#PseudoScientific American

[k-wame]

🗣️📢 L I S T E N N N

[sophie-frm-mars]

The Cass Review, and what we can do about it

The UK government is making decisive moves toward banning trans healthcare outright. The NHS says it is adjusting its policies to be in line with the "cass report", a pseudoscientific report written by a transphobe that goes as far as to claim that little boys playing with trucks and little girls playing with dolls is biological, and which disregards dozens of scientifically sound previous studies into HRT and trans healthcare in order to reach its conclusions that trans healthcare for under 25s should be radically changed to discourage transition at every turn and make it as hard as possible for young people to transition.

These moves will kill countless young trans people. I would not have made it to 25 if healthcare wasn't available and I know so many other trans people wouldn't have either.

The mainstream reporting in the UK is keeping itself ideologically cohesive by claiming that trans people exist, nobody hates them, and they're very rare, and the big problem is the explosion of new cases of not-really-trans people who are clogging up the system (this is a lie, the system has been intentionally slowed by malicious neglect, it isn't even a resource issue, the clinics have far more capacity than the number of patients who are let through)

Once again, this is genocidal and is actually a commonplace methodology of genocide. The nazis asked GRT people to help them understand which Traveller families were "real" travellers and which were the fake ones, since they insisted it was only the fake ones who were the problem and who had to be exterminated (because a lot of nazi GRT policy was based on American indigenous reservation policy).

Labour, the main opposiiton party in the UK, has announced it will "follow the Cass Report", and implement these restrictions on trans healthcare once in government.

For the survival of young trans people, robust community structures must be developed immediately.

Efforts to change the electoral situation will proceed at a snail's pace and will be entirely at the whims of what is politically expedient. It will turn around, but it will take a long time. At the voting level, everyone in the UK who cares about trans people needs to make it clear that they won't vote for Labour unless they reverse position on this, and to be clear about this: Labour will not listen. They are PR Brained Psychopaths and they don't want to get into this "controversial" issue in a way that might cost them further popularity and the easy election win.

Wes Streeting, inhuman lab experiment and Labour Shadow Health Secretary has said that activists need to "stop protesting to ask us to be better opposition and start protesting to ask us to be better government", in other words their electoral promises are cynical reactionary bargains and deals to get them into power and the only point at which they will change anything is once they are in government, if at all. I know this sounds very "push Biden left" but I'm not saying give up now - to repeat, everyone who cares about trans people in the UK should tell Labour to get fucked right away, and then keep doing it as loudly as possible, but it's just not going to change until after the general election at least.

Another way to help could be through legal routes, like the work that The Good Law Project has been doing for trans people for several years now, but I don't know enough about the law to know if it can be used to challenge this at all.

We have to accept there is no electoral solution right now to this genocidal campaign against trans people in the UK, and while those efforts are ongoing trans people and cis allies need to fucking organise. Trans exclusive / separatist organising is riddled with issues, I don't want to cast hopelessness around but there are really very few of us and while it's absolutely necessary to privilege trans voices in trans organising and give us the deciding power and the autonomy, we need to utilise the support and time and labour of every cis person who is willing to help in whatever way they can.

Robust community structures means community structures that are helping young trans people get healthcare as an absolute basic starting point, but it means a lot more than that besides. We need community structures that are consciously organised by people who are taking responsibility for the community roles they are in and being completely explicit with each other about the nature and function of their organising. We need HRT community resources so young trans people can survive this medical segregation, we need drug user harm reduction spaces so that what people turn to in despair doesn't kill them, we need sober spaces so that people can get away from unhealthy coping responses, we need conflict resolution structures so that our problems are dealt with privately and nobody is left completely isolated, but more than any of those things, and in order to have all of those things, we desperately need trans assemblies

Assemblies are how we will get a community of robust radical organisers, because only by repeatedly practicing the ongoing process of democracy can people learn how to do it in a way that will facilitate their own organising. We have to empower the whole community to answer our own questions, come up with solutions, organise people into structures to enact those solutions and then do them. All this means is that an open door event convenes frequently (at least fortnightly) to discuss what is happening in the community. Trans people get the mic for allotted time, and discuss the issues, and then whatever voting structure the assembly uses facilitates further discussion, for example through working groups - the assembly breaks into smaller groups to discuss the topic and then representatives report the outcomes of those discussions back and consensus is reached from what the representatives report.

We have to get people engaging in this process because in order to effectively combat this situation trans people must agree on the solutions and then tell cis allies how to help and so far we haven't been doing that. We really really haven't been. But we could be with a little work. And as I'm saying, doing this will also empower everyone in the community to organise toward specific solutions for specific issues like HRT provision, sober spaces, housing, food, etc.

fuck

I'll have more to add to this post later I have to get to therapy I just got really mad when I saw the news this morning

[transmascissues]

as an intersex woman- it'd be real nice if these people stopped throwing around the word "mutilation" and ignoring IGM (which is still practiced en mass even in "first world" countries) and our lack of bodily autonomy. a trans person (or even a cis person getting elective reconstructive surgery for a myriad of reasons, including IGM) getting bottom surgery is in no way comparable to actual mutilation against your will and it's such a slap in the face to see these people bitch about it while ignoring us. our medical records are literally hidden, destroyed, and altered for the sake of non-intersex people never having to contend with the reality of sex variations.

I bet they'd probably look at the stats on Intersex human rights and try to justify it away though, they sound like the types who want Intersex people to fit into their two perfect sex and gender boxes and never complain! thank you for not backing down, muddying the waters on mutilation- while the intersex community is still trying to fight to get IGM recognized and banned- harms IGM victims worldwide and disgusts me to my core.

