The New York Times is being torn asunder by a civil war between the newspaper’s older, liberal veterans and its younger, woke staff over its coverage of the trans issue. The Daily Mail’s Tom Leonard has more.
The imposing headquarters of the New York Times was built of glass, supposedly to highlight the fact that the august newspaper has nothing to hide.
But last month, something happened there that the management would have very much preferred to go unnoticed.
An electronic billboard lorry parked outside the building bearing the message: “Dear New York Times: Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist & access medical care.”
The stunt was part of a campaign against America’s biggest newspaper to force it to stop criticising the transgender movement and specifically the controversial medical treatments offered to some children wanting to change gender.
What makes it so embarrassing for the 172-year-old newspaper — the bible of the city’s liberal elite and nicknamed the Grey Lady for its dour, sober-minded reputation — is that huge numbers of its own staff and contributors actually support the campaign being waged against it.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the trans debate appears to be tearing the paper apart as senior, more experienced staff insist on reporting the growing concerns among scientists, doctors and parents about the effects of transgender treatment, especially on children — while younger, woke employees are furious at what they see as an attack on the trans movement they wholeheartedly support.
The trouble, simmering for some time, burst into the open a few days ago when more than 180 contributors to The New York Times signed a letter to the paper’s ‘managing editor for standards’, accusing it of fomenting ‘bigotry and pseudoscience’.
The newspaper was following the lead of ‘far-Right hate groups’, they added, in what they claimed was excessive and biased coverage of transgender issues.
Signatories to the letter — which controversially named and shamed specific journalists — included famous names such as Sex And The City actress Cynthia Nixon, writer and actress Lena Dunham, and the U.S. intelligence whistleblower Chelsea Manning, herself [sic] a trans woman, who was jailed after leaking hundreds of thousands of secret files about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This virtuous army of self-described ‘thinkers’ accused the newspaper of publishing “irresponsible misinformation about trans people”.
Articles they singled out for censure included one last June headlined The Battle Over Gender Therapy, which, they said, “uncritically used the term ‘Patient Zero’” to refer to a child in the Netherlands who was one of the first to have transgender treatment.
This phrase “vilifies transness as a disease to be feared”, asserted the complainants.
They also attacked a feature headlined When Students Change Gender Identity And Parents Don’t Know, which, they said, “fails to make clear that court cases brought by parents who want schools to out their trans children are part of a legal strategy pursued by anti-trans hate groups”.
These groups, they went on, “regard trans people as an ‘existential threat to society’ and seek to replace the American public education system with Christian homeschooling” — but, they claimed, New York Times readers were never told that.
The protest letter also mentioned three articles that last year were cited by Arkansas’ attorney general in support of a new law in the Republican-controlled state “which would make it a felony, punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment, for any medical provider to administer certain gender-affirming medical care to a minor (including puberty blockers) that diverges from their sex assigned at birth”.
The signatories of the letter compared the newspaper’s transgender reporting with what they described as its “demonising [of] queers” in the 1960s and 1970s, and its alleged hounding of homosexuals when the Aids crisis broke in the 1980s.
One of the letter’s organisers, British writer Jo Livingstone, has even speculated that the paper’s coverage is being masterminded by a ‘transphobe’ high up in the organisation, primarily to increase readership.
The diatribe was co-ordinated with a separate letter written by a trans advocacy group and backed by more than 100 organisations which accused the New York Times of “spreading inaccurate and harmful misinformation about transgender people and issues”.
The great irony in all this is that the New York Times prides itself on being one of the most progressive newspapers in America. It yields to nobody in its liberal values and sanctimonious self-regard.
Worth reading in full.
Hard not to enjoy this internal spat, but the grown ups at the newspaper should be congratulated for not backing down in the face of this tantrum. The fact that they’ve finally decided to take a stand against the hysterical Red Guards may be a sign that the woke tide is finally beginning to recede.
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Trans-sexualism can only exist with industrially produced, artificial drugs and surgery.
In other words, in the absence of surgeons and a pharmaceutical industry prepared to produce the necessary drugs, you don’t have trans-sexualism.
So, say what you want about trans-sexualism, but it’s not natural.
