Thanks for the term "dog's breakfast" (new to me, but a lot of things are) and for alerting me to Hersh's Substack. I've thought about pitching The Free Press, and you've now given me a nudge to do so. You capture the heart of the issue with current discourse about transitioning. It's related to the controversies about certain books in school libraries, which I can't say that I feel strongly about one way or another. But on the NY TImes' podcast The Daily, there was an episode last fall about parents who are concerned about their kids being encouraged, by teachers or staff, to read books that include instructions about how to hook up with someone on dating apps. And it does trouble me greatly to read that teachers and counselors frequently hide conversations about gender from parents. A friend of mine has a child who has changed their name after graduating from an elite women's college where this apparently was a popular thing to do. He is trying to be supportive, but there is real pain there. I'm not saying that a parent has any explicit right to name a child for life (this has always seemed a little odd to me), but there often is some emotional investment in a name, some tie to family history, that it is fairly insensitive to dismiss. It's not just the name, there's a lot of grieving involved regarding memories of a child's early years, maybe some guilt about overt or inadvertent gender norming. It often feels, though, that one must simply pick a side and be either an ally or an enemy, the way Ibram Kendi forces everyone into either racism or anti-racism. What I wonder, about my friend's eldest, is whether they felt that remaining conventionally gay (as they'd been through high school) would have been abnormal, if there was some degree of in-grouping happening there. But I suppose once someone is an adult, they make their own decisions, and it's not as if these newer versions are so different from the hippies who gave up privilege to live off the land and raise their children in ways that their grandparents thought to be feral.
Haha! I do like that term. But careful! - there's a risk of using it for everything.
Yeah, moderating teenagers is clearly a fraught topic. The age of 18 is, for instance, almost completely arbitrary as a line in the sand. In general, I'm on the side of letting teenagers do whatever they want - I don't like MPAA restrictions on movies, for instance, and don't like restricting access to books. Hormone therapies for teens is tricky, though, since in some cases the therapies seem to be irreversible. I guess that's really the question. If the therapies are reversible, then no problem. But if you're really causing sterility for people who aren't old enough to fully grasp what that means, then you need some tougher safeguards on these sorts of interventions.
I don't know that I'm advocating for "moderating" so much as bearing witness to the emotional complexity of these conversations within families. I hope, as a parent, that I'll be given the chance to be understanding and supportive if one of my children interrogates their gender in these ways. But in some cases this is not the familiar terrain of supporting a closeted child who has always known they were gay. I suppose I'm trying to capture a frustrating combination of ambiguity (about how to define gender, in some cases, or what the primary cause is of a decision to transition) and moral certainty (whatever a child chooses, a parent must unequivocally support). Perhaps the safest path as a parent is to keep your questions to yourself.
"but this is hardball politics and a cold winter in Germany strikes me as a reasonable price to pay for ending Germany’s energy fealty to Russia"
So that an era of energy dependence on the US can begin? This was not done with good intentions in mind this was done to further weaken Germany and Europe by extension. What Germany and Europe is willing to endure and to what extent they are willing to support their neighbour should be up to them. As for Russia relying on it as a strategy for its war, maybe, but as with sanctions they showed that they are able to adapt quickly and this incident has not slowed down advances in Ukraine or deterred them from their initial goals. There is only one clear winner from this and that is not Germany.
Hi Ioana, Thank you for the comment. Fair enough. I'm jamming two different ideas together. Carrying out a clandestine operation to help bolster a fragile coalition's support for Ukraine strikes me as a bold-but-reasonable demonstration of statecraft. Bombing a pipeline in order to open up an energy market for oneself is a much darker way to understand that attack. The sense, from Hersh's reporting, is that both motives were in Biden's mind. Hersh clearly believes that nothing can justify what Biden did, but I'm a little more sympathetic to the motive of extreme-acts-to-support-Ukraine than Hersh is. - Sam
Noble motives are always stated when extreme actions are carried out, and I'm afraid that in the case of the US it becomes more and more difficult to believe that the intentions were good. In any case, as a European, my anger and frustration is mostly directed towards our leadership (or lack thereof). So while I can't say I am sympathetic to the motives of the US I understand and can appreciate that at least it was acting in its best interest.
On a separate note, I really enjoy this Substack. Thank you for the great work and keep it up.
