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"Like, I could say, "So, before I came out as trans, I pretty much constantly felt like the monster in a Cronenberg movie where my skin keeps getting tighter and tighter and the whole time I'm next to a busy highway with wind blowing in my face," but I don't know if that's helpful to most people?"

This is incredibly meaningful and helpful to me. Thank you.

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“…believes minors should be properly assessed before interventions such as blockers or hormones are used" can mean anything if you don't define "properly." What does "properly assessed" mean?”

It means “assessed in a way that I personally believe is proper, even though I know literally nothing about the subject and I run completely on vibes and therefore will never believe any assessment is proper. After all, I write regularly for the NYT! And do you see how many subscribers I have? Why should I learn anything?”

As for “joining in the opprobrium” if Jesse Singal were found to be a mass murderer, lol right—they wouldn’t approve of the mass murder, but there would never be a moment of “hey maybe this guy is a sadistic crackpot.” More like “nobody’s perfect.”

Lastly, OMG I’d never heard the notion of “homophobia is driving parents to transition their kids because a homophobe thinks being trans is fine.” More proof that none of these guys have ever met any actual people.

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Don't forget that if you hold them down and force them to define the assessment, and then do exactly that, they'll claim you didn't interpret it right.

Olympic goal post movers.

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How do folks like Jonathan Chait and Matt Yglesias survive with skin thinner than cling wrap?

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The notion that transphobia is less prevalent and less intense than homophobia is a joke. I can attest to this from lived experience. It's true that most of the people who hold one hold the other equally, but when a person holds one more intensely than the other, it tends to be the transphobia.

Andrew Sullivan's take on this in particular is self-serving bullsh*t, as well as futile.

Throwing us under the bus isn't going to save cisgender gay men or lesbians from fascism. Fascists aren't going to let you into the country club, Andrew, so quit dreaming.

And to speak to your larger point, Parker, you are correct that none of the Very Smart Media people you described are arguing in good faith. F*ck 'em.

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I mean it's the same thing with JK Rowling right? She's clearly scared of trans women and sees them as a threat to cis women. Instead of directing your energy at the patriarchy, you scapegoat other minority groups. Same with Chapelle, who thinks that LGBT people are threatening black people (as if there isn't crossover). But yea, Sullivan's thing has always been, "I got mine, no one should get theirs".

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She hates them. I think she's pretending to be afraid.

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She definitely hates them, but could be both

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Maybe she has talked herself into it at this point. I suppose antisemites fear Jews but I don't think fear of individuals you persecute because you have an ideology they are dangerous presents the same way fear standardly presents itself.

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This is an incredibly thorough and well-realized piece. What I find so disturbing is the 'pundits' fail to take into consideration any medical or scientific data while they're 'just asking questions'.

Yes, every trans experience have different elements, and many are shared. It seems that they would have conversations with actual trans people (both young and old), to get ANY sense of what our reality is like. Even when I transitioned at 13 in 1974, the doctors at Tulane Medical Center didn't have much research to go on, but they instinctively knew I wasn't 'just gay' or being obstinate -- it was a real, true feeling that was persistent, consistent and insistent. My parents were at a loss and frightened, but I had to do what I could to continue living...and I did.

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quick typo note: "Like... here's a Daily Beast story about the drama at the New Y work Times..."

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Thanks! Fixed it.

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Great piece! You are really good at articulating this stuff.

Once, during the height of the CRT panic, Yglesias quote-tweeted a guy saying that Fox News had actually only talked about CRT for 3 minutes the previous week, commenting about how mad left-twitter would be about this fact. Of course, it turned out not to be true (I think the three minutes was the total duration of the literal syllables "crt"). Matt just deleted the tweets, never corrected, never apologized. That was when I realized that there is no performance review for pundits, no quality control, and no shame. My anger and frustration at those "substack bros" was probably more the reason that twitter was unhealthy for me than the trolls or MAGAs or whatever. I realize this experience is much less serious than providing cover for transphobes - although, he provided cover for overtly partisan racists like Rufo - but that's part of the whole thing: Why take a big stance on some dumb little thing like Fox not talking a lot about CRT? Why risk your reputation just jumping in with both feet on something that you clearly don't know is true, and even taunting people who dare to contradict you? And, of course, the answer is why not? There are zero consequences for just lying. The media still treats you like an honest player, so why not just say whatever shit pops into your head?

