Wednesday, November 08, 2017


The Ugly Truth About Sex Reassignment the Transgender Lobby Doesn’t Want You to Know

High suicide rate

Sex reassignment is as natural as being born, some in the media tell us. And many Americans are buying it.

But a growing chorus of dissenters made up of physicians, researchers, and even transgender individuals is beginning to paint a far different picture of the truth.

These dissenters are now coming forward to expose just how harmful gender transition and reassignment are—both medically and sociologically speaking.

First, consider recent revelations about how problematic sex reassignment surgery is as a therapy for gender dysphoria.

In an interview with The Telegraph, world-renowned genital reconstructive surgeon Miroslav Djordjevic said his clinics are experiencing an increase in “reversal” surgeries for those who want their genitalia back. These people express crippling levels of depression and, in some instances, suicidal thoughts.

In male-to-female reassignment surgery, doctors such as Djordjevic transform the man’s genitals into the shape of a vagina, removing the testicles and inverting the penis.

In female-to-male reassignment surgery, doctors remove the woman’s breasts, uterus, and ovaries, and extend the urethra so that the woman-turned-man can urinate from the standing position.

A recent Newsweek article takes note of Djordjevic’s concerns, illustrating their legitimacy by pointing to the case of Charles Kane, a man who underwent male-to-female reassignment surgery.

In a BBC interview, Kane explains that he decided to have the initial surgery immediately after having a nervous breakdown. But after having the surgery and identifying as a female named “Sam Hashimi,” Kane soon regretted the decision and went for reversal surgery.

“When I was in the psychiatric hospital,” Kane said, “there was a man on one side of me who thought he was King George and another guy on the other side who thought he was Jesus Christ. I decided I was [a girl named] Sam.”

Similarly, Claudia MacLean, a transgender woman, is quoted as saying her psychiatrist referred her to a sex reassignment surgeon after having only a 45-minute consultation. “In my opinion,” MacLean said, “what happened to me was all about money.”

Given that clinics charge up to $50,000 for reassignment surgeries, Djordjevic says he fears that doctors are stuffing their bank accounts without concern for the physical and psychological well-being of their patients.

Physical and psychological well-being should be a concern, given that 41 percent of transgender people will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, and people who have had sex reassignment surgery are approximately 20 times more likely than the general population to die by suicide.

In addition to the problems inherent to sex reassignment surgery, we should recognize the troublesome nature of giving hormonal “treatments” to gender dysphoric children to delay puberty.

In a recent paper, “Growing Pains: Problems with Puberty Suppression in Treating Gender Dysphoria,” endocrinologist Paul Hruz, biostatistician Lawrence Mayer, and psychiatrist Paul McHugh challenge this practice.

They note that approximately 80 percent of gender dysphoric children grow comfortable in their bodies and no longer experience dysphoria, and conclude that there is “little evidence that puberty suppression is reversible, safe, or effective for treating gender dysphoria.”

Thus, scientific evidence suggests that hormone-induced puberty suppression is harmful and even abusive.

Finally, gender transitions are problematic for society at large, as revealed in recent debates about restroom usage, military realities, housing policies, and sporting events.

What is often overlooked in these debates is the troublesome and even dangerous situation created when transgendered “females” compete in female athletic competitions.

Consider the 2014 women’s mixed martial arts bout between Tamikka Brents and Fallon Fox. During a two-minute beating, Brents suffered a concussion, an orbital bone fracture, and a head wound requiring seven staples.

“I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night,” said Brents.

As it turns out, her opponent, Fox, wasn’t born female. She is a biological male who identifies as transgender.

Brents thought Fox had an unfair advantage. “I can’t answer whether it’s because she was born a man or not because I’m not a doctor,” said Brents. “I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life, and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right.”

Brents was right to consider Fox’s advantage unfair: The physical differences between men and women are significant enough that professional female fighters cannot compete effectively against other professional male fighters.

Given all this, why do we not see a more constructive and sustained public debate among surgeons, psychiatrists, and lawmakers about the ethics of sex reassignment?

The most significant reason is the power of the transgender lobby.

Consider psychotherapist James Caspian’s recent claim that Bath Spa University in the United Kingdom refused his application to conduct research on sex reversal surgeries because the topic was deemed “potentially politically incorrect.”

According to Caspian, the university initially approved his research proposal, but later rejected it because of the backlash it expected from powerful transgender lobbies.