Hii. Just wondering if you have reconsidered any of your thinking about transgender care after the wave of press which better situated Ms Reeds “whistleblower” complaint as inaccurate and ill-construed. (I put whistleblower in quotes because I don’t consider the Free Press capable of the due diligence a major news outlet would need to evaluate a claim like this and also that Ms Reed chose not to take her whistleblower complaint to the large university system she worked for, the local paper or the States AG office ). The recent reporting on her claims are simply that her comments could not be corroborated and in most cases discovered to directly contradict the policies and documented practices of the clinic. Her complaint worried me at first but it seemed off at first glance. I know how difficult it is to get this care anywhere even if you have insurance and how much counseling you need before they even talk about medical intervention but who knows maybe this clinic has so much money they can subsidize their care with grants or something. But no. They see a small number of folks and their care is fairly typical That is In most cases six months to a year even for adults to get any kind of medical intervention. Apparently in the past 5 years 122,000 minors have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the US and under 15,000 have had some sort of pharmaceutical therapy for it. So I know you are enthusiastic about the Free Press and Bari in particular but it felt like a pretty shoddy product breathlessly hyped and not responsible journalism in the end.
Hi Kyra, sorry for the delay in replying. I've been reading a few of the articles about her. I don't see anything yet that discredits her claims. For instance, one of the Post-Dispatch articles writes, "Parents interviewed by the Post-Dispatch cast doubt on Reed’s ability to know what happened inside exam rooms as an employee who did not have a medical or managerial role." Which seems like a pretty weak response. A case manager at a clinic would know a lot about how the clinic was tackling various procedures. It is clear that many clients and parents had positive experiences from the clinic, that Reed was a controversial figure among the staff while she was working there, and that there are differences of opinion as to what is an acceptable level of discussion before embarking on hormone therapy.
As I'm working on these pieces, I really try not to infer too much from individual stories. You're absolutely right - there's no ability to fact-check from a distance and individual stories have ways of having all kinds of unexpected wrinkles to them. I try to move the conversation as much as possible to thinking in broad cultural terms. For me, Reed's testimony speaks to a much larger issue, which is the prevalence of an intervention-first, 'care-affirming' approach in medicine and which seems to be showing up in treatments for teenagers looking to transition. But you clearly feel that subsequent reporting discredits Reed's claims. Want to elaborate on your position on this?
On Weiss, yeah, I've been really inspired by and impressed with her. It's not an easy thing to make the choices she made or to build a whole publication as quickly and successfully as she has. But I respect you! - and your skepticism has made me regard her a bit more warily. Again, do you want to say more? Are you feeling like she's had multiple stories that are just wrong?
Thanks for the term "dog's breakfast" (new to me, but a lot of things are) and for alerting me to Hersh's Substack. I've thought about pitching The Free Press, and you've now given me a nudge to do so. You capture the heart of the issue with current discourse about transitioning. It's related to the controversies about certain books in school libraries, which I can't say that I feel strongly about one way or another. But on the NY TImes' podcast The Daily, there was an episode last fall about parents who are concerned about their kids being encouraged, by teachers or staff, to read books that include instructions about how to hook up with someone on dating apps. And it does trouble me greatly to read that teachers and counselors frequently hide conversations about gender from parents. A friend of mine has a child who has changed their name after graduating from an elite women's college where this apparently was a popular thing to do. He is trying to be supportive, but there is real pain there. I'm not saying that a parent has any explicit right to name a child for life (this has always seemed a little odd to me), but there often is some emotional investment in a name, some tie to family history, that it is fairly insensitive to dismiss. It's not just the name, there's a lot of grieving involved regarding memories of a child's early years, maybe some guilt about overt or inadvertent gender norming. It often feels, though, that one must simply pick a side and be either an ally or an enemy, the way Ibram Kendi forces everyone into either racism or anti-racism. What I wonder, about my friend's eldest, is whether they felt that remaining conventionally gay (as they'd been through high school) would have been abnormal, if there was some degree of in-grouping happening there. But I suppose once someone is an adult, they make their own decisions, and it's not as if these newer versions are so different from the hippies who gave up privilege to live off the land and raise their children in ways that their grandparents thought to be feral.
Haha! I do like that term. But careful! - there's a risk of using it for everything.
Yeah, moderating teenagers is clearly a fraught topic. The age of 18 is, for instance, almost completely arbitrary as a line in the sand. In general, I'm on the side of letting teenagers do whatever they want - I don't like MPAA restrictions on movies, for instance, and don't like restricting access to books. Hormone therapies for teens is tricky, though, since in some cases the therapies seem to be irreversible. I guess that's really the question. If the therapies are reversible, then no problem. But if you're really causing sterility for people who aren't old enough to fully grasp what that means, then you need some tougher safeguards on these sorts of interventions.
