Aug 24, 2023·edited Aug 24, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
Here’s what he been concerning me lately: we keep saying there’s no long-term studies to justify this kind of butchery, and that’s one of the things we say to push back against it. But are we really at a point where we need “studies” to tell us castrating and mutilating the bodies of minors, let alone ANYONE, is a net good or a net bad thing? Isn’t it playing into the game employed by medical malfeasance and greed, when we don’t need studies to tell us that this is an abject horror we are witnessing? This butchery has to end. Full stop.
"...we don’t need studies to tell us that this is an abject horror we are witnessing..." No we don't need studies! Makes as much sense as needing a "study" to confirm the recent conflagration in Maui was a huge tragedy. Objective truth, self-evident truth has gotten lost for so many.
Yes very true. And another lesson to be taken from this horror is that the common-sense guardrails that every society needs - like 'I am a boy' or 'I am a girl' or 'I am not a cat' (see recent schoolroom horror in in England for details) - have been swept away in our age of rampant narcissistic/therapeutic hyper-'individualism'. This won't end well.
PS, This is actually what you are advocating here, so not a critique. Thank you for fighting. Where would we be if voices like yours were not gaining traction?
Yes! The demand for "scientific evidence" is used as a club by those in power. Yet every time scientific evidence (the ROGD paper for example) manages to get published, those in power ensure it is retracted by threatening the journal in question.
That doesn't mean science is bad. It means the scientific establishment is corrupt and doesn't care about science. But the platonic ideal of science still exists!
Of course it does. But anyone who needs a study to determine that there are 2 sexes in mammals is an idiot and should not be allowed anywhere near power, scientific or political.
It also begs the question of why we are trying to use rational evidence to change the minds of irrational people who use emotion and feelings as their guide rails.
I don't know how you can be on this side of the internet and still believe that feelings should be used to guide social policy instead of facts. When you say that studies on the outcomes of sex reassignment surgery are irrelevant because the practice feels icky to you, you are no different from the bleeding heart liberal who says that recidivism rates are irrelevant because putting shoplifters in prison feels wrong.
The massive uptick of young people identifying as trans is a problem, just as any massive increase in diagnoses for a mental illness is a problem, and the most likely explanation for this phenomenon is social contagion. However, while trans people used to be far less numerous, they have always existed, and we've been allowing them to transition for nearly a century , because medical research (there's that word again!) has yet to find any better treatment for dysphoria. What do you think should be done with these people? Should they just be made to suffer, because helping them would feel icky? Or might you want to do research (there it is again) to see if there's a way to both help them and not gross you out?
There’s a huge difference between, ew, that’s gross, and watching butchering of minors at scale. And yes, it is butchery. Waiting for studies to prove that we are, in fact, allowing the destruction of life for many of these people is like watching a kid saw off his hand and saying, well, let’s do a study to find out if you need that hand, long-term! Seriously? Is that where we are?
Now, sex reassignment surgery is not icky to me when you’re talking about an absolutely tiny population of people who genuinely suffer from a psychological disorder. I have a kid with intense psychological struggles. It’s real. So yes, they’ve been around. But extremely rare. And you can’t honestly read any of Chris’s stuff and think that these surgeons and hospitals are really operating from compassion. The gay community spent decades fighting for acceptance - declaring themselves to be perfect as they are. How did we go from that to - you are definitely NOT perfect as you are, so get yourself to Dr. Frankenstein! He’ll make something better out of you! Only he can’t. And we’ve always known it.
Dan, I basically agree. No medical intervention for children or adolescents. I would raise the age of consent to 21, maybe even 25. And I'd mandate a thorough mental health evaluation (by a truly neutral professional) prior to surgery for all adults desiring any of these procedures. But I do not like the government telling adults what they can or cannot do with their bodies, as long as no one else is harmed. And don't counter with abortion rights: a second human being is involved, the argument is when that being should be protected.
Name, shame, and punish all doctors who do harm to patients. The Pritzkers fund trans clinics and make money from trans drugs. Plume Health mails hormones and surgery support letters across state lines after one Zoom consultation: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-do-no-harm-part-2
I believe Planned Parenthood is now in the business of supplying trans drugs. In addition to eliminating your unborn child, they will act further to eliminate your ability to reproduce.
I believe you. I’m just noting that each state has medical license requirements, so if there’s a national
organization prescribing drugs, the doctor or NP prescribing the drug must have a medical license in the patient’s state. The DEA license is federal, but the provider requires a medical license to practice in a state. Some states have reciprocal agreements, but not many.
