Tag Archives: Transgender

News

Psychiatrist Paul McHugh explains the troubles with transgender activism

3 Comments
Lets take a closer look at a puzzle
Lets take a closer look at a puzzle

In the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

The transgendered suffer a disorder of “assumption” like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one’s maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.

With body dysmorphic disorder, an often socially crippling condition, the individual is consumed by the assumption “I’m ugly.” These disorders occur in subjects who have come to believe that some of their psycho-social conflicts or problems will be resolved if they can change the way that they appear to others. Such ideas work like ruling passions in their subjects’ minds and tend to be accompanied by a solipsistic argument.

For the transgendered, this argument holds that one’s feeling of “gender” is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one’s mind, cannot be questioned by others. The individual often seeks not just society’s tolerance of this “personal truth” but affirmation of it. Here rests the support for “transgender equality,” the demands for government payment for medical and surgical treatments, and for access to all sex-based public roles and privileges.

With this argument, advocates for the transgendered have persuaded several states—including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts—to pass laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor. That government can intrude into parents’ rights to seek help in guiding their children indicates how powerful these advocates have become.

How to respond? Psychiatrists obviously must challenge the solipsistic concept that what is in the mind cannot be questioned. Disorders of consciousness, after all, represent psychiatry’s domain; declaring them off-limits would eliminate the field. Many will recall how, in the 1990s, an accusation of parental sex abuse of children was deemed unquestionable by the solipsists of the “recovered memory” craze.

You won’t hear it from those championing transgender equality, but controlled and follow-up studies reveal fundamental problems with this movement. When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned.

We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into “sex-reassignment surgery”—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as “satisfied” by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a “satisfied” but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.

It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.

We seem to have this popular idea in our culture now that the loving thing to do in every case is to just affirm whatever anyone feels like doing. Want to have sex-reassignment surgery? No problem. Want to be surgically altered to look like a cat? No problem. Want to have an amputation because you don’t like your arm? No problem. Want to have taxpayer-provided heroine injected by nurses? No problem. Want to adopt a lifestyle that involves having risky sex with hundreds of unprotected partners? We’ll wave a rainbow flag for you. Want to get drunk and have sex before you (and they) have even graduated high school? Here are free condoms and free abortions to fix anything that might go wrong.

The really, really bad thing that we must never, ever do, apparently, is to tell someone “it’s wrong”.

I am really struggling to understand why telling people NOT to do things that are bad for them is a bad thing. I set boundaries on myself to keep myself out of trouble. Why can’t I let other people know what they are? Why do I have to pay taxes so that other people can afford to do risky and/or immoral things that I would never do?

News

Government-run healthcare: transgender surgeries first, the rest wait in line

Leave a comment
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

How well is 100% government-run health care working in the United States? Well, the Veteran’s Administration is 100% government-run health care. Let’s see how it works.

The Stream explains:

The number of veterans waiting more than a month for care just passed the 500,000 mark, according to new data on patient wait times released by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Patient data, current up through May 15, shows that the number of veterans waiting more than 30 days jumped by 10,000 in just two weeks, to exactly 505,880.

And over the course of a month, the number of veterans waiting more than 30 days surged by 23,000. The average number of days to wait for a primary care appointment saw an increase to an average of 6.89 days. For days to get specialty care, the average bumped up to 10.15.

The VA also provided data on vets who have had to wait for 1-2 months. There are 297,013 vets who have waited that time period, a figure which increased by 5,000. For vets in the 3-4 month category, the number jumped by 2,000 to 46,672.

Although the new wait time data is not encouraging, VA Secretary Robert McDonald recently downplayed the importance of that metric, instead preferring to cite other apparently superior figures like overall veteran satisfaction with the experience. To justify his prioritizing the “satisfaction” metric, McDonald said that Disneyland does the exact same thing and doesn’t place a whole lot of importance on wait times for rides as such, but rather how much its patrons enjoy their experience at the amusement park as a whole. Citing Disneyland plays to McDonald’s philosophy of bringing corporate management techniques to the VA from his private sector experience as CEO of Procter & Gamble.

“When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what’s important? What’s important is, what’s your satisfaction with the experience?” McDonald said, according to The Washington Examiner. “And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure.”

Shut up and wait, he says. Be happy you even get a place in line at Disneyland at all. And they get big fat bonuses for this, as I blogged previously. We are being forced to pay taxes to pay this clown’s salary.

But there is one kind of treatment that is a top priority for the Democrat VA administrators.

This is from the Daily Wire.

