Political discourse on the right today often seems like little more than a battle of the buzzwords, with the victory going to whoever can stuff the most buzzwords into their proclamations, never mind what they might possibly mean.
Recently i found a real winner in this regard on a site called Creative Destruction Media, which managed to work four buzzwords (or, rather, buzz phrases) into a 12-word headline in such a way as to make clear that the headline writer didn’t actually understand half of what they were saying: “Is Gender Dysphoria yet Another Marxist Weapon Against Judeo-Christian Democratic Societies?.”
How exactly a medical condition can be a plot by the evil trans Marxists of the world I’m not sure, and the article never explains it.
The author, a medical doctor who (one hopes) had nothing to so with writing the headline, begins by expressing his anger that we as a society allow young people to make certain decisions about their own bodies and selves at a young age — specifically, decisions about abortions, contraception and, gender. It’s the latter that’s the subject of his rant.
“Perhaps, this is not accidental and in fact by design,” writes John Hughes (not the 80s film director).
Many in the US fear a Marxist inspired takeover of America by subtle and incremental assaults on religion, family structure, parental influences, and even the Constitution.
“Many” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Legally blocking parents from the decision cycle for abortion, contraception, and transgender protocols and empowering children to make such decisions likely sews chaos that is needed to help destroy American society.
“Sows chaos,” not “sews.”
Interestingly, or not surprisingly, the same children being allowed to make these permanent decisions about their health are not trusted to drink alcohol, rent a car, or purchase firearms.
Frankly, no one should be buying firearms at any age, but that’s a whole other kettle of worms.
[T]he sudden push to allow for children to decide to remove/alter their genitalia and sign up for a lifetime of hormonal treatments is alarming given the paucity of medical knowledge of the long-term implications for children.
Children are not making decisions about “removing” or “altering” their genitalia. This sort of surgery is restricted to those above 18 years old. And no one is signing anything that irrevocably commits them to a “lifetime” of hormone treatments. As a doctor (he’s a doctor), Hughes knows this.
The natural incidence of gender dysphoria is approximately 1/30,000 or 0.003%.
Hughes offers no citation for this figure, but a bit of Googling reveals that this finding has been challenged for being way too low. According to one recent study you can find here:
The prevalence of gender dysphoria is difficult to determine in the general population. Previously, the prevalence in adults was thought to range from 0.005% to 0.014% for people assigned male gender at birth and 0.002% to 0.003% for people assigned female gender at birth. These estimates are based on referrals to surgical gender reassignment clinics, however, and are therefore likely an underestimate.
That’s putting it mildly.
More recent studies suggest that 0.39% to 0.60% of adults identify as transgender, with an increasing prevalence over the past decade. In studies from different jurisdictions using general samples of adolescents, rates were found to be higher among youth than among adults, with 1.2% to 4.1% of adolescents reporting a gender identity different from that assigned at birth. Similar numbers of adolescents were also found to be variant in their gender expression; that is, in the way they communicated about their gender to others — either consciously or unconsciously — through external means such as clothing, personal appearance or mannerisms.
The study goes on to note something else that Hughes should or does know.
Not all children and youth who report gender identities different from their gender assigned at birth will experience persistent gender dysphoria.
Let’s set aside reality for a moment and return to Hughes’ ideological fantasy land:
[S]ocial media and leftist politicians are fanning the flames and the actual number of children claiming to be transgender is rapidly increasing in incidence. Recent data shows that 1.3 million adults (0.5%) identify as transgender and over 300,000 adolescents 13-17 (1.4% identify as transgender).2 This exponential rise in gender identity shift has occurred at the same time that social media, mass media, totalitarian teaching organizations, and medical censorship have emerged as formidable forces in our country.
This “gender identity shift” has also emerged in a society more open to trans folks than it used to be, in which people feel more comfortable defining themselves as trans.
In one weird passage, Hughes tries to suggest a parallel between greater medical acceptance of trans people and … the opioid crisis.
The same medical entities advocating for increased transgenderism are the same ones who were less than truthful about the covid vaccines, enabled the opioid epidemic (remember Purdue pharma?), and are largely responsible for failed national drug policies that have led to over 100,000 drug overdose deaths per year.
Then he suggests that the doctors offering “gender affirming care” to young people are driven not by evidence that such care works (he doesn’t think there is any such evidence) but rather by … Marxism.
One thought is that transgenderism itself is not the goal, but the imposition of the theory on society to foster obedience to the state and then allow the state to target religion and parents as threats to society. It is no accident that Marxism despises both religion and parental influences on children. … Perhaps this is how China wants it.
This is Hughes’ rather abrupt ending. These [citation needed] assertions are Hughes’ only attempt to connect trans care to a Marxist attack on “Judeo-Christian Democratic Societies.” Indeed, at no point in the article is there even a single mention of “Judeo-Christian” anything. Or a mention of democracy. And the last sentence contains the only reference to China.
Where is the evidence that doctors are a bunch of secret Marxists? There is none. How exactly does trans care “foster obedience to the state?” Hughes never explains. What does China have to do with any of this? No answer. The only reason to mention such things is to rile up an audience already primed to think the worst about anything trans.
But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that this is the best that Hughes can offer us in the way of a conclusion. This isn’t an attempt to prove a point or two with scientific evidence; rather, it’s an attempt to mobilize prejudices and fears. It’s propaganda, and not even good propaganda at that.
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That’s because many in the US are fucking morons.
Does this guy think saying “Judeo-Christian” while he rants about Marxists will make people not think he is likely anti-Semitic.
