Assigned Media
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Assigned is a daily trans news website, founded by journalist Evan Urquhart. [email protected] Masto @[email protected] [email protected]
Joined September 2022
You, yes YOU, can support the high quality, independent science journalism on Assigned Media. Just this week we've featured a piece on the evidence of informed consent, a provocative opinion column by an MD who thinks doctors should stop assigning sex at birth, and more.
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Eliott Page is a good looking guy, but I am about to blow your mind right now by saying that the goal of transitioning from female to male is not, typically, to maximize our sexiness.
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Trump is reportedly going to sign a piece of paper later today declaring that the federal government defines me as a woman. If there's a better encapsulation of how stupid the whole "define woman" thing is and has always been I'd like to see it.
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A divide between (many) cis people and (many) trans people that cis folks may not realize is that trans people often actively avoid learning, and genuinely do not want to know, each other's deadnames.
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I want to slow this discourse down for a moment and be very clear and deliberate about why Armstromg's history of cheating in cycling is important and relevant here, beyond a cheap gotcha. (thread)
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Weird to see anti-trans folks hating on the Kristen Stewart photoshoot, surely one is allowed to be a gender nonconforming lesbian as long as one doesn't identify as anything other than a woman?.
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In 20 years a prestige podcast will "discover" the gender-affirming care debate was a moral panic and share things like "the Cass Review found fewer than 10 detransitioners" to the scandalized delight of their audience and I'm gonna to try so hard to be gracious about it.
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Parents of trans youth spent hours pouring their hearts out to an NYT reporter. They thought she empathized with them, and trusted her with their stories.
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In the tweet, Armstrong's arguing there are nuances to trans participation in athletics that deserve discussion. And he's taking it as a given that a man who disgraced himself and all athletic competition with repeated egregious cheating, has a place leading that conversation.
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A guy who didn't just cheat but pressured others to cheat, who helped make cheating the norm for his sport, casting a taint on it it still lingers under. THAT guy's voice going to be placed above ours, because he's cisgender? No. Get outta here.
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The authority Armstrong is relying on- the thing that gives him the standing to lead this conversation- is that he is cisgender. He is not even arguing it- it is assumed. He has the mantle of authority, his cheating is irrelevat, his cisgender identity is his authority.
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But because he left cycling in disgrace because he was a cheater, and he is specifically claiming a right as a cis person to decide questions of sports fairness, there's a little room here to say "No. Wait a minute. This fucking guy doesn't get to weigh in on sports fairness.".
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Cultural divides can be hard to put into words, but I'd describe cis people's attitude towards a trans person's deadname as a deliciously naughty piece of gossip, while trans people see it as an unpleasant personal intrusion like knowing what someone's farts smell like.
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BREAKING: Missouri's largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group is circulating a highly unusual warning, advising trans people and their families not to speak with NYT reporter Azeen Ghorayshi for an upcoming NYT podcast on gender-affirming care for youth.
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The Cass Review didn't find a single child who had been harmed by puberty blockers or rushed into them by the NHS. It speculated, without providing any evidence, that the harm of blockers might be that a child would become transgender.
The judgement leans heavily the widely discredited Cass review. Experts at the world-class Yale School of Medicine evaluated the Cass review and report that it ‘repeatedly misuses data and violates its own evidentiary standards by resting many conclusions on speculation’.
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This is the story of a NYT reporter who played hardball with a vulnerable family, and won.
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If he was a cisgender athlete who WASN'T a notorious multiple cheater who'd disgraced his sport, this authority as a cisgender person would go unquestioned. I sure wouldn't waste my time writing a thread about it because I'd assume no one but other trans ppl would listen.
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The conversation on how to resolve these questions in the trans community are quite advanced. The most mainstream position, as I understand it, is that elite level sports should follow the evidence and balance fairness and inclusion, while low levels should maximize inclusion.
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Last note: I'm aware the moderation regime on this platform is such that I could be banned for this thread's using cisgender, but the platform's unusable if I can't speak clearly and concisely, so I'm just tweeting as normal and if they come for me, they come for me.