Not to mention how many recent american bills banning or limiting elective trans surgeries conveniently still allow for IGM and the pushing of hormones on intersex children and adults who don't need them (again for the comfort of non-intersex people and the assumption we must be "fixed"...) very convenient for these people to ignore!

all of this! these people will act like the “western world” was totally against genital mutilation practices until the big bad trans people came along, when in reality it’s been happening right here at home the whole time.

the only reason they don’t see it (or at least act like they don’t see it) is because of intersexism and racism — intersexism that tells them that whatever’s being done to intersex people must be beneficial and medically sound because of course intersex traits should be “fixed”, and racism that validates their belief that the things happening where they live must be better than what’s happening “over there” because of course there are more human rights abuses happening in non-western places than in their good progressive home.

fearmongering about anything that changes the clitoris or vulva in any way being a form of FGM + downplaying the harms of IGM and saying it’s just good medicine = the perfect way to uphold their precious pseudoscientific sex binary for another day, i guess. as long as we’re all living with the genitals they think we should have, they don’t care who it hurts.

[292pantone]

I am once again thinking about the movie Nope and I just realized that a seemingly throwaway line actually has a lot more depth behind it than I anticipated. Tech support worker Angel makes a comment about the TV show "Ancient Aliens", which seems like a comic relief moment at first, but actually really highlights some of the film's underlying themes.

For those unfamiliar with the show, Ancient Aliens is a History channel show in America that basically promotes the "ancient aliens" hypothesis, i.e. that some past extraterrestrial race must have come to earth and is secretly behind technological marvels like the Egyptian pyramids. It focuses a lot on things built by non-Western cultures, from Native Americans to Africans to South Americans, with the heavily implied undertone that people of color couldn't possibly have been advanced enough to create things without the help of aliens. The show has been rightfully criticized for racism and its extremely pseudoscientific content with sparse and misleading evidence. Not only does Ancient Aliens perfectly encompass the concept of spectacle in pop culture, but it constantly erases and downplays the scientific and artistic advancements of whole cultures.

The concept of cultural erasure came up earlier in Nope with Em's speech about being descended from the first Black stuntman, who despite his contributions to film history was overlooked by Hollywood. The Haywood family are some of the only Black horse trainers in the industry, but struggle to keep their business afloat as predominantly white filmmakers dismiss and disrespect them. Em and OJ spend much of the film striving to get the perfect "Oprah shot" that will finally launch them from obscurity and earn them fame and fortune.

Angel's casual reference seems too on-the-nose to be a coincidence. Even as he joins the search for aliens, his whole frame of reference is a clickbaity show that promotes conspiracy theories undermining the achievements and contributions of people of color.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

A funny commonality to both indian/hindu and euro-american creepy etnonationalists who closk their retrograde politics in the veil of anticolonialism is how they will complain about Abrahamic missionaries/invaders trampling over their pristine authentic ancient indigenous traditions even when this offending abrahamic presence often predates large swathes of "traditional" customs and folkloric/religious beliefs and so forth, thus impeding their reclamation of their "real" ancestral culture. Bc if Christian/islamic interference with ones ancient ways is intolerably foreign and oppressive no matter how long ago it was introduced then, oh boy, you are going to fucking hate hearing about the spread of indo European culture!

(Ik that hindu ethnats do in fact develop elaborate pseudoscientific conspiracy theories to hide their head in the sand on this point, i am not sure if this immune response has yet been adopted by the "retvrn to yr evropean roots to avoid culturally appropriating from indigenous Americans" crowd)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Gerald Posner

Published: Mar 4, 2024

Newly leaked files from the world’s leading transgender health-care organization reveal it is pushing hormonal and surgical transitions for minors, including stomach-wrenching experimental procedures designed to create sexless bodies that resemble department-store mannequins.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health documents demonstrate it’s controlled by gender ideologues who push aside concerns about whether children and adolescents can consent to medical treatments that WPATH members privately acknowledge often have devastating and permanent side effects.

Yet the US government, American doctors and prominent organizations nonetheless rely on WPATH guidelines for advice on treating our youth.

The files — jaw-dropping conversations from a WPATH internal messaging board and a video of an Identity Evolution Workshop panel — were provided to journalist Michael Shellenberger, who shared the documents with me.

Shellenberger’s nonprofit Environmental Progress will release a scathing summary report, comparing the WPATH promotion of “the pseudoscientific surgical destruction of healthy genitals in vulnerable people” to the mid-20th-century use of lobotomies, “the pseudoscientific surgical destruction of healthy brains.”

‘Arbitrary’ age limits

The comparison to one of history’s greatest medical scandals is not hyperbole.

It is particularly true, as the files show repeatedly, when it involves WPATH’s radical approach to minors.

When the organization adopted in 2022 its current Standards of Care — relied on by the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization and every major American medical and psychiatric association — it scrapped a draft chapter about ethics and removed minimum-age requirements for children starting puberty blockers or undergoing sexual-modification surgeries.

It had previously recommended 16 to start hormones and 17 for surgery.

Not surprisingly, age comes up frequently in the WPATH files, from concerns about whether a developmentally delayed 13-year-old can start on puberty blockers to whether the growth of a 10-year-old girl will be stunted by hormones.

During one conversation, a member asked for advice about a 14-year-old patient, a boy who identified as a girl and had begun transitioning at 4.

The child insisted on a vaginoplasty, a surgery that removes the penis, testicles and scrotum and repositions tissue to create a nonfunctioning pseudo-vagina. It requires a lifetime of dilation. Was he too young at 14?

Marci Bowers, WPATH’s president and a California-based pelvic and gynecologic surgeon who is herself transgender, said she considered any age limit “arbitrary.”

But she would not do it. Why?

“The tissue is too immature, dilation routine too critical.”

In lay terms, that means boys who are too young do not have enough penal tissue for the surgery and the surgeon must harvest intestinal lining to build the faux vagina. Even Bowers admits that can lead to “problematic surgical outcomes.”

She would know since she has performed more than 2,000 vaginoplasties. Her highest-profile patient is 17-year-old Jazz Jennings, the transgender star of reality TV show “I Am Jazz.”

Three corrective surgeries were required to fix problems from the original vaginoplasty.