@SpecialFFrog
Probably; he’s clearly used to talking to morons.
“Perhaps this is how China wants it.”
Ah, yes, China, a country well known for its love of trans people.
Usually you see an argument from these sorts about how the USA’s enemies view anything LGBT+ as something that weakens the country to their advantage, but no, apparently in this dude’s mind, they want trans people to thrive so as to make the US more like China… Ok, sounds legit.
” Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre
This applies equally well to every stripe of bigot.
Simple. By accepting that trans people are who they say they are and by using empathy and kindness, you open yourself up to taking orders from the state. The only way to ensure that doesn’t happen is by treating already people like crap.
I think. I don’t understand bigots.
Of course their social media links are to Gab, Gab TV, Truth Social and Bitchute.
The reference to China can’t hide the fact that “Marxism” here isn’t just a scare buzzword, but almost certainly an anti-Semitic dog whistle, like Jordan Peterson’s “cultural Marxism.”
@Tabby
Keeping the classes infighting using bigotry is a typical fascist tactic designed to hide the fact it’s corporations and the ultra wealthy destroying everyone else’s quality of life and standard of living. Using marginalized groups as scapegoats is a tactic as old as civilization.
@Carstonio
The concept of “cultural Marxism” is an anti-Semitic dogwhistle that predates Jordan Peterson’s rise to fame, or rather infamy. If I remember right, it was actually either Bill O’Reilly, or Rush Limbaugh who popularized it. It was Michael Savage who I first heard using it though.
This is our new Home Secretary.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/suella-braverman-cultural-marxism-anti-semitism-conspiracy-theory-273364
@Natsume: I think the Nazi’s originally popularized it. A lot of right wingers stopped using it when this became more commonly known as it no longer worked as a dog whistle at that stage — i.e. non “dogs” could hear it.
It was definitely Rush Windbag.
i
took my HRTfostered obedience to the state this morningOff-topic: Elizabeth II is now an ex-Queen in the Pythonian sense.
she’s been dead for months. shame they couldn’t find a second body double.
There are parallels between “Cultural Marxism” and “Critical Race Theory”. In that both of those terms mean something, but have been turned into boogeymen which are completely disconnected from their actual meanings.
Semi off topic: 10 Attorney generals (so far) from conservative states have signed something called “Women’s Bill of Rights”, a document created by an organization called IWV (Independent Women’s Voice) is and also co-sponsored by WOLF¹. Note that the name IWV is Orwellian – they don’t give voices to “Independent Women”, rather, their purpose is stated as “to share conservative and free market ideas with women and independents” (more accurately: preach fundamentalist religious values to all women and to moderate/centrist men).
¹In case anyone doesn’t know who they are, it’s “WOmen’s Liberation Front”, which is an anti-feminist group masquerading as a feminist organization.
The actual “Women’s Bill of Rights” has little to say about women or rights, it’s mostly about how it is vitally important that AMAB and AFAB people are kept completely separate and distinct for government purposes and some social purposes, but doesn’t give a clear reason why. I think the conclusion you’re supposed to draw (based on two of the premises stated in the first half) is along the lines of “because women are helpless, and rape is a thing which randomly happens but we’re not going to do jack about it”. It also defines “men” and “women” in a way which excludes some intersex people from either category.
They even had the audacity to claim that “separate is not inherently unequal”.
So the Jews are both Marxists AND gnomes who control all the money?
I’m sorry, I’m too sane to even begin to parse that. Also “obedience to the state” is already here from the MAGAts.
Also, @Gaebolga summed it up and should have dropped his/her/their mic.
@Dave:
Much older. Think Josef Goebbels rather than Rush Windbag. Though back then the phrase the far right used was “cultural Bolshevism”.
Maybe a bit older still, to the forerunners of the Nazis like the freikorps.
@ FMO
Stephen King tells of a kid he knew growing up who would check the local obituary column every day, and then cross people out of the phone book.
But anyway, today I’ve been drafting an application for a case that’s currently in the Queen’s Bench Division. That’s a branch of our High Court. But I checked and I do now have to change that to King’s Bench Division.
I feel a little bit like that kid.
@Alan:
I’m not too proud to say that I came close to tearing up at that picture.
Though someone needs to tell Paddington that he’s missing one of his marmalade sandwiches.
(Yes, I read most of those books when I was a child. They were reasonably popular in Canada. Heck, it was one of the Paddington books that taught me about Guy Fawkes Day, when somebody in the book had to explain to Paddington what ‘Penny for the Guy’ meant. I may have mentioned this before.)
I feel kind of bad for “assaults” in that sentence. It is doing almost as much work as “many,” yet will likely never receive the recognition it deserves with “many” up at the front grabbing all the attention.
@ jenora
Paddington is a bit of a symbol here.
Some people complained about the ‘politicisation’ of a children’s character; but then Michael Bond’s family pointed out that Paddington was explicitly created to represent refugees (after MB had seen some evacuee children with those labels tied to them)
Even I, as a tiny person, recognized Paddington was one of what they called back then “displaced persons”. Or displaced bears. And a child refugee to boot.
Of course the current lot in the UK would be putting him on a dodgy flight back to Darkest Peru instantly. The Hard Stare would accomplish nothing.
@ GSS ex-noob
Nah they’d send him to Rwanda, that bastion of free speech^, democracy^, freedom in general^.
^ Sarcasm, yes I know it’s the lowest form of humour, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.
At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if “sews chaos” was an antisemitic dog whistle.