Yes, but more harmful, because it impacts children! It needs to be stopped! Lobotomy never cancelled people who did not agree with the practice. Lobotomy was never as widespread as the trans ideology. Lobotomy never hurt women’s rights . It was never as dangerous to society as the trans cult is .
"it’s kind of assault to make a patient remove an organ that they’re enjoying."
Ironic statement from a man who makes his living removing perfectly functional organs on request.
There's postmodernism in a nutshell. What matters isn't whether the organ is actually functioning correctly. What matters is the patient's perception of the organ. Perception creates reality, so actual reality must be modified to conform to your perception.
There is no logical endpoint to this philosophy. Mary Harrington has been great on pointing out that transgenderism is really only the onramp to transhumanism, the desire to remake ourselves in our own image. It is a logical consequence of the philosophy of scientific materialism. If man is just a random combination of chemicals that happened to produce a smart ape, why shouldn't the smart ape rearrange his chemicals as he sees fit. That's a loose rhyme for, "Ye too shall be as God."
Fortunately, systems of unreality always end. Reality wins... because it's real. Unfortunately, they can do a great deal of damage along the way, as we are seeing now.
In one sense, this barbarism is creating a population of sterile approximations of human beings, horrifying in the extreme.
In another sense these creatures are being removed from the gene pool, from the reproducing population, which is probably a benefit in the long run.
The exception, though, is the woman who has enough surgery to look like a man but keeps her reproductive parts and breasts, giving rise to the freakish spectacle of what were once called "bearded ladies" giving birth and suckling infants.
Pity the poor, soon-to-be-confused offspring of such a freak and the weirdo who impregnated her. He or she will be sent to a public school where he or she will be indoctrinated into the cockeyed world-view of the progressive catechism--the lies that constitute the "gender" nonsense advocated by latter-day Lysenkos.
This whole social movement is obscene, grotesque, and ultimately evil for its effect on relations between genuine men and women. Its advocates are irrational in the extreme and are adept at avoiding scrutiny and criticism and support a trans-human (read: anti-human) agenda whether they realize it or not. Not satisfied with the terms of being born in a human body, they seek some sort of adjustment which will ultimately render Homo sapiens sterile and asexual, a species that can no longer replace populations and ultimately dies out, leaving the Earth to the cockroaches and fungi. An environmentalist's dream.
Sadly, we live in a society so corrupted in thought that many people will have no objection to this if it is done to “consenting adults,” as if the Nuremberg doctors would have been totally justified to mutilate their victims had only those patients been mentally ill enough to consent to being tortured…
That is a point I TRY to make to others all the time, but it’s a tough sell!
Even for “moderates”, gender theory has become so accepted that wanting to “change genders” (and having drastic surgeries to do so) is seen as something akin to getting a tattoo (permanent, yes, but not a big deal, as long as one is over 18 years old).
THAT is really scary -- the average person now tacitly accepts the idea that gender is NOT binary in humans; that this stuff doesn’t indicate mental health issues, and is “normal”.
Chris Rufo’s work has brought focus on so many aspects of “woke” philosophy, the main tenets of which are moral relativism and the normalization of pathologies like crime, sexual deviance, racism, etc.
Once ideas like this have been successfully sold to the public, reversing this destructive mindset becomes less and less likely.
We clearly don’t frame this issue in the same way at all. I don’t see this as a “body autonomy” issue. I see this as a form of mental health crisis, with so many of our young people crying out for help, but instead being guided into using gender dysphoria as a (wrong) self-diagnosis -- supported by the medical establishment. And I see so-called “adults” in our culture as being relatively emotionally immature, and therefore unable to truly understand the consequences of what they’re doing. I think we need to recognize that people often don’t make rational choices, and before something as drastic as these surgeries, we need MUCH more “gatekeeping”. For their own sake, and for the sake of our deeply disturbed society.
Would you be in favor of those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) being permitted to have a surgeon sever their spinal cord because they “identify as a paraplegic”? [Yes, BIID is a real thing; for now, extremely rare...but “transsexualism” used to be extremely rare, too!] Or is that a body autonomy issue that we should permit without judgement?
If I wasn't clear, I want NO surgeries on minors, and I would increase the age of consent for any surgery to at least 21 if not higher. We differ only on "adults". Yes, I'm aware of BIID. I would elect no government interference. Crazy libertarians make people uncomfortable.