“She had a very difficult surgical course,” Bowers admitted in a 2022 appearance on the show. “We knew it would be tough — it turned out tougher than any of us imagined.”

Still, Bowers told her colleagues in the internal discussion forum of the best age for an adolescent to undergo surgery: “sometime before the end of high school does make some sense in that they are under the watch of parents in the home they grew up in.”

Christine McGinn, a Pennsylvania plastic surgeon and herself transgender, agreed. McGinn has performed “about 20 vaginoplasties in patients under 18” and thinks the “ideal time in the U.S. is surgery the summer before the last year of high school. I have heard many other surgeons echo this.”

Waiting until teens are older than 18 and in college is problematic, she said: “there are too many stressors in college that limit patients’ ability to dilate.”

Dangers downplayed

WPATH assures patients that surgical and hormonal interventions are tested and safe. It is a different matter in private.

President Bowers, for instance, said publicly in 2022 that puberty blockers are “completely reversible,” although in the internal forum she conceded it is “in its infancy.”

What about children who are infertile for life since they started hormone blockers before they reached puberty?

Bowers told her colleagues the “fertility question has no research.”

At other stages, members talk frankly about the complications for the transition surgery for girls, a phalloplasty in which a nonfunctioning pseudo-penis is fashioned from either forearm or thigh tissue.

It requires a full hysterectomy and surgical removal of the vagina. They also discuss other serious consequences, including pelvic inflammatory disease, vaginal atrophy, abnormal pap tests and incontinence.

A 16-year-old girl who had been on puberty blockers for several years before she was put on testosterone for a year had developed two liver tumors that an oncologist concluded the hormones had caused. Another member described “a young patient on testosterone for 3 years” who had developed “vaginal/pelvic pain/spotting . . . [and] atrophy with the persistent yellow discharge.”

Several colleagues described patients with similar conditions, some with debilitating bowel problems or bleeding and excruciating pain during sex (“feeling like broken glass”).

Vaginal estrogen creams and moisturizers as well as hyaluronic acid suppositories “can be helpful.”

One WPATH member seemed surprised: “The transgender people under my surveillance do not complain about this matter. However, I confess that I have never asked them about it.”

Rise of ‘de-gender’ surgery

The litany of transition surgery’s side effects did not stop WPATH from endorsing far more radical “nullification” surgeries for patients who do not feel either male or female and identify only as nonbinary.

Several dozen so-called “de-gendering” surgeries are designed to create a sexless, smooth cosmetic appearance that is unknown in nature. There is even an experimental “bi-genital” surgery that attempts to construct a second set of genitals.

In 2017, when tabloids reported a 22-year-old man had spent $50,000 to surgically remove his sex organs so he could “transform into a genderless extra-terrestrial,” it seemed a one-off oddity.

But WPATH has enshrined that concept in its Standard of Care — the same document in which the group endorsed for the time first time chemical or surgical castration for patients who identify as eunuchs. (WPATH even linked to the Eunuch Archives, where men anonymously share castration fetishes.)

These science-fiction-like surgeries are not only reserved for adults.

“How do we come up with appropriate standards for non-binary patients?” asked Thomas Satterwhite, a San Francisco-based plastic surgeon who has operated on dozens of patients younger than 18 since 2014. “I’ve found more and more patients recently requesting ‘non-standard’ procedures.”

What are nonstandard procedures? They include “non-binary top surgery,” a mastectomy without nipples. There are brutal procedures for girls that eliminate all or part of the vagina and for boys that amputate the penis, scrotum and testicles.

The goal, as one San Francisco surgical clinic proclaims on its website, “is a smooth, neutral body that is cosmetically free of sexual identification.” On TikTok the trend is called a “flat front.”

‘Too young to understand‘

A particularly intense subject of discussion was whether minors could understand the lifelong consequences of their gender treatments. Minors are presumed by law to be incapable of making an informed decision about having a vasectomy or tubal ligation.

Gender surgeries are an exception, however.

WPATH’s Standard of Care allows all procedures so long as the minor “demonstrates the emotional and cognitive maturity required to provide informed consent/assent for the treatment.”

In a May 2022 internal workshop, “Identity Evolution,” WPATH members conceded that was all but impossible.

Daniel Metzger, the British Columbia endocrinologist who cowrote the Canadian Pediatric Society’s position paper on health care for trans minors, said, “I think the thing you have to remember about kids is that we’re often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven’t even had biology in high school yet.”

Metzger noted adolescents are incapable of appreciating the lifelong consequence of infertility. “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old,” he said, “but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. They’d be like, ‘ew, kids, babies, gross.’ Or, the usual answer is, ‘I’m just going to adopt.’ And then you ask them, ‘Well, what does that involve? Like, how much does it cost?’ ‘Oh, I thought you just like went to the orphanage, and they gave you a baby.’ . . . I think now that I follow a lot of kids into their mid-twenties, I’m always like, ‘Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you, right?’”

There is extensive research showing adolescent brains are wired to have little control over rash behavior and are not capable of grasping the magnitude of decisions with lifelong consequences. It is why society doesn’t allow teens to get tattoos or buy guns. Car-rental agencies set 25 as the minimum age for renting a car, and Sweden sets the same limit for deciding on sterilization.

Detransitioners ignored, shunned

Although many WPATH members privately doubt that adolescents can give truly informed consent to life-altering procedures, they must affirm whatever children say about their gender.

Unless, the WPATH files disclose, the patient wants to reverse course and become a so-called detransitioner.

WPATH members mostly dismiss those cases as insignificant or overblown by the media and question whether minors who want to revert to their birth sex really understand what they are doing.

It’s a question that would never be asked for minors who declared themselves to be gender dysphoric.

One case involved a 17-year-old boy, just graduated from high school, who had been on testosterone for two years. He was reported to be “very distraught and angry. He reports he feels he was brainwashed and is upset by the permanent changes to his body.”