An alternative view might be that while in the past people with gender dysphoria had to simply put up with it (and perhaps suffer mental anguish), medical science has developed to the point where they can be helped.
This isn’t to say that they should be helped — it is very complex, not least the evidence of increased suicide rates in those who have transitioned. But it isn’t helpful to simply say ‘it is unnatural’.
Of course it’s unnatural, and, more than that, it’s an evolutionary aberration.
You’re right, it is very complex. Not having read about the condition in any depth, my concern is that what if something like body dysmorphia were approached by doctors in the same way as gender dysphoria, and people who thought themselves ugly ( but it’s all in their head as they look perfectly fine ) and wanted plastic surgery to change their appearance were allowed to do so, similar to people who want to change gender and so the doctors start them on hormonal treatments, progressing to surgery. To me, both of these diagnoses require talking therapy to work through the impact on the individual’s mental health, not hormonal or surgical intervention, because they are genuine psychiatric disorders.
Also, as in the article I shared, there’s now the ability, whether using a country’s census or records from these gender identity clinics etc, that the social engineers can now get feedback on just how impactful this whole ‘wokedemic’ is. I wonder, if stats exist on this, how many people are currently transitioning/have transitioned in the last 3 years compared to, say, 5 years ago. Because I definitely never used to hear anything like the amount of news and woke stories pertaining to transexuals or the whole ideology of the movement years ago compared to nowadays. Is there really more going on or is it just an illusion as the media shifts it’s focus after being consumed with all things Covid these last few years?
I’m of the opinion that psychotherapy should have a much higher profile as treatment for gender dysphoria.
This will bring howls of ‘conversion therapy’ from the usual suspects, but gender dysphoria really is very different from homosexuality — if your whole existence is telling you that you only want to love someone of the same gender (sex) and there are plenty of similar individuals around then simply allowing homosexuality to occur (in law but also persuading society to tolerate it) will result in a positive outcome.
With gender dysphoria the goal is to actually become a member of the opposite sex but that’s really not possible, with the best outcome being a simulacrum of the opposite sex, which might be ‘okay’ but in the end isn’t achieving the desired outcome. Hence psychological problems including suicidal tendencies for too many.
This isn’t to say that transition is inappropriate for all — I’m sure that in many cases it is a satisfactory (perhaps even near perfect) outcome, but the evidence suggests that it is unsatisfactory for rather too many others.
Gender dysphoria is just a form of body dysmorphia- like anorexia. The difference being that if someone has anorexia we don’t call them stunning and brave, we don’t surgically shrink their stomachs, and we don’t have huge campaigns in the media saying that any attempt to help them get over their condition is bigoted and that anorexics should be celebrated.
We are in the middle of a cultish wave of fanaticism, of insane and demonstrably illogical nonsense, that is grooming and encouraging vulnerable children to wreck their mental and physical health in order to satisfy the liberal fantasies of the cultists.
There is nothing good about it and when the magic-dust wears off and people return to collective sanity this period will be looked back on as a scandal of monstrous proportions akin to the witch hysteria of the 17th century.
Re gender dysphoria in children:
IMO there should be some research into the proportion of adults who experienced some gender dysphoria when going through puberty but who nevertheless matured into a sexually normal (whatever that is) adult.
You are confusing gender dysphoria, which of course is natural, given that (a tiny number of) people are born with it, with the pharmacological and surgical procedures to achieve a sexual transformation, which are entirely artificial.
That’s how much we have been overwhelmed by the trans-sexual movement. One can be accused of being unhelpful for stating simple, undeniable facts.
Would you object to me referring to trans-racism as unnatural if one day a pharma company produced a drug that allowed people with black skin to change it to white skin or vice versa?
What about trans-staturism if short people started adding a several inches to their height through surgical procedure.
How about when a lady dons gigantic surgically enhanced boobs. Is it ok to refer to that as unnatural?
My guess is that it all depends on the strength of the lobby and how much fear it can instil in people.
My point wasn’t that it is unnatural, but that it isn’t a helpful argument.
If something ‘unnatural’ can be done to help people then I’m fine with that.
I would agree with what you are saying if the transsexual movement we are seeing were about helping people. But it isn’t.