As long as this quack doctor has malpractice insurance he will and should be sued by victims who realize that they did not achieve the promised land assured by advocates of such "surgery "
We should be careful about crossing certain lines with legislation, lest we do more harm than good. Protecting children who can't consent is a no-brainer. It gets much more difficult when we're talking about protecting adults from themselves. Law is a very blunt instrument, the sausage is made badly, the bureaucracy executes poorly and is often corrupted by such laws (prohibition, for example).
As long as adults are spending their own money and bearing ALL the consequences of their actions in pursuit of whatever weird goals they have, we should tread lightly on the legislative front. Bearing all consequences means there should be no special legal protections for such people in terms of employment or other association. Under these conditions the small number of people who are helplessly bent on destroying themselves are not a threat to society, but just a sad, unhappy fact of life. Unless we're willing to bring them into our own homes and provide them nurturing care (I'm not), we need to at least leave them free to manage the best they can.
I find the whole business disgusting, whether it's the doctor doing the surgery or the patients destroying themselves, but in adults we need to combat that socially, not legally.
Truly evil. I have decided to pray for this monster. May he have his own day on the road to Damascus. In any case, like all of us, someday he will speak to God. In the meantime, thanks to all those actively standing in the gap to save children and trying to shape the culture back to the Good.
I think we should inundate the clinic with requests for for three penises or two vaginas. All of us should demand for appointments. Why stop with one of each? Push them to the limits. This is my truth after all.
Here’s what he been concerning me lately: we keep saying there’s no long-term studies to justify this kind of butchery, and that’s one of the things we say to push back against it. But are we really at a point where we need “studies” to tell us castrating and mutilating the bodies of minors, let alone ANYONE, is a net good or a net bad thing? Isn’t it playing into the game employed by medical malfeasance and greed, when we don’t need studies to tell us that this is an abject horror we are witnessing? This butchery has to end. Full stop.
Exactly, this is a simple moral problem.
"...we don’t need studies to tell us that this is an abject horror we are witnessing..." No we don't need studies! Makes as much sense as needing a "study" to confirm the recent conflagration in Maui was a huge tragedy. Objective truth, self-evident truth has gotten lost for so many.
Yes very true. And another lesson to be taken from this horror is that the common-sense guardrails that every society needs - like 'I am a boy' or 'I am a girl' or 'I am not a cat' (see recent schoolroom horror in in England for details) - have been swept away in our age of rampant narcissistic/therapeutic hyper-'individualism'. This won't end well.
PS, This is actually what you are advocating here, so not a critique. Thank you for fighting. Where would we be if voices like yours were not gaining traction?
Yes! The demand for "scientific evidence" is used as a club by those in power. Yet every time scientific evidence (the ROGD paper for example) manages to get published, those in power ensure it is retracted by threatening the journal in question.
That doesn't mean science is bad. It means the scientific establishment is corrupt and doesn't care about science. But the platonic ideal of science still exists!
Of course it does. But anyone who needs a study to determine that there are 2 sexes in mammals is an idiot and should not be allowed anywhere near power, scientific or political.
It also begs the question of why we are trying to use rational evidence to change the minds of irrational people who use emotion and feelings as their guide rails.
Exactly!
I don't know how you can be on this side of the internet and still believe that feelings should be used to guide social policy instead of facts. When you say that studies on the outcomes of sex reassignment surgery are irrelevant because the practice feels icky to you, you are no different from the bleeding heart liberal who says that recidivism rates are irrelevant because putting shoplifters in prison feels wrong.
The massive uptick of young people identifying as trans is a problem, just as any massive increase in diagnoses for a mental illness is a problem, and the most likely explanation for this phenomenon is social contagion. However, while trans people used to be far less numerous, they have always existed, and we've been allowing them to transition for nearly a century , because medical research (there's that word again!) has yet to find any better treatment for dysphoria. What do you think should be done with these people? Should they just be made to suffer, because helping them would feel icky? Or might you want to do research (there it is again) to see if there's a way to both help them and not gross you out?
There’s a huge difference between, ew, that’s gross, and watching butchering of minors at scale. And yes, it is butchery. Waiting for studies to prove that we are, in fact, allowing the destruction of life for many of these people is like watching a kid saw off his hand and saying, well, let’s do a study to find out if you need that hand, long-term! Seriously? Is that where we are?