A self-described “queer therapist” did not believe any young person could be brainwashed. “In my experience, those stories come from people who have an active agenda against the rights of trans people.”

WPATH President Bowers said that “I do see talk of the phenomenon [detransitioners] as distracting from the many challenges we face.”

‘Frankenstein files’

The leaked files put a spotlight on the danger of mixing ideological activism with medicine and science. They should serve as an urgent wakeup call for the medical associations and government agencies that rely on WPATH guidance for transgender health.

The files might even prompt investigations into how those with distorted personal agendas seized control of the organization at the expense of science and patients.

Investigating what has gone wrong at WPATH might prove uncomfortable for some gender progressives in the Biden administration, none more so than Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health. Levine, the first transgender four-star military officer, is a WPATH member and has lavished praise on the organization.

She says it “assesses the full state of the science and provides substantive, rigorously analyzed, peer-reviewed recommendations to the medical community on how best to care for patients who are transgender or gender non-binary. It is free of any agenda other than to ensure that medical decisions are informed by science.”

Either Levine is unaware of the hormonal and surgical experimentation the group promotes or refuses to acknowledge it.

“The Frankenstein files.”

That is how a pediatrician described the leaked documents after I shared them with her.

Unfortunately, this is no horror novel.

It is a medical travesty playing out in real time, and the casualties are our children.

[gothhabiba]

Although the chemical imbalance model remains the dominant cultural story of depression in the United States (France, Lysaker, & Robinson, 2007), its validity has been publicly questioned with increasing frequency in recent years (e.g., Angell, 2011a, 2011b; Begley, 2010; Spiegel, 2012; Stahl, 2012). Scientists have long understood the “low serotonin” explanation of depression to be unsubstantiated (Kendler & Schaffner, 2011; Kirsch, 2010; Lacasse & Leo, 2005), and psychiatry is currently attempting to distance itself from this pseudoscientific notion. Prominent biomedical model proponents now use adjectives like “antiquated” (Insel, 2011) and “outmoded” (Coyle, cited in Spiegel, 2012) to describe the chemical imbalance story, thereby creating the misleading impression that this notion has only recently been exposed as mistaken. Pies (2011) proclaimed that the chemical imbalance theory is an “urban legend” that was never taken seriously by thoughtful psychiatrists. “In the past 30 years,” he asserts, “I don't believe I have ever heard a knowledgeable, well-trained psychiatrist make such a preposterous claim, except perhaps to mock it.” This declaration might come as a surprise to former APA president Steven Sharfstein who explicitly defended the validity of the chemical imbalance theory on NBC's Today Show (Bell, 2005b) in the wake of actor Tom Cruise's infamous remarks criticizing psychiatry (Bell, 2005a). Patients with mental disorders might also be surprised to learn that some doctors use the chemical imbalance story simply as a convenient metaphor for facilitating drug treatment and/or attempting to reduce stigma. Until recently, the American public had little reason to doubt the veracity of chemical imbalance claims promoted by the popular media, health websites, patient advocacy groups, governmental agencies, and other reputable medical authorities. Given recent high-profile revelations about the limitations of the chemical imbalance story, biomedical model advocates may face increasing pressure to disseminate accurate information about mental disorder rather than persist in the promotion of an unfounded but politically and economically useful scientific caricature.

–Brett J. Deacon, “The biomedical model of mental disorder: A critical analysis of its validity, utility, and effects on psychotherapy research.” Clinical Psychology Review 33 (2013), 846–861. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2012.09.007

[creature-wizard]

What exactly is New Age? Some things I've read make it sound like cultural appropriation witchcraft (which is complicated, because something religions/cultures have a bit of overlap or similarities that showed up through parallel evolution) and some things make it sound like Scientology 2.

In a nutshell, New Age comes out of Theosophy, a perennialist spirituality that proposes that Earth and humanity are on a path of spiritual evolution, and that we are about to enter the next phase. Depending on who you talk to, you might hear it referred to as the New Age, the Aquarian Age, the Age of Aquarius, the Fifth Density, or Fifth Dimension. This is called "ascension."

Unfortunately, all of this was deeply influenced by Victorian age understandings of evolution and cultural advancement, which were racist as all fuck - you know, that whole thing of assuming that evolution progressed in a linear fashion, that some races of people were more objectively advanced than others, and that the "natural order" of things is that the more advanced will wipe out and replace the less advanced.

In New Age thinking, reaching the next stage in our cosmic evolution requires people to convert to New Age spirituality. Those who don't convert are to be purged. A number of New Agers have professed belief that the purpose of climate change is purging the unevolved/unenlightned. A number of them believe that "regressive entities" (essentially, those who reject New Age teachings) will be executed.

As for who they reckon as "regressive beings," you'll find it's typically the same people targeted by QAnon and pretty much every fascist movement - Jews, queer people, liberals, etc. New Age has always been heavily conspiratorial, because it's an easy way to justify why nobody ever heard of or believes in the "ancient wisdom" you're teaching, and it's always attracted and interested people with extreme right wing views - William Dudley Pelley and Hermann Wieland come to mind. Not every New Ager is equally hateful, but if you start looking through influential New Age literature you'll more often than not find it pushing antisemitism and/or Aryan idealism in some way.

New Age also incorporates ancient aliens, which itself was a pseudoscientific idea cooked up by people who refused to believe that ancient POC could have built anything they reckoned as "civilization" by themselves. This in turn influenced the whole starseed narrative, which essentially teaches that advanced alien souls are incarnating into human bodies to help "raise Earth's vibrational frequency" (New Age speak for "convert people to New Age beliefs"). The whole reptilian alien myth they believe in is pure antisemitism.

New Agers also cherry pick and misrepresent other people's spiritual traditions in order to fabricate "evidence" of their beliefs. Anytime there's a story about gods or angels banging humans, they'll claim it's about "alien genetic experiments." They'll ignore the animistic elements in many myths, because they just don't really comprehend that animism was and still is an entire thing for many cultures. Any time two myths are even vaguely similar, they'll claim they're talking about the same thing. (And of course, they believe that they, personally, know the correct and true interpretation of any myth.)