Regardless of how politically incorrect the evidence may be, and even while we accommodate the privacy and safety concerns of those who identify as transgender, we must also draw a sober and honest conclusion about the human costs of sex reassignment.

The best medical science, social science, philosophy, and theology coalesce. As Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Ryan Anderson puts it, they reveal that sex is a biological reality, that gender is the social expression of that reality, and that sex reassignment surgeries and treatments are therefore not good remedies for the distress felt by people with gender dysphoria.

The most helpful therapies for gender dysphoria, therefore, will be ones that help people live in conformity with the biological truth about their bodies.

SOURCE






No, the Bible Does Not Teach Socialism

Writer Peter Heck has found himself in a back-and-forth with Christian socialists Jim Wallis and Michael Wear. After writing an article for The Resurgent titled "There's Not Much As Gross As Christian Socialists," Heck found himself the target of Wear's ire. Doubling down, Heck reasserted in an article for The Christian Post that socialism is not taught in the Bible.

Having been a Christian who used to read and admire Jim Wallis and who once mistakenly believed that the Bible teaches socialism, I am grateful for Peter Heck's articles. It's necessary to push back on the erroneous belief that socialism is taught in the Bible. Sadly, many Christians conflate the commands of Jesus that we are to care for the poor with the failed economic theory named socialism.

A friend recently asked me if I still believed the Bible teaches socialism. Immediately, and without equivocation, I responded, "No."

Using my own past words and arguments to push back, he mentioned Acts 4:32-37, the passage that relates how the early Church "had everything in common" and that "there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands and houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet and it was distributed to each as any had need."

Before he could finish, I interrupted, "They weren't compelled by the government, but gave willingly."

As Heck writes,

If the government takes from me and gives to the poor, I am not fulfilling the command of Jesus to be personally charitable. Anyone who teaches that deserves rebuke. Similarly, if I am in a position of power in government, and I use the force of law to take from certain citizens and redistribute to other citizens, I am not fulfilling the command of Jesus to be personally charitable. Anyone who teaches that also deserves rebuke.
Peter Heck is clear that he doesn't believe that supporting socialist government programs means that an individual is not a Christian. That would be a violation of the Apostle Paul's claim, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Responding to Wear's accusation that he slandered Jim Wallis, Heck asserts:

I don't believe anyone is unchristian for supporting the Social Security ponzi scheme. Politically wrong and unwise? Yes, but not unchristian. I don't question the Christian bona fides of anyone who wants to ramp up Medicaid or the SNAP food stamp systems. I may disagree with them politically, but those aren't issues of belittling or abusing the Word of God.

My objection to Wallis was and is that he teaches and many of his followers repeat that support of socialist redistribution policies is synonymous with obedience to the call of Christ to care for the "least of these" ......

As an evangelical Christian who has conservative politics, I am more than happy to concede that policy differences are typically not matters where our faith compels us to be rigid and dogmatic. But when it comes to twisting and using Scripture to advance our policy preferences (particularly when those policies lead to dramatic suffering for the poor, as in the case of socialism), all believers must oppose such an offense.

It's true that we should care for those in our community who are suffering. Failing to do so is a sin. However, twisting Scripture to support your pet economic theory is also a sin.

SOURCE




Radical feminism fundamentally opposes liberal feminism

Sean Gabb

Introduction: The common core of feminism, before about 1970, was that women should have the same political and legal rights as men and that they should not be denied the same economic opportunities – eg, “equal pay for equal work.” This can be called liberal feminism. Since then, however, a strong divide has emerged within feminism, and some feminists (the radical or “second wave” feminists) believe that male oppression (patriarchy” is deeply rooted in the structures of the established order.

Point 1: For the radical or “second wave” feminists, patriarchy begins in the structures and assumptions of heterosexual monogamy. Girls are conditioned from an early age to accept the primacy of boys. By the time they are young women, they are wholly enslaved – so much so that they cannot recognise their chains. Two key texts of this kind of feminism: “Fat is a Feminist Issue,” Susie Orbach (1978), “The Beauty Myth,” Naomi Wolf (1990) The first argues that women are made to feel bad about themselves if they grow fat, and so they give in to other forms of oppression. The second argues that male oppressors have created an ideal of female beauty that cannot be achieved, but that women are encouraged to aim at by starving themselves. Because women on starvation diets are incapable of standing up for themselves, both pornography and the advertising industry are key supports of patriarchy.