Now, sex reassignment surgery is not icky to me when you’re talking about an absolutely tiny population of people who genuinely suffer from a psychological disorder. I have a kid with intense psychological struggles. It’s real. So yes, they’ve been around. But extremely rare. And you can’t honestly read any of Chris’s stuff and think that these surgeons and hospitals are really operating from compassion. The gay community spent decades fighting for acceptance - declaring themselves to be perfect as they are. How did we go from that to - you are definitely NOT perfect as you are, so get yourself to Dr. Frankenstein! He’ll make something better out of you! Only he can’t. And we’ve always known it.
Dan, I basically agree. No medical intervention for children or adolescents. I would raise the age of consent to 21, maybe even 25. And I'd mandate a thorough mental health evaluation (by a truly neutral professional) prior to surgery for all adults desiring any of these procedures. But I do not like the government telling adults what they can or cannot do with their bodies, as long as no one else is harmed. And don't counter with abortion rights: a second human being is involved, the argument is when that being should be protected.
The largest studies show that those getting TG surgery still have a almost 20x higher rate of commiting suicide than the population.
That sounds believable, but I'd still like if you could provide an author or year so I can look it up.
Name, shame, and punish all doctors who do harm to patients. The Pritzkers fund trans clinics and make money from trans drugs. Plume Health mails hormones and surgery support letters across state lines after one Zoom consultation: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-do-no-harm-part-2
Absolutely.
I believe Planned Parenthood is now in the business of supplying trans drugs. In addition to eliminating your unborn child, they will act further to eliminate your ability to reproduce.
That’s not legal unless the prescriber has a medical license in the patient’s state of residence.
Lisa: look on Planned Parenthood’s website and you will readily see they provide Transgender Hormone Therapy.
I believe you. I’m just noting that each state has medical license requirements, so if there’s a national
organization prescribing drugs, the doctor or NP prescribing the drug must have a medical license in the patient’s state. The DEA license is federal, but the provider requires a medical license to practice in a state. Some states have reciprocal agreements, but not many.
This is so similar to the lobotomy craze.
Yes, but more harmful, because it impacts children! It needs to be stopped! Lobotomy never cancelled people who did not agree with the practice. Lobotomy was never as widespread as the trans ideology. Lobotomy never hurt women’s rights . It was never as dangerous to society as the trans cult is .
JFK's Father had it done to his sister Rosemary who was only 23, because she had mood swings and was rebellious.
"it’s kind of assault to make a patient remove an organ that they’re enjoying."
Ironic statement from a man who makes his living removing perfectly functional organs on request.
There's postmodernism in a nutshell. What matters isn't whether the organ is actually functioning correctly. What matters is the patient's perception of the organ. Perception creates reality, so actual reality must be modified to conform to your perception.
There is no logical endpoint to this philosophy. Mary Harrington has been great on pointing out that transgenderism is really only the onramp to transhumanism, the desire to remake ourselves in our own image. It is a logical consequence of the philosophy of scientific materialism. If man is just a random combination of chemicals that happened to produce a smart ape, why shouldn't the smart ape rearrange his chemicals as he sees fit. That's a loose rhyme for, "Ye too shall be as God."
Fortunately, systems of unreality always end. Reality wins... because it's real. Unfortunately, they can do a great deal of damage along the way, as we are seeing now.
In one sense, this barbarism is creating a population of sterile approximations of human beings, horrifying in the extreme.
In another sense these creatures are being removed from the gene pool, from the reproducing population, which is probably a benefit in the long run.
The exception, though, is the woman who has enough surgery to look like a man but keeps her reproductive parts and breasts, giving rise to the freakish spectacle of what were once called "bearded ladies" giving birth and suckling infants.
Pity the poor, soon-to-be-confused offspring of such a freak and the weirdo who impregnated her. He or she will be sent to a public school where he or she will be indoctrinated into the cockeyed world-view of the progressive catechism--the lies that constitute the "gender" nonsense advocated by latter-day Lysenkos.
This whole social movement is obscene, grotesque, and ultimately evil for its effect on relations between genuine men and women. Its advocates are irrational in the extreme and are adept at avoiding scrutiny and criticism and support a trans-human (read: anti-human) agenda whether they realize it or not. Not satisfied with the terms of being born in a human body, they seek some sort of adjustment which will ultimately render Homo sapiens sterile and asexual, a species that can no longer replace populations and ultimately dies out, leaving the Earth to the cockroaches and fungi. An environmentalist's dream.
