Alex Paideia

YouTube video by Genspect The Devastation of Gender Affirmation on Young Minds – Marcus Evans

An interesting presentation. Therapist Marcus Evans sees the certainty of a young person that they are the opposite gender as the biggest of red flags, showing that the person isn't able to self reflect.

youtu.be/TP6VxuuIIn4?...

A: The very commercial leviathans entities progressives claim to resist..

It's remarkable to see the Green Party, left Labour and the array of micro socialist pressure groups lining up to fight for this cause without once, apparently, asking if they might be batting for the wrong team here.

Purdue's white hatted crusade led to tens of thousands of opioid deaths and, eventually, exposure of one the biggest medical scandals of modern times.

Lupron may not be the next OxyContin, but the principle remains. Cui bono? *Who* benefits from winning the argument that drugs don't need trials?

This is the pharmaceutical industry's dream, and who better to stand arm in arm than people identified as the most marginalised in society? What harm could possibly come of that?

It's exactly what Purdue did when marketing OxyContin: fund patient advocate groups, and present as their saviour.

But who benefits from this outrage? What is the demand?

It is for pharmaceutical companies to be allowed to put their products on the market *without* the type of clinical testing that is required to prevent profit-driven commercial entities causing damage.

It is to *remove* basic regulation.

Right now, swathes of the 'progressive left' are up in arms because the UK Government has extended a ban on puberty blockers until clinical trial evidence demonstrates they are safe to use for dysphoria.

NB safe *for dysphoria* not for treating precocious puberty, which is completely different.

The term 'recuperation' refers to a process by which potentially radical ideas or activities are absorbed into the prevailing system, so that they end up working to maintain the status quo.

It's what John Lydon was on about when he said 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?'

It comes to something when young people's desire to be progressive expresses itself in a sit-in protest to allow pharmaceutical companies to market their products without standard clinical trials. #recuperation

We've been using ketamine as an anaesthetic for decades too. Same drug, different context and purpose. That's the issue here.

And it's the *lack* of evidence that is the problem. Every pharmaceutical company would love to get its products to market without trials etc. Most can't, thankfully.

No, it's because one is an intervention to delay *abnormal precocious puberty*, the other to prevent normal physical development in response to a self-identified psychological need.

Hope that clarifies things.

Quick note for anyone saying 'But they've used puberty blockers for cis kids for years!'.

Yes, because that is an intervention to delay *abnormal precocious puberty*, not to prevent *normal* physical development in response to a self-identified psychological need.

Hope that is helpful.

Róisín Murphy: Hit Parade review – a masterful album with an ugly stain To DJ Koze’s warped soul and dub techno, Murphy examines unrequited love and the ecstasy of being seen for who you are – a theme that jars with her recent comments about trans kids

Remind me which side of history the Guardian was on here... www.theguardian.com/music/2023/s...

Ban on puberty blockers to be made indefinite on experts’ advice Existing emergency measures banning the sale and supply of puberty-suppressing hormones will be made indefinite, following official advice from medical experts.

This is great news - but incredible the practice continued unabated and without evidence for so many years. And also to think that only a few months ago people like Roisin Murphy were being slated (👀 @theguardian.com) for expressing the slightest doubt that it was ethical. www.gov.uk/government/n...

The Supreme Court is today holding a hearing to decide what a woman is - in other words, whether "sex" in the Equality Act means biological sex or whether a man who identifies as female can opt into Equality Act protections normally reserved for females.

Supreme Court to hear case on definition of a woman Judges will consider a legal challenge which could affect how women and trans people are treated.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Important day at the Supreme Court today 👇

If anyone can put a coherent counter-argument to all this, I'm genuinely interested.

It seems to me that the "radical" language of trans activism - all that talk of queering heteronormativity etc. - is surface glitter, while the underpinning principles it expresses are our old friends individualism, commodification and the construction of identity through the consumption of things.

Doesn't reading non-conformity with gender stereotypes as evidence of a psycho-biological condition just reinforce patriarchal norms about how men + women should behave?

Doesn't the extreme dualism of 'being born in the wrong body' simply reinforce conservative ideas about inborn mental traits?

Isn't the belief we can choose our gender the triumph of hyper-individualism? Isn't it nothing more than the colonisation of biology itself by consumer capitalism?

And how is submitting yourself to surgical interventions and a lifetime of drug use liberatory? What does it free you from?

Who benefits from this system of belief, economically? Pharmaceutical companies. The cosmetics industry. Fashion. Even Jaguar is now selling its grotesquely elitist products on the back of 'queer' aesthetics.

What is radical about a belief system that is *dependent* on medical intervention?

I have some genuine questions for trans activists who consider themselves politically radical. 🧵

Isn't promoting the commodification of the human body - the idea that we can purchase our way into the identity of our choosing - doing *precisely* the work of consumer capitalist ideology?

So, yes. Strong feelings, but hoping this site isn't a place where such thoughts are silenced...

Which is perhaps the greatest irony. For all that it purports to be progressive, transgenderism is the purest triumph of capitalist ideology: the commodification of the body itself. The purchasing of a new identity from pharmaceutical corporations, cheered on by the fashion + cosmetics industries.

Young people need the space and support to work out, and come to terms with, who they are. Framing confusion or discomfort as proof of being trans is denying them the power to work through their issues authentically - and consigning them to a future beholden to the pharmaceutical industry.

If I have a corner of this that most angers me, it is the abandonment of young people who feel discomfort with their bodies to an education and therapy system that - due to capture or fear - primes them to understand those feelings as evidence they are, in fact, born in the wrong body.

This is not my professional interest, nor - if I had the choice - would it have become the one that matters to me most personally. But you can't choose your zeitgeist, and there's even more at stake than my child's mental wellbeing, physical health and bodily integrity.

I'm anonymous because family is involved.We are working through it with two of the most important things in life: love and critical thinking. I'm angry, absolutely, but hoping the promise of Bluesky (leave your rage at the door) enables a better conversation. Yes: I know, I know...

So, I'm a social science academic who was reading Judith Butler etc. back in the 90s. I found the reach from 'gender roles are socially constructed' to 'sex is an identity' incoherent in principle and expression back then. Fast forward 30 years, and the whole thing came crashing through my door.