the terms undermined each other. Being serviced and tended to by women at home made men less inclined to treat women with respect at work; achievement and independence at work made women less interested in performing subservient labor at home. 

There is nothing suspicious—or particularly gendered—about a desire to rest. But if we can sympathize in this respect with women who are drawn to the housewife fantasy, then we must also address the housewife’s immature side: her refusal of responsibility in the public sphere. The housewife lifestyle abandons the struggles of feminist advancement, community building, justice, and political engagement. It trades them for insularity, callowness, and superficial self-regard.

[eyesofhope-stephi]

Book Reads of March

Final Girls by Riley Sager ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Quiet Tenant by Clemence Michallon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Housewife by Lisa Selin Davis ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Next Mrs Parrish by Liv Constantine ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Girl, Forgotten by Karin Slaughter ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Half Gone by Tarryn Fisher ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Just the Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Notorious RBG by Irin Carmon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It Didn’t Start With You by Mark Wolynm ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sanguine Mandanna ⭐️⭐️⭐️

On Our Best Behavior by Elise Loehnen ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[analeekasudia]

Big fan of Moira's words.

[jurassicworldtieindrpepper]

"Wife Sentences" by Moira Donegan

Really great review on Bookforum by one of my favorite writers, Moira Donegan. This one covers a new, deceptively choice feminist history of housewifery. For your friend who likes to jokingly request a lobotomy <3

[ninja-muse]

Just finished! I found Tomboy to be a very thoughtful and thought-provoking look at gender nonconformity and gender policing. It talks about the historical contexts for tomboyism, the sorts of people tomboys grow up to be, how “tomboy” gets defined and redefined as cultural ideas of “girl” and “boy” shift, whether “tomboy” is always different from or the same as “nonbinary” or “trans”, and a lot more. Davis is more interested in asking questions, discussing research, and talking to current and former tomboys, than in providing answers, and her overall message is to open up gendered activities, interests, and clothes to all kids and accept kids’ interests and needs, whatever they are.

I enjoyed seeming Davis discuss not only how girls and other AFAB people are affected by ideas of “girl things”, but also how those ideas limit and affect boys and how class and race affect who’s perceived as a tomboy. I liked that she made a point to say that tomboys grow up to be cis and trans and nonbinary and of talking to people from all those groups for their experiences, and I was also glad to see her discussing how tomboy rep has declined in media in favour of trans rep and the pros and cons of that shift. I was a little disappointed that Davis kept saying “straight or lesbian”, despite her knowing that bi and pan people exist, and that ace people didn’t even get a nod. (Perhaps it’s a lack of studies on both fronts? The fact that asexuality is relatively “new” and adult aces might be harder to find?)

Overall, I loved the nuance, enjoyed the information presented, and will be carrying some of the questions and ideas in the book forward. As someone who fit the tomboy mold even if I don’t think the term was ever used, I felt pretty validated at points too, which is always nice. :) Despite the bi and ace erasure, I still feel pretty comfortable saying “this is how you feminism” and want to rec this to everyone interested in gender and sexuality (and also parents).

(Photo taken with three of my own childhood interests.)

[bigtickhk]

Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different by Lisa Selin Davis https://amzn.to/2SEkUqe

[wazafam]

By BY LISA SELIN DAVIS from U.S. in the New York Times-https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/us/supermom-work-family-kids.html?partner=IFTTT That archetypal female who is both a career woman and a housewife — whose to-do list spans cooking, cleaning, parenting and earning a substantial paycheck — isn’t doing families any favors. It’s 2021. Why Is ‘Supermom’ Still Around? New York Times

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Lisa Selin Davis

Published: Apr 15, 2024

A thoughtful, comprehensive review just released in Britain points to a way out of the political impasse over youth gender treatments.

The toxicity of the culture war over youth gender medicine is well known to most of us. What’s less well understood is how that poisonous climate affects the very cohort being argued about — and those who care for them.

An exhaustive, level-headed 388-page report, commissioned by the National Health Service in England and released last week, warns: “Polarisation and stifling of debate do nothing to help the young people caught in the middle of a stormy social discourse.”

The Cass Review, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, examines the events and evidence (or lack thereof) that led to the closing of the UK’s only public youth gender clinic, the Gender Identity Development Services. GIDS opened in 1989 and at first served only 10 clients per year, mostly males who received psychological therapy; few medically transitioned. By 2016, GIDS was seeing nearly 1,800 clients a year, and multiple concerned clinicians there were blowing the whistle about the poor quality of the care. For years, their complaints mostly fell on deaf ears.