Sadly, we live in a society so corrupted in thought that many people will have no objection to this if it is done to “consenting adults,” as if the Nuremberg doctors would have been totally justified to mutilate their victims had only those patients been mentally ill enough to consent to being tortured…
That is a point I TRY to make to others all the time, but it’s a tough sell!
Even for “moderates”, gender theory has become so accepted that wanting to “change genders” (and having drastic surgeries to do so) is seen as something akin to getting a tattoo (permanent, yes, but not a big deal, as long as one is over 18 years old).
THAT is really scary -- the average person now tacitly accepts the idea that gender is NOT binary in humans; that this stuff doesn’t indicate mental health issues, and is “normal”.
Chris Rufo’s work has brought focus on so many aspects of “woke” philosophy, the main tenets of which are moral relativism and the normalization of pathologies like crime, sexual deviance, racism, etc.
Once ideas like this have been successfully sold to the public, reversing this destructive mindset becomes less and less likely.
I don't think belief in body autonomy for adults is equivalent to accepting gender as non binary and gender dysphoria as normal.
We clearly don’t frame this issue in the same way at all. I don’t see this as a “body autonomy” issue. I see this as a form of mental health crisis, with so many of our young people crying out for help, but instead being guided into using gender dysphoria as a (wrong) self-diagnosis -- supported by the medical establishment. And I see so-called “adults” in our culture as being relatively emotionally immature, and therefore unable to truly understand the consequences of what they’re doing. I think we need to recognize that people often don’t make rational choices, and before something as drastic as these surgeries, we need MUCH more “gatekeeping”. For their own sake, and for the sake of our deeply disturbed society.
Would you be in favor of those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) being permitted to have a surgeon sever their spinal cord because they “identify as a paraplegic”? [Yes, BIID is a real thing; for now, extremely rare...but “transsexualism” used to be extremely rare, too!] Or is that a body autonomy issue that we should permit without judgement?
If I wasn't clear, I want NO surgeries on minors, and I would increase the age of consent for any surgery to at least 21 if not higher. We differ only on "adults". Yes, I'm aware of BIID. I would elect no government interference. Crazy libertarians make people uncomfortable.
As long as this quack doctor has malpractice insurance he will and should be sued by victims who realize that they did not achieve the promised land assured by advocates of such "surgery "
“... removing all external genitalia to create a smooth transition from the abdomen to the groin.”
Make them all Barbies and Kens!
He thinks he’s God.
This is dehumanization in its most literal sense.
Even the NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/health/transgender-youth-st-louis-jamie-reed.html) is slowly beginning to realize what European countries have come to understand about mutilating children without adequate assessment. The prestigious British Medical Journal makes the case:
https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p553
Which is great. Though the article still had issues. I appreciated the corrections made here
https://open.substack.com/pub/lisaselindavis/p/there-i-fixed-it?r=aumd&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
This is horrifying!! Please keep your foot"on the gas" revealing these satanic pratices!! & thank you for all you have done thus far.
We should be careful about crossing certain lines with legislation, lest we do more harm than good. Protecting children who can't consent is a no-brainer. It gets much more difficult when we're talking about protecting adults from themselves. Law is a very blunt instrument, the sausage is made badly, the bureaucracy executes poorly and is often corrupted by such laws (prohibition, for example).
As long as adults are spending their own money and bearing ALL the consequences of their actions in pursuit of whatever weird goals they have, we should tread lightly on the legislative front. Bearing all consequences means there should be no special legal protections for such people in terms of employment or other association. Under these conditions the small number of people who are helplessly bent on destroying themselves are not a threat to society, but just a sad, unhappy fact of life. Unless we're willing to bring them into our own homes and provide them nurturing care (I'm not), we need to at least leave them free to manage the best they can.
I find the whole business disgusting, whether it's the doctor doing the surgery or the patients destroying themselves, but in adults we need to combat that socially, not legally.
Nicely said!
Is there any reality left in our America!
Truly evil. I have decided to pray for this monster. May he have his own day on the road to Damascus. In any case, like all of us, someday he will speak to God. In the meantime, thanks to all those actively standing in the gap to save children and trying to shape the culture back to the Good.
I think we should inundate the clinic with requests for for three penises or two vaginas. All of us should demand for appointments. Why stop with one of each? Push them to the limits. This is my truth after all.