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"And you're doing all this for the children?". "Yes, of course we are.". "So you think the children will be better off without this medication?". "No, we expect it to cause mental health crises.".
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The actual questions around of transgender participation in athletics really are complex. Every trans person I know acknowledges that, and always has. Certainly I do every time this comes up.
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A picture of what's been going on at Owasso High School for minority youth, including queer youth like Nex Benedict, is starting to come out. Kids being called f-- and n----- not bothering to report it because the school does nothing if they do.
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Congrats to all mainstream reporters who ran with "Police say death was not due to trauma.". According to reporting by @JuddLegum you've helped the Owasso Police's attempts to "head off national scrutiny." .
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BREAKING: A doctor who leaked private medical records of trans kids has been indicted, and is facing four felony counts. Eithan Haim has claimed to be a victim of political persecution, maintaining that the records he leaked did not contain personally identifying information.
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But as publication approached, one mom began to grow suspicious of the reporter's warm interactions with Jamie Reed, the very same anti-trans activist she'd proven to the NYT's Azeen Ghorayshi had misrepresented her daughter's medical history in a sworn affidavit.
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A young girl who socially transitioned in second grade and never went through testosterone-fueled puberty is at the heart of a controversy in Florida, after her high school principal and 4 other school staff members were suspended by the superintendent. 1/2.
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If someone wants to choose prayer over medical treatment, I'll be the first one to defend them on bodily autonomy and freedom grounds. But these people are trying to get the treatments banned and force everyone to detransition along with them.
The PragerU detransitioner admits she is still dysphoric and is simply repressing it with "Jesus Christ"
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We all fart, it's perfectly normal, no one is denying that other people fart and those farts have an odor, but it's a weird thing to be curious about, and if you find out it's not that big a deal, but you'd still rather you hadn't.
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I don't think it's sufficiently sunk in for people that the "controversy" over Dylan Mulvaney doing a sponsorship with Bud Light is that she exists and the right doesn't want any of us to.
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However there is a strong strain that feel gendered sports should not exist at all. I've also seen people say trans people shouldn't contest this and just avoid sports and a few who say natural advantages are part of sports so who cares if trans athletes have advantages.
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Crusading Christian parents got a trans girl moved to another room, away from their cisgender daughter, when the two were assigned to bunk together on a field trip, but they're still not satisfied.
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A large hospital, one associated with the oldest medical school in the South, quietly folded to political pressure and ceased offering medical treatments for gender dysphoria to adolescent patients. Quietly. meaning they did not tell the patients and their families about this.
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Here's me, smiling as much or as little as I damn please, 5'2", overweight, trans AF, and glad of it.
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In Indiana, conservative Christian parents are asking the U. S. Supreme Court to force the state to return their trans daughter to them so they can continue trying to force her to be a boy.
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I'm not anyone's lost daughter. My parents, like everyone else, can see how much good transition did me. Trans men's stories are being erased. We're not victims, we're not helpless, we're making sensible medical decisions for our own lives.
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Going in, I thought I'd be writing about the disappointment of families who realized they'd been wrong to trust an NYT reporter. I didn't expect a dramatic scene, lasting well into the night before publication, of a family trying to decide whether to pull their participation.
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Thanks for reading. I run a news website debunking anti-trans propaganda. It's and if you're interested in factual, careful coverage of trans issues you might like it.
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(I cannot imagine saying that to anyone who expressed dissatisfaction with my reporting, much less a distraught parent in this type of situation, but I guess NYT reporters are built different.).
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I know this is nearly impossible for people on the anti-trans side to understand. After all, in their understanding trans men are women and their understanding of women's motivations is that the goal of every woman's life is to maximize sexiness.
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A tidbit that didn't make the draft bc it felt a little too inside journalism: Heidi was particularly unhappy with the final quote in Azeen's story. She says Azeen told her it was too late to change anything and "No one reads stories to the end anyway.".