This document allows them to be heard. It is exceptional in many ways, including its scope. Cass spoke to many different and competing stakeholders, including disagreeing clinicians, “transgender adults who are leading positive and successful lives,” and “people who have detransitioned, some of whom deeply regret their earlier decisions.”

Cass reaches back into the history of youth gender medicine, formalized in the late 1990s in the Netherlands. She observes that the entire practice is “based on a single Dutch study which suggested that puberty blockers may improve psychological wellbeing for a narrowly defined group of children with gender incongruence.”

Recent scrutiny of the Dutch research revealed that the methodology was too flawed to support that conclusion. The Dutch approach involved something different from what has become the norm in the United States and was the norm at GIDS for a time. The Dutch doctors and psychologists offered youths extensive evaluation over long periods of time, discouraged social transition before puberty, and limited interventions to a carefully selected cohort who’d suffered from lifelong gender dysphoria, didn’t have other serious mental health issues, and lived in supportive families.

In America, this approach became denigrated as “gatekeeping,” and we veered toward a model known as “affirming.” We shifted from treating gender dysphoria to affirming a trans identity, letting a child’s feelings lead the way, and allowing social transition at any age. Here, manifesting one’s gender identity separate from natal sex was eventually seen as a civil right, rather than as a series of psychological and medical interventions — a model that influenced GIDS. But science doesn’t work that way. “Although some think the clinical approach should be based on a social justice model,” writes Cass, the National Health Service “works in an evidence-based way.”

That social justice / civil rights framing has made it harder to reckon with what Cass calls the “exponential rise” in adolescent patients starting around 2014, and a reversal in the sex ratio. Once it was mostly natal males who transitioned, but now it is mostly natal females, many of whom had no history of gender distress but did suffer from other mental health issues.

As for the evidence about how to treat these patients and others who havesought care, Cass concludes: “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” Individual studies may make claims about the efficacy of social transition, puberty blockers, or hormones, but they are too biased and low quality to draw conclusions from.

The National Health Service had already recently declared that puberty blockers would no longer be used for young people with gender dysphoria, “because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness.” The Cass Review confirms this, noting that “bone density is compromised during puberty suppression” and that doctors don’t know enough about the effects on “psychological or psychosocial wellbeing, cognitive development, cardio-metabolic risk, or fertility.” No evidence proved that blockers provided “time to think,” as many proponents of affirmation claim, but there is “concern that they may change the trajectory of psychosexual and gender identity development.”

As for the claim that these interventions prevent suicide, Cass reports that “the evidence found did not support this conclusion.”

Perhaps most important, Cass notes that “clinicians have told us they are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity.” That is, in contrast to the affirmative model’s claim that “children know themselves,” the few high-quality studies we have suggest that gender dysphoria in kids most often resolves during puberty, as they develop and mature and gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between gender and sexuality. Many grow up to be gay.

These findings fly in the face of claims by activist groups that the science is settled and that gender-affirming care is “evidence-based” and “lifesaving.” But the findings also don’t negate the fact that some young people are deeply grateful to have transitioned.

Cass isn’t calling for a complete ban on youth gender interventions, like the bans many Republican states have enacted. Nor is she arguing for removing barriers to these interventions and making them more accessible without parental knowledge or consent, as many Democrats advocate. Her recommendation is to expand services but root them in holistic psychological care, making sure all other mental health issues are attended to. She is suggesting the end of the specialized gender clinic model, where gender dysphoria is viewed as the root of all distress.

Without that broader approach to treatment, she says, directly addressing the thousands of youths distressed about their gender, “you are not getting the wider support you need in managing any mental health problems, arranging fertility preservation, getting help with any challenges relating to neurodiversity, or even getting counselling to work through questions and issues you may have.”

The Cass Review offers 32 recommendations, including exercising “extreme caution” when prescribing cross-sex hormones to those 16 and younger and having provisions for people considering detransition. Cass calls for long-term follow-up of those who have transitioned or sought care and a commitment to lifelong care for both those who transition and those who detransition. In contrast, Democrats have blocked attempts to pass detransition care bills and amendments that would require insurers to cover reconstructive surgeries, hormone treatments, and other assistance for detransitioners who want to live as their natal sex again, in whatever way is possible after permanent changes. Detransitioners are often left with nowhere to go to attend to their bodies or their minds — as the case used to be for trans people (and may be the case again).