Since they're perennialists who believe that all religions are secretly the same under the surface, they think cultural appropriation is fine and dandy. They tend to idealize Native American and Eastern spiritualities the most, so that's what you'll usually find them appropriating and misrepresenting.

New Agers also tend to claim that science supports their belief, but they have a very... shall we say... misinformed conception of science. They butcher quantum physics to hell and back. They essentially understand "spiritual energy" as a form of radiation - and not just some kind of mystical, unknown form of radiation, but actual forms of radiation that we know about like light and electromagnetism. Supposedly, high vibrational energies are always morally and physically good for you, and low vibrational energies are morally and physically bad for you. Based on their own logic, touching the demon core should cure you of all illnesses and open and cleanse your chakras immediately.

Since New Age's endgame is eradicating all other forms of religion and spirituality, it is inherently genocidal. If you took out the parts that were problematic, it wouldn't really be New Age anymore.

This, I hope, sums things up for you. If you want more information, I recommend checking out my pinned post and my resources page.

[the-cimmerians]

In a concerning turn of events, Ohio has become the newest addition to the growing list of states progressing gender affirming care bans for transgender youth out of legislative committees. If Ohio successfully passes this bill, House Bill 68, it will become the 20th state to do so. The bill has weathered numerous iterations and significant setbacks in the past. However, the latest version has emerged with an unprecedented provision unseen in similar bills from other states: a mandate to screen for “influences,” or “causes,” of being transgender.

The bill mandates that before therapists can diagnose a patient with gender dysphoria, they must first screen for a host of other potential "causes" that might explain an individual's transgender identity. Included in these are anxiety, depression, and autism. This provision ignores established scientific consensus: none of these conditions "cause" someone to be transgender. Furthermore, there are no existing diagnostic tools or guidelines to establish the "cause" of someone's gender identity, because fundamentally, such "causes" are nonexistent.

[ ]

The list of potential causes forwarded for being transgender in the bill include:

ADHD

Autism

Anxiety

Depression

Physical, Mental, and Emotional Abuse

Trauma

Moreover, even when these so-called "causes" are screened for and no underlying reasons for a person's gender identity are found, treatment remains banned. Essentially, these screenings don't provide access to gender-affirming care for trans youth; rather, they erect a formidable barrier to even obtaining mental healthcare for transgender youth.

Disturbingly, these provisions essentially mandate "gender exploratory therapy," a new conversion therapy currently pushed by members of Christian conversion therapy organizations such as the American College of Pediatricians. This pseudoscientific group, a strong advocate for conversion therapy, has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its deceptive name is expressly designed to confuse legislators into mistaking it for the American Academy of Pediatrics, the respected medical organization representing the vast community of pediatricians across the United States.

[cupcraft]

Why is that when people are fat phobic about America they sometimes conclude its because "American food is poison and you're all on medication and etc etc type points". Like what is up with this shit and weird pseudoscience? And please dont respond to this "but american food is poison" with absolutely no nuance or science whatsoever because i will block you and will refuse to entertain it.

Like I'm sorry but American food is not "poison", or at least this generalization is just simply frustrating to me. It is true there are ingredients that are legal in the US but are not in other parts of the world, but you can't generalize that as "american food is poison" as it's more complicated than that. You can't make up claims about american food in order to be fatphobic. You can't make generalizations about american diets and nutrition without understanding the social determinants of what go into diet and accessibility of food. You can't have conversations about this without discussing socioeconomics, racism, ableism, food deserts, transportation access, healthcare, and etc. You can't just push bigoted and bullshit diet culture talking points and think you're saying something good here.

And on the science end, you can't look up how a preservative/ingredient that's in food "is also used as a paint thinner/[insert scare tactic]" without understanding food science and what makes something food grade. You can't say GMO's are evil without understanding what a GMO is and how its developed and what it actually means. You can't say "natural and organic is better! that's why american food is toxic" without really understanding food safety/what organic labels mean/etc. You can't say preservatives are evil without understanding why they're important for foods to be shelf stable and accessible, and also just the fact is they are not evil and bad.

And this is not to say there are not things that are able to be criticized about the american food system under capitalism. There is plenty to criticize. There is plenty to talk about within nutrition, access to food, farming/livestock practices, and much more. There's a lot to talk about with water runoff and the effects of american agriculture on the environment. There is so much to talk about with our food within capitalism but the thing is you dont want to talk about it. You don't actually care about improving the health and access to food and minimizing hunger and mitigating social determinants of health. You don't care, because if you did you'd be talking about these things in nuanced scientific and empathetic ways. But instead, you're just fatphobic and you really just want to make it seem like youre not by making up fake pseudoscientific and ableist points about american health in order to justify it. I'd much rather people admit that instead of scaremongering and spreading misinformation that could cause harm.

And for the recordthat's just my short point on the food topic, I haven't even gotten into the "americans are on too many meds" point which is just fucking terrible to say in itself, and ablelist. Like i for one people take meds if they want im glad people have medications that can help them. I'm glad medications exist. I hope to take my meds for the rest of time actually if it means I don't suffer from my shit 😭!! Instead of worrying about the amt of meds ppl are on as a moral failing focus on how we can make meds better more accessible and with less side effects. The end.

And feel free to rb and reply and send asks and add on btw!! There's a lot of nuance to my very short rant on a huge topic. Just don't be weird and rude.

[goldenfreddys]

september ‘04, cont.— american healthcare

Dr. David Miller’s office was situated in a dingy, hole-in-the-wall clinic downtown that practically oozed of quackery. The clinic was obviously created for the sole purpose of exploiting impoverished, desperate people who couldn't afford actual healthcare, Jeremy thought. Unfortunately, he was one of those people, and being scathingly self-aware could do very little to change it. He needed his terrible nightguard job, so he needed his brain halfway functional, and that meant getting his pills refilled before the withdrawal symptoms got too severe. At the very least, the clinic took drop-in appointments.