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Don't get it twisted. Imane Khlelif is the target because there simply aren't enough trans women in sports to sustain the right's need for scapegoats, and never were, because trans women don't have an unfair advantage and never did. Trans women belong in sports too.
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@laura_tee_mdgi Under fascism, the law is whatever the fascists say it is in the moment. So, in addition to sex actually being very difficult to define, I'd say vagueness gives room to target Trump's enemies and reward his friends.
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On a recent episod of Dax Shephard's podcast, Shephard demonstrated the ways that anti-trans propaganda confuses people in the mainstream left who think of themselves as allies. He also made Jonathan Van Ness cry.
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However, trans men's transitions become easier to understand when you factor in two things. First, that trans men aren't women. Second, that the anti-trans view of women as being motivated primarily by wanting to look good is unbelievably sexist and retrograde.
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Transgender youth do not deserve what this country has done to them in 2023. What an absolutely god awful year, an embarrassment for the country to strip families of their rights to medical care in state after state with barely a murmur.
@TheOhioChannel @kristinaroegner @phh4Toledo 🛑BREAKING: The bill was voted out of the Senate by a vote of 24-8. This is a shameful day in Ohio. 📜IMPORTANT REMINDER: Before this legislation goes to @GovMikeDeWine, HB 68 has to go back to the full House for a vote since it was amended in committee.
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Pamela Paul has written a sour grapes response to trans criticism of her shoddy, misinformation ridden opinion column and had the absolute gall to call me an activist. My identity as a transgender person does not make me an activist. I am a journalist.
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@ericsimsjr I don't expect everyone to have a close grasp of the details, but he was a leader/instigator of the doping culture, not a follower, which is one of the reasons he's so thoroughly disgraced now.
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Huge scoop by Erin Reed here. Ohio and Michigan Republicans openly plotting to expand bans on gender affirming care to everyone. This isn't about protecting children, and never was. It's about an attempt by the far right to legislate trans people out of existence.
1. In a stunning audio release, Michigan and Ohio Republicans are heard stating that the "endgame" of anti-trans legislation is to ban trans care "for everyone.". They discuss exactly how they plan to do it: "piece by piece, incrementally". Subscribe to support my work.
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As a straight guy I can say with near certainty that I was a lot more conventionally attractive as a woman than I am as a man, but as a trans guy I can say even more confidently: I am biologically incapable of minding that I'm not an attractive woman anymore.
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Superintendent Peter Licata received a tip that a trans girl was playing volleyball and reassigned the principal and five other school staff at Monarch High School. This is the reality of trans sports bans, arbitrary and hate-fueled.
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And the trans people surely are frothing at the mouth, enraged, insisting Stewart change how she identifies, start testosterone, and chop her tits off?. What's that? Trans people are celebrating her and her fun, hot, pop-transgressive photo shoot?. Huh. I never woulda guessed it.
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Remember: This is banning a treatment that has not been shown to have harmed patients. It's not been shown to have been overprescribed or wrongly prescribed. There's no evidence it is ineffective. The most you can say is the evidence for it is weak. For that, they banned it?.
My eldest daughter just said “that would destroy her” about her kid sister. Puberty blockers save lives and I’m angry and upset that our government would do this to these kids.
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A raging moral panic is destroying the lives of innocent children. The trans girl at the center of this hasn't been able to attend school since November. She has no possible athletic advantage bc she never underwent testosterone-fueled puberty, having started blockers at age 11.
BREAKING: Family of Monarch High transgender student sues @Browardschools
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A bunch of well respected, smart reporters were complete dupes for these people and helped sell their agenda to the mainstream. It's not polite to say it, and I'm honestly sorry it's true, but it absolutely is.
Re: GOP’s transgender fixation, it’s wild how this dude cynically lays out how conservatives went on a hunt for a boogeyman.
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Detransition a relatively uncommon outcome after medical transition. However, the reason anti-trans detransitioners are SUCH a small number of people is detransitioning with anti-trans politics is EVEN RARER compared to detrans ppl than detrans people are compared to trans ones.
If there are so many detransitioners, then why is it always the same seven people every single time?