Therefore, the personal is political. Dieting is not a personal choice. It is an acceptance of patriarchy. Being fat and not bothering to wash or use sanitary towels are revolutionary acts that tend towards the true emancipation of women.

Point 2. Perhaps the most prominent of the second wave feminists was Andrea Dworkin, who became notorious for her writings on sex. She did much to expand definition of rape from unwilling sex with threats of violence to any kind of sex that does not involve explicit prior consent. She also popularised the idea of “political lesbianism,” and insisted that heterosexual sex is not oppressive only when women are on top and the man has only a weak erection. She was also strongly opposed to the free availability of pornography, claiming that it “objectified women” – that is, made them into objects of male lust that demeaned them as individuals and encouraged rape and other forms of sexual abuse. For the same reason, she supported the suppression of prostitution and other forms of sex work.

Point 3: However, not all feminists stand within this tradition. Both Germaine Greer and especially Camille Paglia continue to insist that feminism is achieved by a programme of political and legal equality. They strongly reject the idea that the political is the personal. Germaine Greer has become steadily more conservative since her “Female Eunuch” was published in the 1960s. Camille Paglia stands close to the American libertarian tradition. She believes that, once obvious political and legal discriminations are removed, there is no fundamental conflict between men and women. She also strongly supports the right to publish and enjoy pornography and the right of women to become sex workers. She is a lesbian who believes that sexual orientation should be a matter of personal choice.

Pont 4: This is a fundamental divide within feminism – as fundamental as the older divide between democratic and revolutionary socialists. It is not just a matter of political difference, but also of intense personal hatred. Germaine has been banned from speaking at various British universities on account of her alleged “transphobia” or unwillingness to accept that men who change their sex are really women. Camille Paglia enjoys disrupting second wave feminist demonstrations outside sex shops – explaining how she thinks pornography and sex toys are wonderful. Another example is the British feminist Erin Pizzey. In the 1970s, she inclined to second wave feminism, founding the first refuge for battered wives. She then published a book claiming that women were just as likely as men to initiate domestic violence, and that women were just as likely to be paedophiles. Since then, she has been subject to death threats from radical feminsts, and has had to leave the country.

Conclusion: The division between these two kinds of feminism is so great that it is hard to find common ground between them. They really are as different as the British Labour Party and the British Communist Party in the 1940s. They both use the word “feminist” to describe themselves, but place radically different meanings on the word.

SOURCE






These are desperate times for Democrats. And what do Democrats do when they're desperate? They play the race card

These are desperate times for Democrats. And what do Democrats do when they’re desperate? They play the race card.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Democrats and their equally smug media allies thought the nation would be basking in the glow of the nation’s first female president. Instead, Trump was elected, and his victory was attributed to “referencing a nostalgia that would give hope, comfort, settle grievances for millions of people who were upset about gains that were made by others,” Hillary Clinton stated on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” in September.

Host Jane Pauley looked for clarification. “What you’re saying is millions of white people?” she asked. “Millions of white people, yeah. Millions of white people,” Clinton responded, adding that Trump’s inauguration a speech was a “cry from the white-nationalist gut.”

Hillary and her equally clueless fellow travelers never get around to explaining how those same “racist” white people elected Barack Obama twice, or why many of them label any black American who identifies as Republican a race “traitor.”

When one swims in a sea of identity politics, inconvenient reality is easily ignored.

What cannot be ignored is when Democrat institutions engage in the very same bigotry they claim to abhor. Last week, DNC Data Services manager Madeleine Leader sent an email to fellow DNC employees announcing that the Technology Department is looking to fill some positions. That would be a DNC whose website states it is an “equal opportunity employer.”

For most Americans, “equal opportunity” would be self-explanatory. For a Democrat Party obsessed with dividing Americans into tribalist sub-groups, it is apparently necessary to elaborate. Thus we are told the DNC does not discriminate based on “sex, race, age, color, creed, national origin, religion, economic status, sexual orientation, veteran status, gender identity or expression, ethnic identity or disability, or any other legally protected basis.”

Leader didn’t get the proverbial memo. “I personally would prefer that you not forward [this email] to cisgender straight white males, since they’re already in the majority,” she wrote.

For Americans who have failed to keep up with the Left’s sexual identity politics, “cisgender” is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. Thus one can presume a white male claiming to be a woman trapped in a man’s body remains in the running.