“Samuel Fitzgerald?”

He cringed as the man in the hallway beckoned him to another room. He figured by the white coat that this was the so-called medical professional that had been generously provided to him in the spirit of goodwill and philanthropy. He had large, rectangular glasses and a long face, which Jeremy figured would be enough discernable features to correctly identify him in the future.

Dr. Miller placed himself behind a cluttered desk with a dusty computer monitor in the classic, charming grayish beige that all technology seemed to come in before the year 2000. Facing the desk, there was a faux leather armchair with a visible slash in the upper corner of the upholstery. Besides that, some motivational posters were plastered on the walls.

Jeremy sat down and ambled through the motions of exchanging pleasantries, which the doctor kept graciously brief.

“Now let’s get right into the nitty gritty. Are you sexually active?”

“... No.”

Dr. Miller let out a quiet chuff, as if amused by his response.

“Do you smoke?”

“Sorta, but I’m- um, trying to quit.”

“Are you on any medications? If so, which ones?”

“Xanax, I guess. The uh, generic brand though. Can you- um, could you get my prescription renewed? That's actually- that's why I'm here. I've been taking it for, like, a long time now, and…”

“We can discuss that once we’re finished the screening process.” Miller took some sheets of paper from his folder and held one up, “Duck or rabbit?”

“Rabbit.”

“Great. How about this one?” he shuffled to the next paper, which was a printout of an Rorschach Inkblot. At this point, Jeremy had his answers for inkblot tests locked and loaded.

“Ghost.”

“And this?”

“Also a ghost.”

The doctor leaned in with an inquisitive smirk, “Do you believe in ghosts, Sam? Are you a superstitious guy?”

“I don’t know. I just think they're cool.”

“What's your relationship with your father like?”

“Not applicable.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Again, I-I need my meds refilled.”

“Why?”

“Because I can't stop taking them suddenly or I get jittery and spacey and I can't think, can't sleep, and my head hurts and I feel like throwing up all the time.”

“It says on your file that you have a family history of psychosis. Are you aware of this?”

“Being crazy has been running in our genetics since prehistoric times. Can I please—”

“Follow the yellow rabbit.”

“Get my… What?”

Dr. Miller held out what looked to be a pen topped with a small plastic bunny figurine. He slowly waved it from side to side.

“With your eyes. Trust the process.”

Jeremy obeyed, “You know, despite its- its clinical popularity, most members of the scientific community uh, they consider EMDR to be borderline pseudoscientific–”

“I can't help you if you don't let me, Sammy. At least try to keep an open mind.”

“I've had an open mind. I never skipped a session, I took my pills. I went on walks, I filled out worksheets, I read those short stories about kids who were quote-unquote just like me. All I got was this stupid benzo addiction.”

He took a shaky breath, still following the plastic bunny with his eyes.

“I’ve heard the buzzwords a million times: progress isn't linear. Grief doesn't always dull with time, it just gets easier to manage. It gets better, blah blah, etcetera. It's not like I chose to be like this! It's just- I’m- I’m not supposed to be here, it was supposed to be me- not Charlie, not Cass, it- it really, really should have been me.”

“And yet here you are.”

The doctor put down the pen then reached into his desk, shuffling around before pulling out a small, unlabeled bottle of pills.

Dr. Miller tossed the bottle to Jeremy with a grin, “They're not exactly your Xannies, but they're in the same family. Best I can do on short notice, but they should tide you over until I can getcha something better.”

Jeremy let out a heavy sigh of relief and crumpled over in the chair. Despite his deep embarrassment about crying in front of other people, a gross, wet sniffle escaped him.

Miller hummed approvingly, “Attaboy, have some damn catharsis. It’s good for the id.”

[thoughtportal]

Oprah went on the air nationally in the 1980s, just as non-Christian faith healing and channeling the spirits of the dead and “harmonic convergence” and alternative medicine and all the rest of the New Age movement had scaled up. By the 1990s, there was a big, respectable, glamorous New Age counterestablishment. Marianne Williamson, one of the new superstar New Age preachers, popularized a “channeled” book of spiritual revelation, A Course in Miracles: The author, a Columbia University psychology professor who was anonymous until after her death in the 1980s, had claimed that its 1,333 pages were dictated to her by Jesus. Her basic idea was that physical existence is a collective illusion—”the dream.” Endorsed by Williamson, the book became a gigantic best-seller. Deepak Chopra had been a distinguished endocrinologist before he quit regular medicine in his 30s to become the “physician to the gods” in the Transcendental Meditation organization and in 1989 hung out his own shingle as wise man, author, lecturer, and marketer of dietary supplements.

Remember the satanic panic, the mass hysteria during the 1980s and early ’90s about satanists abusing and murdering children that resulted in the wrongful convictions of dozens of people who collectively spent hundreds of years incarcerated? Multiple Oprah episodes featured the celebrity “victims” who got that fantasy going.

Most of the best-known prophets and denominational leaders in the New Age realm owe their careers to Winfrey. Her man Eckhart Tolle, for instance, whose books The Power of Now and A New Earth sold millions of copies apiece, is a successful crusader against reason itself. “Thinking has become a disease,” he writes, to be supplanted by feeling “the inner energy field of your body.”

Oz has encouraged viewers to believe that vaccines cause autism and other illnesses—as did Winfrey on her show before him. In 2007, long after the fraudulent 1998 paper that launched the anti-vaccine movement had been discredited, she gave an Oprah episode over to the actress Jenny McCarthy, a public face of the movement.