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The death of Nex Benedict, a trans youth who reported being bullied for his queer identity, has been ruled a suicide. Whatever the cause it's equally a tragedy, but I'd like more info clarifying how the determination was made, in light of the strange ways officials have behaved.
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Someone directed my attention to material on the listening sessions the Cass Review held with trans youth and their families, and it's just heartbreaking. These kids openly begged Cass not to view transition as an inherently bad outcome, and that was one of the main conclusions.
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I'm short, I'm fat, I'm hairy, and I wouldn't trade it to be a 20-year-old female supermodel much less my old appearance.
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My journalism is free, but I have human needs for food and shelter and whatnot. The very best way you can help keep me going is to subscribe at $5/month to my newsletter.
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The Cass Report, which took 4 years to examine treatment for gender dysphoria in youth, wound up making very few conclusions. They particularly failed to find evidence that detransition is anything but extremely rare.
1. (a) Patient data is patient data. It is not the Health secretary’s data, nor even NHS England’s data. Clinics were correct in not disclosing data without having the express permission of the patient. (b) In a letter to Adult GIC’s this week, NHS England’s National & . ,.
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ANNOUNCEMENT!. For months I've been working with a team of transgender writers and a trans dev, on the Trans Data Library, a repository of information on anti-trans activists, "expert" witnesses, and organizations. Today I'm letting the world know what we're cooking.
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This is correct. The history of legal protections for patient records, in the US at least, stems from privacy violations of HIV and AIDS patients, particularly gay men for whom the exposure of HIV status doubled as outing.
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I've been thinking about how sometimes we lose the forest for the trees. There's no apolitical, evidence based opposition to gender-affirming care. It does not exist.
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Remember when all this was supposedly about protecting gender-nonconforming girls?. Remember when we told you that the inevitable result would be stricted gender rules and targeting gender-nonconforming girls for harassment?.
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Because I know this matters a lot to anti-trans activists: In jail today I was processed/held with the other men.
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Prepping my quotes now "Yes, well, some of us did notice at the time, but the tenor of the mainstream discussion was such that it simply overwhelmed us." . Note to self: Say this with an air of dignified sorrow.
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It's credit where credit is due day!. The NYT published a reported story about detransition focusing on how few anti-trans detransition activists there are, and how they don't seem to represent the views of most people who detransition.
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I don't want to see anyone being weird about this devastated family who just lost a 16-yr-old child not always getting name and pronouns perfectly.
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(She's bi, sorry, my hands just typed lesbian and I'm leaving it.).
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It's not a medical scandal. Gender-affirming care for youth, I mean. It's just not, and I can prove it.
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You are not going to believe this but the QAnon Shaman, Chloe Cole, and Laura Becker all went on Twitter spaces earlier this week and promoted tripping on acid as a method to convert people away from being trans.
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NEW: JK Rowling has become so toxic even fellow transphobes and self-identified moderates are distancing themselves from her. That's right, today I've been writing about the latest Rowling psychodrama, and what to make of it.
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Astounding that this is the first mainstream article I've seen about the loss of healthcare for trans adults in Florida.
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@byJudeDoyle I don't have a problem with adults making lifetyle choices but he's glamorising serious surgeries with irreversible effects and major risks. Impressionable children could, in theory, read his blog.
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The two genres of longform NYT stories:. What if we can't trust trans people?. and. What if we can trust Elizabeth Holmes?.
This is abysmal.
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Conservative Christians find this unacceptable. They see parenting as a power struggle, a challenge to impose your will on your children. If the child's safety happens to require the parent to compromise, they would want the child's safety to lose out, not the parents' authority.
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The Independent has made some major headway on the story of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary OK high schooler who died after being brutally beaten by older teenage girls at school.
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What did Chaiya Raichik/LibsofTikTok have to say about the death of nonbinary teen Nex Benedict?. “Having a fight in school, it’s not breaking news, it’s not so outrageous,”.
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Cannot stress enough the extent to which mainstream media, including outlets I personally read and pay for and admire, has failed to sufficiently inform the public on the GOP's attack on trans rights in 2023.