The DNC disavowed Leader’s email. “The email in question was not authorized by the DNC nor was it authorized by senior leadership,” spokesman Michael Tyler told Fox News. “All hiring decisions at the DNC are made consistent with the DNC’s commitment to equal employment opportunity and hiring an inclusive and talented staff that reflects the coalition of the Democratic Party, because our diversity is our greatest strength.”

That is, quite simply, a bald-faced lie. For Democrats, diversity is about anything that accrues to their political agenda. Anything that doesn’t is bigotry with all the attendant subheadings, from nativist to transphobic, and everything in between.

New Yorkers are the latest group of Americans paying a high price for Democrat-defined diversity. Following last Tuesday’s terrorist attack, during which eight innocent people were slaughtered with a truck allegedly driven by Sayfullo Saipov, it was revealed the Islamic State supporter was invited to America under the auspices of the “Diversity Visa Program.” The program was initially spearheaded by-then New York Representative and current Senator Chuck Schumer, along with former Senate “lion” Ted Kennedy in 1990. And the GOP, demonstrating an equal level of cluelessness, supported the measure, with President George H.W. Bush signing it into law.

An added “bonus” of that lottery is chain migration, a system that allows citizens and lawful permanent residents the ability to sponsor their non-nuclear family members for entry in America. Thus we welcome a virtual flood of unskilled, uneducated and often elderly immigrants to partake of our nation’s generous welfare system.

In Saipov’s case, he was able to help as many as 23 other individuals become eligible to emigrate to America.

Trump would eliminate the lottery and turn immigration into the skills-based merit system that benefits America, not merely those who wish to come here. For that he was branded a racist, just as he was for imposing a travel ban including the nations of Chad, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia.

One of the jurists blocking this latest ban is Barack Obama appointee Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii. That would be the same overwhelmingly Democrat Hawaii prepping for a nuclear attack by North Korea, one of the countries added to the list. Like their New York counterparts, it appears a commitment to diversity and multiculturalism is more important than the threat of terror — or nuclear annihilation.

Speaking of annihilation, that’s exactly what the Latino Victory Fund (LVF) attempted to do to Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Ed Gillespie. They produced a political ad showing a white man attempting to run down minority kids with a pickup truck sporting a Confederate flag, a Tea Party license plate, and a bumper sticker for Gillespie. The end of the spot reveals this is a nightmare replete with awakened kids shaking in fear, while the narrator asks, “Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by ‘the American dream’?”

As opposed to the open borders, national sovereignty-despising fundamental transformation dreams of Democrats?

Records subsequently released by the Virginia Department of Elections reveal Democrat candidate Ralph Northam’s campaign coordinated with the LVF to produce the ad. No doubt to both entities’ dismay, the real truck attack in New York forced them to pull the spot. Undaunted, LVF released a Spanish-only ad featuring Gillespie and Trump — appearing in front of Nazi flags.

And despite pulling the original ad, LVF president Cristóbal J. Alex defended it. “We knew our ad would ruffle feathers,” he said. “We held a mirror up to the Republican Party, and they don’t like what they see.”

What Republicans see? How about what decent Americans see? Americans who don’t believe anyone and everyone who disagrees with the Democrat agenda is a potential terrorist or a dedicated Nazi? Americans who finally got sick and tired of being referred to as “bitter clingers,” “irredeemables” or “deplorables” in addition to the aforementioned epithets Democrats substitute for rational debate?

“The Democrats use identity politics to develop their campaigns, organize their party and impose their will via government policy,” explains Washington Post contributor Ed Rogers. “Qualified people are excluded from service, good candidates are smeared, and Americans are put in danger. But somehow, Democrats think this is progress. They think this is justice. It is what they want to do more of when they are in power.”

Last week, former DNC leader Donna Brazile revealed just how committed Democrats are to honesty and fairness amongst themselves in pursuit of power. In short, the party was willing to shaft half (or more) of its supporters to make Clinton its presidential candidate. Thus as always, “by any means necessary” remains Democrat Party’s foremost “principle.”

And as for race bait, Brazile recounted an exchange she had with the Clinton campaign: “I’m not Patsey the slave,” referencing a character in the film “12 Years a Slave.” She continued, “Y'all keep whipping me and whipping me and you never give me any money or any way to do my damn job. I am not going to be your whipping girl!”

Race-baiting? A tool of the Democrat trade.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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