It’s an ideological movement used by a variety of people for a variety of different purposes most of which have nothing to do with helping people with sexual dysphoria.
The idea that it is about helping people is a weapon that is used by the various people pursuing their ideological goals. And they use thay weapon against anyone who opposes them.
So it’s used by those who want to teach young children about transsexualism, or by New York Times staff in a power struggle to control the editorial narrative of the paper, or by politicians against their rivals.
It’s a weapon that you’ve inadvertently used yourself in a similar way. Because I’m not arguing against helping the gender dysphoria. I’m arguing against the insane ideological attack against our society.
In that context, in which they are trying to brainwash our children into believing that changing sex is the most natural thing in the world, pointing out how unnatural it is is not only helpful but absolutely critical.
Affirming people’s obvious delusions is not helping them. Humans are sexually reproducing mammals and are – except in fringe cases – born male or female. Someone who hates his own body certainly has a problem. But not a problem which can be solved my mutilating this body chemically or chirugically. That’s nothing but self-harming.
Time to acquire a new recruiting department.
The march through the institutions as outlined by the Soviets in the 60s is now just about complete, each new set of graduates come out more twisted then the last.
I wonder if graduating in 2004 I was one of the last to come through unscathed. In my engineering degree there was no talk of anything political whatsoever, no opinions voiced by lecturers about anything other then the subject matter and the mutual interest of aircraft.
Perhaps the Grey Lady might appease its critics by rebranding itself as the more acceptably ambiguous Gary Lady.
Don’t humour them. Sack ’em.
Fire everyone who feels too entitled to have a proper conversation on the topic.
Speaking of the complex topic of gender identity politics, sparked by changes to the New Zealand census form, I thought this was a very good and comprehensive take written on the subject, with particular focus on how kids are arguably being groomed/indoctrinated by school educators;
”We believe there is a truly evil agenda funding this avant garde approach to coralling off the impressionable outliers within the normal distribution of our kids’ development. It has been transfected into the education system, and delivered throughout the curriculum – along with other nonsense like taking the knee to net zero, and how to recognise disinfo (actual answer: when most government officials or tenured academics open their mouths). But nowhere is this more obvious than in the sexuality training penetrating our kids’ impressionable minds. Some of our children and their friends openly refer to it as sexual grooming training. We are all for removing sexual ignorance as a source of life stress and unhappiness, and teaching how to ensure valid consent (oh, the terrible irony!) but, really is this not just encouraging gender dysmorphia? Some of the self-pleasuring techniques taught to our 12 year olds raised eyebrows for some of us parents. Pass the hairbrush…
Many of the clinicians advancing the Brave New World of the hormonal, surgical and psychological techniques required to ‘transition’ may believe egotistically they are advancing humanity somehow, and relieving suffering. But their legacy will be surely despised for the misguided and blunderbuss approach to a contrived epidemic of gender dysphoria that we have somehow missed and neglected through the ages.
It would seem that the same forces are at play which pushed that a man-made synthetic mRNA was more effective than natural immunity and that humans are to be enhanced by nano-machines. Have we become so conceited as to once again proclaim that we can improve on nature? That has rarely worked out.”
https://nzdsos.com/2023/03/03/gender-identity-politics/
Can we be surprised when children are now ‘taught’ that same sex couples can be mummies and daddies of children when, prior to the invention of IVF, such an approach would have led to the extinction of the human race?
As always, an incredibly small minority of media employees (both MSM and Social – maybe 0.1% of the total population) believe that their wacky views are held by the other 99.9% and use their employment positions to broadcast these beliefs to all and sundry.
Like most things, the situation regarding transexualism (and gender dysphoria) is complex and doesn’t have a simple solution.
Unfortunately, both the media and political-class are determined to distil the situation into a simplistic ‘with us or against us’ argument.
The recent ‘Matt’s messages’ fiasco serves to highlight how the public are manipulated to their agenda. The weird thing is, the public seem to have an incredible ability to not notice this happening, and instead let themselves get whipped up into a frenzy again and again.
Sorry, it’s not a complex issue. Not if we don’t allow it to become one.
A tiny minority of people have a physical condition. It gets dealt with in the best way possible as with many other physical conditions.