Excerpt:

A reported 307,000 veterans have died while awaiting health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs. In May of 2015, 53-year-old military veteran Thomas Murphy pulled into a VA parking lot, put a gun up to his head and pulled the trigger. The incident is suspected to have been done in the VA parking lot to bring awareness to the department’s unacceptable shortcomings. Again, in July of 2015, 30-year-old military veteran Tom Young killed himself after being sent to voicemail when he called the VA’s suicide hotline. In as recent as March of this year, another veteran set himself on fire outside a VA clinic in New Jersey.

And the list, sadly, goes on.

While the VA lets countless brave men and women who have served our country die due to their utter incompetence, bureaucrats from the department are focusing their attention on paying for highly controversial sex-reassignment surgeries for self-identified transgenders. As reported by theMilitary Times, a new rule proposed by the department “would remove a long-held ban on the surgery.”

The proposal claims that “increased understanding of both gender dysphoria and surgical techniques in this area have improved significantly, and surgical procedures are now widely accepted in the medical community as medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria.”

“Gender dysphoria,” states the proposal, “is a serious condition that has had severe medical consequences for certain patients if transition-related surgeries and procedures are not provided.”

It should be noted that though the VA is claiming that sex-reassignment surgery is the proper response to the mental illness of transgenderism, many in the medical field have warned against such action. One of the more vocal is former Chief of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital Dr. Paul R. McHugh, a man who has studied transgenderism and sex-reassignment surgeries for 40 years, who said that those who push for such surgeries which enable the mentally ill are simply “collaborating with madness.”

Johns Hopkins Hospital eventually stopped providing such surgeries after psychiatrists’ research led them to conclude that the hospital was “fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness.”

The government controls health care for veterans – it is 100% government-controlled. Should we give them control of the res of health care? It seems to me that government-run health care is basically mandatory taxation, followed by doling out health care to those who are most likely to vote for the radical leftists who now control health care. Don’t allow them to do take it over.

In other news, Obama has declared June to be gay pride month. This is what we voted for in 2008 and 2012, people. This is not an accident. All of Obama’s supporters are on board with putting the gay agenda above common sense. That’s what they voted for.

News

Obama administration forces transgender bathroom access in all public schools

1 Comment
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

This is from The Stream:

Public schools must permit transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity, according to an Obama administration directive issued amid a court fight between the federal government and North Carolina.

The guidance from leaders at the departments of Education and Justice says public schools are obligated to treat transgender students in a way that matches their gender identity, even if their education records or identity documents indicate a different sex.

“There is no room in our schools for discrimination of any kind, including discrimination against transgender students on the basis of their sex,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement accompanying the directive, which is being sent to school districts Friday.

In issuing the guidance, the Obama administration is wading anew into a socially divisive debate it has bluntly cast in terms of civil rights. The Justice Department on Monday sued North Carolina over a bathroom access law that it said violates the rights of transgender people, a measure that Lynch likened to policies of racial segregation and efforts to deny gay couples the right to marry.

“We must ensure that our young people know that whoever they are or wherever they come from, they have the opportunity to get a great education in an environment free from discrimination, harassment and violence,” [Education Secretary John B.] King said.

Ah yes – the students get their educations in the bathrooms, changerooms and showers. So that’s where they have to be free to pretend to be a sex they are not, or they won’t learn anything in there. It’s part of their education, what goes on in bathrooms, changerooms and showers.

In any case, things are going so well academically in our schools, that of course we can focus on these human rights issues instead. Our public schools are the best in the world, and our students are the most educated, right?

OK, so who is behind this power play? The largest gay activist group in the United States, of course:

The move was cheered by Human Rights Campaign, a gay, lesbian and transgender civil rights organization, which called the guidelines “groundbreaking.”

“This is a truly significant moment not only for transgender young people but for all young people, sending a message that every student deserves to be treated fairly and supported by their teachers and schools,” HRC President Chad Griffin said in a statement.

All of this Obama administration activity is being down with taxpayer dollars. Even if you disagree with it, you’re paying for it. The solution is to shrink the size of government by voting for people who want the federal government to only focus on the responsibilities outlined for it in the Constitution, and push the other responsibilities down to the state level. I can guarantee you that if you live in a red state, you would never have your state government forcing gay activist legislation down your throat. But even then, at least you could move to a more conservative state. When the federal government does it, you’re stuck.

Think of the things that the federal government should be working on like fighting wars, building up our armed forces, detecting and neutralizing terrorists, securing the border, and lowering taxes and regulations on business. But they do none of those things, and instead just do whatever the Human Rights Campaign wants them to do. And this is what people who vote for the Democrat party want.

Ted Cruz campaigned on abolishing the federal department of education, precisely because education is something that should be left to the states. But, unfortunately the Republican primary voters were not looking for someone with good policies. So this isn’t going to get fixed, no matter who wins the election in 2016. It might get fixed in 2020, if we elect a Constitutional conservative.