Increasingly, some providers are so intimidated by the noise around this issue that they don’t want to attend to kids with gender issues at all. But these young people, as Cass says, “must have the same standards of care as everyone else.”

In America, the main problem with the issue of how best to treat kids with gender distress is that it has become intertwined with politics. Some who object to the affirmative model or question it fear the personal and professional repercussions of being cast as a bigot. Some who support the affirmative model in red states that are criminalizing the care fear being jailed. “There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour,” Cass writes. “This must stop.”

As someone writing a book about the youth gender culture war, I couldn’t agree more. Polarization, the stifling of debate, and invective-flinging have left many families ill informed, making decisions in the dark and often based on fears of suicide that are unsupported by evidence. How can there truly be informed consent when there is so little unambiguous information, when there are more unknowns than knowns? And what do we do in the face of uncertainty? Argue and legislate, or gather data? It doesn’t help when our federal government contributes to the faux certainty, declaring that gender-affirming care is “suicide prevention” or “well-established medical practice” — arguments the Cass Review eviscerates.

For much of Europe, our government’s digging in on these treatments rather than investigating them more fully is just another way America has gone astray. Countries such as Finland and Sweden have analyzed the evidence and crafted more cautious guidelines, with psychological support as the baseline intervention.

We, too, need new, evidence-based guidelines. We need follow-up from all youth who transitioned, those who detransitioned, and those who desisted — meaning they stopped identifying as transgender without medically transitioning. We need to speak with multiple and competing stakeholders, and we need Democrats and Republicans to listen to those who’ve been helped and those who’ve been hurt; we need bipartisanship, not polarization. We need to push past politics and create an environment where robust scientific debate is not only tolerated but celebrated.

The National Health Service itself applauded Cass’s work, writing that it “will not just shape the future of health care in this country for children and young people experiencing gender distress but will be of major international importance and significance.” Let’s use the report to call for a ceasefire in the American gender culture war. We need our own Cass Review.

[dyke-bars-never-last]

Any woman who had “fallen in love … with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man,” as Alcott once said, might simply believe that they had the soul of one sex and the body of another.

... mapping trans identities onto masculine females of the past, whether real or fictional, is complicated. It imposes modern interpretations onto history, ignoring historical roles and norms and laws that created confining sex-based scripts while removing models of gender nonconformity among girls.

Was Mulan a liberated trans man or a woman who couldn’t otherwise fight in wars because of regressive ideas about females?

Tomboy, sexist though the word may be, once conferred a freedom upon girls to explore the blue side of the pink/blue divide and push the boundaries of acceptable behavior and appearance. But that freedom usually evaporated at puberty. Its offerings were limited and temporary.

The message to them is that if they veer too far toward masculine — being tough, rejecting dresses and skirts, wearing short hair — they're no longer girls.

While it is impossible to know how people from the past would have . While IT IS WONDERFUL to have trans characters represented in film, re-gendering tomboys as trans can end up reinforcing stereotypes.

What liberates one group, may limit another.

While it is impossible to know how people from the past would have identified or lived if 21st century choices had been available, I imagine that those who suffered because ideas of gender in their time didn’t accommodate them would indeed FIND TODAY'S ZEITGEIST FREEING.

But imposing modern definitions of gender on the past, and assuming that all gender nonconforming people would change their pronouns or bodies, doesn’t make room for masculine girls and feminine boys to be themselves; it tells them that they have to be somebody else.

Davis, Lisa Selin. “Tomboys, Trans Boys and ‘West Side Story.’” Yahoo | 19 Dec. 2021, https://www.yahoo.com/news/tomboys-trans-boys-west-side-110029891.html.

[teachingrounds]

Lisa Selin Davis, "Why Modern Medicine Keeps Overlooking Menopause," New York Times (6 April 2021).

[dan-levy-is-my-life-coach]

“My daughter will be able to dream what Dan Levy couldn’t. Through his creation, and through our discussions at home, she’s seen a world in which LGBTQ people are loving and loved, and can create happy, full lives no matter their circumstances, no matter how far they travel against the grain.

For that, I’m grateful to Dan Levy, too.”

Lisa Selin Davis in Romper, Feb 13, 2021

https://www.romper.com/entertainment/schitts-creek-sex-ed-dan-pansexual

Photo: Cara Robbins

+++++++

I love the way she puts this.  Dan Levy and Schitt’s Creek really are saving lives and giving hope, comfort and love to so many.  Especially those that love outside the mainstream.