Some people are conflating that tiny problem which is a non-issue for most of society with an ideological crusade to tranform our society and convince people that sex is a cultural construct and switching genders is perfectly natural.
Don’t get drawn into the deliberately created confusion.
It’s dead.simple really.
Mentally ill freaks. Sick. In need of either a serious beating or a white jacket in a loony jail cell.
Which ones are mentally ill freaks — the ones suffering from gender dysphoria, or the people who drive themselves into a mania demanding that children be allowed to transition while they’re going through a complex period in their gender-life?
In German, there are two terms for madness, Wahnsinn and Irrsinn. Sinn means sense in the sense of senses, eg, sight or hearing, and also sense in the sense of meaning. As prefix, Irr- refers to something that’s know to be wrong and Wahn- to a delusion or obsession. I think this answers the question nicely: People who believe that sex is assigned at birth suffer from Wahnsinn and people who believe to have been assigned the wrong sex at birth from Irrsinn.
Both?
Their gender life? Really?
He is clearly referring to the lunatics that want our society to deny biological reality and pretend there aren’t two sees, but many. And switching sees is normal.and natural.
This has nothing, nothing at all to do with people born with rare biological conditions.
Bang out of order and talking like a bloody knuckle dragging thug.
Comments like yours are an insult to DS.
The ignorance on the subject of transexuality being spouted here, with one or two exceptions – tips o’ the hat to Amanuensis and Mogs in particular – is absolutely breathtaking.
Ninety-nine percent plus of the transexual / trans community would have nothing to do with the current shenanigans and would absolutely NOT support all the trouble and publicity that is being manufactured around this subject. And the constant MSM fuss is just that – fuss. Genuine trans people have nothing to gain from all these stories, campaigns and headlines. Nothing.
Genuine trans people would not in any way support Drag Story Hour and associated behaviours and most certainly would not wish to see the sexualisation of our children. Believe it or not the majority of trans people are very similar to the people we meet on a daily basis and most of those weighing in on this discussion don’t even realise.
The sensationalism that is being stoked around transsexualism is being done for deeply malign purposes but it is not being pushed by the real trans community. The purpose of the manufactured trans debate is primarily to undermine the sanctity of the family. The push is to break down family life and as ever with any attempt to wreck societal change and havoc TPTB have to target our children.
As Neil Oliver would say:
“It’s not always about what they say it’s about.”
Yes spot on Hux and I agree entirely. I feel like what is going on at the moment, which is definitely *not* representative of the vast majority of trans people, is just getting people riled up and stoking animosity towards the trans community. As you say, most individuals would, I’m sure, just want to get on with their lives quietly and be respectfully left to do so, simultaneously staying in their own lane and not interfering with others. The whole thing has become so warped. It reminds me of the similar situation with feminism, which is something else that has been highjacked for the purposes of furthering an agenda. This fringe minority of extremists do not speak for me or represent my core values or beliefs but certain people will lump us all together and tar us all with the same brush, purely to legitimize their hostility and resentment towards these women, and I am somehow meant to answer for a minority of nutty outliers? Jog on! It would appear that ‘Trans”, along with ‘feminism’, now exists on a spectrum and has become an umbrella term for an entire ideology which definitely was not so complicated and ever-evolving years ago. I can’t even keep up with it myself! lol
Thanks Mogs.
Neil Oliver laid it out bare tonight ! He is right over the target ! Also Mahyar Tousi covered the Dutch Farmers plight which is being Ramped up to the point that their farms are going to be taken !!
‘U.S. intelligence whistleblower Chelsea Manning, herself [sic] a trans woman, who was jailed after leaking hundreds of thousands of secret files about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan’ – typical MSM. How about ‘Chelsea Manning, who risked life and liberty to expose an unconstitutional, un-American shadow government working within the US and aided by at least eight US security agencies including the CIA.
Using the term ‘Red Guards’ will give the childish idiots more delusions of grandeur.
Some if the ‘Woke’ generation does not want to be criticized and scrutinized.
Maybe they went to universities where it was not allowed to dispute any of the ‘woke’ ideology and therefore were indoctrinated instead of being educated.
They seemingly do not understand free speech, preferring to censor those they disagree with.