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This is all infuriating, especially knowing that, for guys like Matt Yglesias, you and the entire trans community are just raw material for the Argument Factory. Your relationship to Yglesias is like the relationship of bauxite to an aluminum smelter. Stop complaining and climb on to the conveyer belt.

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Also, that tweet from Kevin Drum shows how, for guys who are supposedly all about open debate and ideas, they're surprisingly allergic to actual ideas. Sure, Kevin, your pals get all this shit from progressives because they don't score high enough on some abstract "progressive" scale. And how convenient for you, this absolves you of any need to examine the ideas your pals are putting forward and the ideas of the people who oppose them. Kinda like you're a political reporter but the actual ideas contained within politics only confuse and bore you, so let's just turn it all into a horse race.

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Yea, I mean, you bring a level of nuance to discussions that the reactionaries are not even going to touch. The whole reactionary cancel culture mainstream conversation is such a massive circle jerk and like I don't understand how they don't get tired of writing and saying the same thing over and over again. My best guess is it's a mix of white guys being bigoted, wanting to appeal to a larger audience, and being stuck in an elite journalism bubble and spending way too much time on Twitter.

As for the transphobia, yea, they're clearly uncomfortable by and probably scared of trans people and projecting that into a stupid not allowed to talk about it meta discussion with a lot of confirmation bias. And like, that's their right to be uncomfortable, but excluding trans people from the discussion is just fucked up. Like, I'm cis, obviously I don't understand aspects of being trans. But I know that trans people say that they are who they are, and like, who am I to tell them that they're not? But I think a lot of pundits have this mindset where like the more they're told they're wrong the more they feel like they're right. Like there's pushback so they must be protecting some forbidden truth when the reality is they're just wrong about things. I mean, Yglesias is such a fucking childish troll, the influence he holds is pretty embarrassing. Ultimately it's all just another dumb moral panic, but unfortunately one with severe real life consequences. Anyway, I always appreciate your writing and you speaking out.

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Excellent article and the way you frame the problem is perfect. It does boil down to these writers and she-who-must-not-be-named being too afraid to come out and say what they really believe. They don't like trans people, they think we're icky and the cishet men are scared to death that they might be attracted to a trans woman. It's disheartening that the transphobes have the bigger platform.

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They can criticize and insult with impunity, but get upset when they are critcized or insulted back. Not unlike Trump.

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I have trouble keeping the prominent TERFs separate, wasn't Helen Joyce the one who complained about how hard it was to get her book published (because something something cis woman)? Kinda sounds like it's, at least in part, a punch up of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion so I'm not surprised.

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Oh, Helen Joyce is the one that said trans people need "special accommodation" and are therefore a burden on society so that's why she would like to "reduce the number of trans people." Got some real "Useless Eaters" vibes there.

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'They don't want a conversation.' I think that's a great motto to remember

. And perplexing. What's in it for them? This is prima facie absurd that journalists are inserting themselves into children's health like they're talking about high speed rail projects. Maybe it seems like a safe place for the centrist to

position himself (I say him because this tends to be a thing for men...'Anti-trans Centrism. For Men.' Like Aftershave. Pour Homme. ) Oops! I forgot Michelle Goldberg. Never mind? Perhaps the safety lies in the low bar they've set to know anything. Or maybe the idea that they can keep friends on the right because at least they agree on this one issue. So they don't want a conversation just like the person who works at Raytheon doesn't want a conversation on the morality of war. They see it as their job to do this sort of thing.

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Parker, here's hoping your Friday article will talk about what we can do to combat this..? Pretty please.

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Articulating a point is so challenging yet ultimately the most satisfying result of the writing process. I can't imagine putting out something like the "properly" line or JKR's internal contradictions and not being filled with anxiety.

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