[kakodaimones]

Eudaemonics: The Science of Success is a 1949 self-help book by American author and engineer Vincent Voss. The book was intended to promote Voss's pseudoscientific system of Eudaemonics, which he claimed was a series of principles derived from "Classical and Eastern philosophies." Among the book's claims were that the system's techniques could cure psychological problems, alleviate physical ailments, and lead to increased material wealth when properly applied. The book's relative success would lead to the formation of the Eudaemonic Society in Princeton, New Jersey in 1950.

See Also

Murder of Vincent Voss

[tertiaryunit]

Walton meets his new assistant for the first time.

/ ------------------------------------------------------ /

[Washington, D.C, 28 September 2045 Majestic 12 Agent Graduation Ceremony]

Another of the many social events Walton disliked. As a retired army general, he had seen so many such events that they were enough to last him a lifetime. The only reason he was attending was because his “new assistant” (Page’s current pet project) was going to be there and Simons preferred to know in advance with who he was going to work with.

“Trust me, you’ll love him” - said Bob, without considering how strange it might have been for Walton to interact with a person made artificially from half of his very DNA - “Even if I still don’t understand why you refused to see him until now. That boy’s quite impressive and he absolutely adores you”

To be fair, Simons outright refused to look at any of Page’s experiments involving children, especially knowing how high the mortality rate was - apparently his half-clone was the only subject to make it to eighteen. The rest died either because of the experiments or by taking their own lives. The real reason why he had been so adamant on seeing absolutely nothing of the Agent until now was to keep his distance as much as he could; as he did with every single person in his life that wasn’t Bob.

“Well, I am glad you changed your mind! Maybe now you’ll finally assist to the tests, so you can become familiar with his powers” “So what can he do? Talk with the dead? Phase through walls?” - Walton sneered - “Mind control? Maybe he can possess people?”  “Joke about it as much as you want, Walt. You’ll see”

"Walt” always considered parapsychology to be “pseudoscientific bullshit”, the kind of stuff that’s entertaining to watch on TV when you have nothing to do. According to him, Page’s experiments were unnecessarily cruel (not that he tried to dissuade him from doing them) and the CEO had retorted that he wouldn’t think the same way if he bothered to check out the results.

Bob gave a pat on the back to his friend before going away to greet some business partners.   Simons walked around in the confusion of the hall for a while before catching sight of Sam Carter, the man who had so diligently raised their little experiment. He wore his most elegant outfit - a dark green tuxedo with a white button shirt and black tie, with many military medals decorating the left breast. The person he was talking to was giving Walton his back so that he couldn’t see him. 

Simons had met Sam numerous times before, to check on him. He knew very well how the other veteran didn’t like him at all, especially because they never told him the full extent of Lawrence’s program.

[”We told you about the experiments, Carter” ”You… You didn’t tell me how dangerous they would have been! You said they’d be safe! This is not… Military training! Military training for a child that’s barely TEN!” “Don’t be stupid. You know we can do this and more if we think it’s for the safety of millions of Americans”]

The two Veterans couldn’t have been more different as far as their ethics were concerned; Sam Carter was, according to Simons, a bleeding heard who let his trauma take full control of his life – he was no longer the man who once dispatched an entire platoon with a pocket knife. Carter, on his behalf, considered him a social climber who would do anything for power, even if it meant getting his hands dirty.   Now, Walton disagreed with that. He earned his position with actual work – like eliminating competition. He thought about the sweet irony of how he was going to use that man’s son to have power without “getting his hands dirty” and a very punchable smile appeared on his lips. Then, the man who was talking with Sam earlier turned and Simons’ eyes immediately fixated on him: the presumed Psychic seemed to have struck the old man like an electric shock. His skin tone was neither as dark as Asad’s (the other genetic half) neither as pale as his. Walton could definitely see what Page meant when he told him he was a “fifty-fifty”: the curly hair, the lips, the tip of the nose were identical to the deceased CEO’s. Everything else was his own: the hair color and hairline, the eyebrows, the forehead, the hint of the dimple on the chin...  And most importantly, those eyes with his exact shade of gray and a prominent bottom lid. Even his body build reminded Simons of himself at his prime - except for the height. The older man literally towered over him of at least one head. 

”So... You must be my new assistant” “P-pl... Pleased to m-meet you, Sir! Honored, actually! I am Lawrence Carter” It was... Uncanny, to say the least. Simons felt something like a cold rush running down his spine - nothing he couldn’t skillfully conceal behind a firm handshake, however. “Pleased to meet you too. I’ve been told you’re quite the asset for our organization” “Y-yes Sir! I graduated cum laude. I have been trained in Muay Thai, Shotokan and various fields including basic medicine and surgery, psychology, computer science...” Walton wasn’t really listening, however - he was having a flashback of his early adulthood, back when his face wasn’t scarred, wrinkled by old age or marked up with bioelectrics; back when he was so... Good looking.  He shook his head imperceptibly. 

“... Two years of British Butler Institute and, not to brag of course, I can play violin and piano quite well” “Mhm... I doubt Page recommended you so highly for your music skills, Agent. Anything else?” “Yes Sir. I am an Esper - my specialties are Telekinesis and Pyrokinesis” “Care to show me something, Mister Carter?”  

It was obvious Lawrence was waiting for him to ask about that. The young man removed the watch he was wearing, holding it in his palm: it immediately started levitating up and down, first slowly then like a little bouncing ball of mechanisms and gears.  The Psychic then snapped his fingers and small flames erupted from that rubbing along with a dry, sizzling sound. Walton noticed the fire formed a small heart shape before disappearing as quickly as it appeared.

“Ah...! This is n-nothing, Sir!” - The Psychic took Walton’s wide-eyed stare as a positive reaction - “A few weeks ago mister Page made me lift some freightliners. I hope I will get to try with some tanks soon”  “Freightliners... Yes, he... He told me” “I just hope... I just hope you will come watch me, Sir. It would mean a lot to me” The young man lowered his eyes, his cheeks hot and flushed with emotion.  Walton’s mind was running wild. The idea of harnessing such power gave him a rush of excitement below the belt - or at least, he hoped it was that idea of power rather than his half-clone’s looks. 