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The only reason it matters that sex isn't binary in the sense of a binary code (a switch is on or off, no in between possible) is bc people insist everyone can be easily sorted into one of two sexes, and the law should treat people differently based on which category they're in.
I really tried. But when you claim to value science then insist on espousing a premise that fails on its face, I don't know what to call that except prejudice. If you don't want to be called a bigot, you can't be sharing harmful misinformation. You can't have it both ways.
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Listening to the South Carolina hearing on their gender affirming care ban and I cannot stress enough the fact that these lawmakers just lie openly.
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We knew this was coming. Conservative media is beginning the push to restrict transition for adults. In the Washington Free Beacon, a story about an adult who sought cross-sex hormones against her parents wishes is being presented as a scandal of some kind.
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It makes sense this way: Conservatives know trans people rarely stop being trans, and many who do return to living as their AGAB do so in the face of intense societal pressure. Their goal is to try and force detransitions by making trans lives harder. He's just admitting it.
Rep Grothman had one of the wildest claims. He stated that trans sports participation would mean that trans people "would not switch back," or detransition. Sarah Parshall Perry, from the Heritage foundation, concurred, stating playing would "lead to genital surgeries"
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The girl developed a severe eating disorder due to conflicts over gender with her non-affirming parents. The courts have agreed with CPS that returning the child to her family would cause an unacceptable risk to her health.
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I think this is an interesting and frightening story because it really gets to the heart of the conflict between conservatives and child welfare. The courts look at the safety of the child. It doesn't matter if the child is being unreasonable, it's if they're safe that matters.
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@tpwrtrmnky Hah. I only wish that certain chromatics had the self-awareness to say "wait don't back me up on this-" when a gray rushed in to agree with them in the real world.
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"I think reporters at the Times and elsewhere really tried to do their jobs, honestly I do. You must understand the sophistication of the efforts to confuse and mislead them by folks like the Heritage Foundation.". Note to self: Maintain an air of sympathy, not condescensionon.
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At least two trans journalists in the US have brought this story to mainstream outlets, and been told no. Meanwhile, the same publications published credulous cis reporters puffing up the Cass Review, and in the UK mainstream-adjacent trans journalists don't even exist.
I have now seen further evidence that, since the Bell decision in the High Court (1 December 2020), there has been a huge increase in deaths of young trans people on the NHS waiting list - and that NHS management has sought to suppress that evidence. CW: Suicide 🧵.
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This step comes after a previous story by Ghorayshi ended with families feeling angry and betrayed by coverage they saw as misleading and biased towards the anti-trans side. You'll find this story ONLY on Assigned Media.
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I feel a truly profound sadness, seeing this. Reporters, many of whom I once respected made hundreds of tiny decisions that led to this moment. Some decided to deprioritize truthful coverage of trans issues, other to commision stories based on right-wing narratives.
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The detransition discussion has been frustratingly resistent to grappling with the actual evidence and what it shows. The Cass Review took 4 years. Any honest, objective person has got to admit the likelihood is they found few detransitioners is because it's very rare.
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People are getting too blase about the mainstreaming of raw hate towards trans people. The Kathleen Parker column was way, way outside the norm for mainstream news and should not be accepted quietly.
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With Alliance Defending Freedom's backing, they're making national news, claiming the right to privacy includes the right for students to know medical information on other students.
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This is a great example of how hard you have to work to present an anti-trans position while hewing to the data. You're forced to argue absurdities, such as claiming that a reduction in suicidal ideation and attempts isn't actually evidence of a benefit of affirming treatment.
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Since we've been talking about things that are weird and creepy, here's something really weird and creepy:. Telling a 15-year-old that their homework is to masturbate and come back and tell you about it. But in Finland, that's what treatment for trans youth is like.
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Assigned Media is a labor of love, and I depend on the support of my community to keep it free and healthy. If you want to support Assigned there are a few options, but the best is to give $5/month and get a weekly bonus essay just for subscribers! .
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