I don't know that I'm advocating for "moderating" so much as bearing witness to the emotional complexity of these conversations within families. I hope, as a parent, that I'll be given the chance to be understanding and supportive if one of my children interrogates their gender in these ways. But in some cases this is not the familiar terrain of supporting a closeted child who has always known they were gay. I suppose I'm trying to capture a frustrating combination of ambiguity (about how to define gender, in some cases, or what the primary cause is of a decision to transition) and moral certainty (whatever a child chooses, a parent must unequivocally support). Perhaps the safest path as a parent is to keep your questions to yourself.
"but this is hardball politics and a cold winter in Germany strikes me as a reasonable price to pay for ending Germany’s energy fealty to Russia"
So that an era of energy dependence on the US can begin? This was not done with good intentions in mind this was done to further weaken Germany and Europe by extension. What Germany and Europe is willing to endure and to what extent they are willing to support their neighbour should be up to them. As for Russia relying on it as a strategy for its war, maybe, but as with sanctions they showed that they are able to adapt quickly and this incident has not slowed down advances in Ukraine or deterred them from their initial goals. There is only one clear winner from this and that is not Germany.
Hi Ioana, Thank you for the comment. Fair enough. I'm jamming two different ideas together. Carrying out a clandestine operation to help bolster a fragile coalition's support for Ukraine strikes me as a bold-but-reasonable demonstration of statecraft. Bombing a pipeline in order to open up an energy market for oneself is a much darker way to understand that attack. The sense, from Hersh's reporting, is that both motives were in Biden's mind. Hersh clearly believes that nothing can justify what Biden did, but I'm a little more sympathetic to the motive of extreme-acts-to-support-Ukraine than Hersh is. - Sam
Noble motives are always stated when extreme actions are carried out, and I'm afraid that in the case of the US it becomes more and more difficult to believe that the intentions were good. In any case, as a European, my anger and frustration is mostly directed towards our leadership (or lack thereof). So while I can't say I am sympathetic to the motives of the US I understand and can appreciate that at least it was acting in its best interest.
On a separate note, I really enjoy this Substack. Thank you for the great work and keep it up.
Hii. Just wondering if you have reconsidered any of your thinking about transgender care after the wave of press which better situated Ms Reeds “whistleblower” complaint as inaccurate and ill-construed. (I put whistleblower in quotes because I don’t consider the Free Press capable of the due diligence a major news outlet would need to evaluate a claim like this and also that Ms Reed chose not to take her whistleblower complaint to the large university system she worked for, the local paper or the States AG office ). The recent reporting on her claims are simply that her comments could not be corroborated and in most cases discovered to directly contradict the policies and documented practices of the clinic. Her complaint worried me at first but it seemed off at first glance. I know how difficult it is to get this care anywhere even if you have insurance and how much counseling you need before they even talk about medical intervention but who knows maybe this clinic has so much money they can subsidize their care with grants or something. But no. They see a small number of folks and their care is fairly typical That is In most cases six months to a year even for adults to get any kind of medical intervention. Apparently in the past 5 years 122,000 minors have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the US and under 15,000 have had some sort of pharmaceutical therapy for it. So I know you are enthusiastic about the Free Press and Bari in particular but it felt like a pretty shoddy product breathlessly hyped and not responsible journalism in the end.
Hi Kyra, sorry for the delay in replying. I've been reading a few of the articles about her. I don't see anything yet that discredits her claims. For instance, one of the Post-Dispatch articles writes, "Parents interviewed by the Post-Dispatch cast doubt on Reed’s ability to know what happened inside exam rooms as an employee who did not have a medical or managerial role." Which seems like a pretty weak response. A case manager at a clinic would know a lot about how the clinic was tackling various procedures. It is clear that many clients and parents had positive experiences from the clinic, that Reed was a controversial figure among the staff while she was working there, and that there are differences of opinion as to what is an acceptable level of discussion before embarking on hormone therapy.
As I'm working on these pieces, I really try not to infer too much from individual stories. You're absolutely right - there's no ability to fact-check from a distance and individual stories have ways of having all kinds of unexpected wrinkles to them. I try to move the conversation as much as possible to thinking in broad cultural terms. For me, Reed's testimony speaks to a much larger issue, which is the prevalence of an intervention-first, 'care-affirming' approach in medicine and which seems to be showing up in treatments for teenagers looking to transition. But you clearly feel that subsequent reporting discredits Reed's claims. Want to elaborate on your position on this?
On Weiss, yeah, I've been really inspired by and impressed with her. It's not an easy thing to make the choices she made or to build a whole publication as quickly and successfully as she has. But I respect you! - and your skepticism has made me regard her a bit more warily. Again, do you want to say more? Are you feeling like she's had multiple stories that are just wrong?
Best,
Sam