“Oh S-Sir! I have waited this moment for so long! Y-you’ve been my hero since I was eleven!” - Walton was struck by a momentary deafness when the Psychic mentioned that number. He coughed a bit too, for good measure. ”I have read all your biographies Sir, all your interviews, everything!” Simons was obviously quite pleased by all that enthusiasm about his person – Sam, however, looked at him barely holding his disgust. “I trained all my life to be by your side, Sir, and I can’t wait to start working together! This is the best belated birthday present ever” “So… How old are you now, Agent?” “Eighteen, Sir!” “Well, since you seem to admire me so much, Agent...“ Walton knew from the start that the best course of action was to play on the Agent’s feelings. He wasn’t the first nor the last he was going to manipulate - what could have gone wrong? After all, it had been at least a decade since he had felt any kind of sappy sentiment...  “... I think I could take a nice picture with you, as a birthday present. Then we can go print it and I’ll make sure to leave you a nice message. What do you think?”

Lawrence’s smile was radiant; he was so happy his eyes got wet with tears of joy. Even the old General was smiling. The young Psychic had no idea that that was nothing more than the omen of a storm about to come.

[”28th Semptember 2045. Officially appointed as mister Simons' assistant!!!" "Happy belated 18th Birthday. - W.S."]

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The Horrific Story of Ota Benga

Benga was born in the Ituri Forest, in the extreme northeast of the colony, to the Mbuti Pygmies. His people lived in loose bands of family groups of between 15 and 20 people, moving from one temporary village or camp to another as the seasons and hunting opportunities dictated. Benga married young and fathered two children, which put him on track to start his own family and perhaps someday lead a band himself, like the Mbuti had done for thousands of years.

But that wasn’t to be. Benga would never lead his own band.

When he was still a teenager, the eastern Congo erupted into a war that saw mass deportations, raids by Arab slavers, and an invasion by the Force Publique, a Belgian-led occupying army that was manned by the dregs of the colony and commanded by some of the worst sadists Belgium could produce; the Force Publique was originally formed to enforce rubber quotas and beat complainers with hippopotamus-hide whips.

Like many colonial militias, they were corrupt: they raped and murdered villagers, even collecting severed hands and heads. Sometime in the late 1890s, Force Publique “soldiers” found Benga’s family camp and killed his entire family. He was out hunting at the time, so he only got to see the aftermath of the massacre. To a hunter-gatherer like Benga, the family is life itself. Without them, he had the choice of wandering alone until he died, or seeking out a new family group and begging them to take him on as a helper.

However, aside from dying or finding a new family, fate tossed Benga a third option.

A short time after losing his family, he was picked up by slave traders who put him in chains and dragged him out of the forest, which had been the only home he had ever known. They put him to work as a laborer in an agricultural village. It was there, in 1904, that Benga was discovered by, of all people, an American businessman and amateur explorer named Samuel Verner.

Verner had been sent to the Congo on an expedition commissioned by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which was planning an exhibit for the St. Louis World’s Fair that would “educate” the public in what was then a racist, pseudoscientific brand of anthropology.

Verner’s job was to find some authentic African pygmies to display as “missing links” in human evolution. Looking at Benga, a lean, very black, very short man with teeth that had been filed into points, Verner knew he had what he needed. He bought Benga for a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth.

Verner’s group promptly brought Benga to St. Louis, where he was the hit of the 1904 World’s Fair.

He and the other captive Africans he had been lumped in with quickly figured out that the crowd wanted to see genuine African “savages,” so they started imitating the dancing and war-whoops they saw the nearby American Indians doing. He made friends with Geronimo and charged increasingly interested visitors five cents to see his teeth. At one point, the National Guard had to be called in to control the crowds because they were getting so large.

After the fair, Benga travelled with Verner and even returned to Africa for a time. In 1905, he took up residence with another Congolese tribe, the Batwa, and married a woman from the tribe. The marriage only lasted a few months, ending when Benga’s wife died from a snakebite. At loose ends again, Benga travelled back to the United States with Verner in 1906. 

Upon returning to the United States in 1906, Benga’s first stop was a spare room at the American Museum of Natural History, where he again “delighted” visitors by pretending to be a babbling half-human.  Everybody at the museum liked Benga, but the director refused to pay Verner the salary he was asking for, so eventually the pair picked up and moved to the Bronx Zoo.

Benga was allowed free movement through the zoo grounds, but his hammock was slung in the primate exhibit. He was displayed as part of the New York Anthropological Society’s exhibit on human evolution. Local black clergy were appalled by the exhibit and demanded Benga’s release, even lobbying the governor to force the zoo to shut down the display. Benga was eventually released into the custody of James Gordon, the minister who had led the charge to free him. He then went to live in Gordon’s black orphanage.

Still unhappy with his life, Benga eventually moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, to live with friends of Gordon named the McCrays. Gordon still managed Benga’s affairs, and he seemed to have definite ideas about how the 27-year-old man should live. Gordon arranged to have Benga’s teeth capped and enrolled him in a school for non-white children. He also got Benga a job at a local tobacco plant, where he seemed to have been popular and told his story for free root beer.

However, by 1914, Benga was planning a final return to Africa. Life in America, he decided, wasn’t for him. With the money he made from the tobacco job, Benga started putting things in order and looking for passage to the nearest port to his homeland. By this time, Leopold II was dead, and the Belgian government had stepped in to clean up some of the mess he’d left behind. Conditions were looking up in the Congo, and it was time to go home for good.

But this return passage was not to be. The outbreak of World War I suspended most cross-Atlantic shipping, and the German occupation of Belgium threw the Congo into bureaucratic chaos, with nobody allowed in or out. On March 20, 1916, depressed at the thought of not being able to return home, Ota Benga shot himself in the heart.

[meandmybigmouth]

INHUMAN MOTHER FUCKERS! I AM NOT HIDING THE TERM!