Guardian states absolute untruth on medical treatment

[ValuePartnership]

In an article on Mississippi the Guardian included these paragraphs:

"Mississippi is among the US states that have pursued a barrage of restrictions pertaining to transgender youth medical care, sports participation and bathroom use. Earlier this year, the state’s conservative governor, Tate Reeves, signed into law a legislative bill which prohibits health professionals from providing both hormone treatments and surgical procedures to transgender minors.

Such gender-affirming care is medically necessary and potentially lifesaving for children and adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria."

That statement is categorically untrue and represents deliberate misinfomation. No gender affirming care is "medically necessary" for anyone, let alone children; and has no connection to "saving lives".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/21/trans-girl-mississippi-high-school-graduation

On most birth certificates, there is an M or F box ticked for newborn babies. So at the level of language, to be transgender means not aligning one’s own identity with that rigid box on an official document – and there was no non-binary option on mine.

And there’s a reason for that.

Swapping from soprano to alto ?

Both are female voices categories though.

I think Madison is one of the worst type of trans activist. Even though her own self conclusion that she’s trans instead of just a woman who doesn’t like stereotypes is obviously flawed, she should be using her experience to counsel other young women and teenage girls about how they don’t have to undertake radical changes to their bodies like a mastectomy. Instead she wants to claim the specialness of trans-ness while championing the right of those women and girls to adulterate their bodies with testosterone and surgery in fruitless pursuit of happiness. She wants “in” but won’t do anything to help.

Fuck her.

With all my 20 years on MN I have never presented a with such conviction as I do now to Madison.

Hmm. I'm assuming the emoji is a Jammy Dodger, but what does it mean?

Anyway, I saw and avoided the article earlier, but as the asinine drivel seems to have raised a few laughs, I'll force myself.

I don't read a great deal of poetry but certain poems have stuck in my mind because the use of language and the ideas expressed have made me see the world in a different way. I'm not optimistic about Madison's ability to create a poem of that order, based on this article.

This, on the other hand (heard on Radio 3 the other day):

Quotes like that never seem to occur to them to deny the rhetoric that gender is innate and must be obliged as per the suicide leveraging.

I have noticed quite a few of the young trans people are now using words such as ‘choice’. I wonder how long until it really does come apart. That all this is exposed.

I encourage as many of them as possible to repeat those phrases about personal choice. It shines the light for all to see.

Did Madison’s brain explode thinking that through, do you think?

Crikey, what a load of turgid shite that turned out to be; I've only myself to blame, yous gave me enough warning signs!

What does: "Rather than changing my body, I was changing the ways I inhabited my body." mean?

I don't wear the same clothes every day ?

I think it’s “sometimes I wear eyeliner because that’s what I see as feminine and sometimes I don’t”.

There aren’t enough eye rolls available.

We were watching the music channel yesterday and we all commented how perfect Marc Almond’s cat eye eyeliner was. Men in eyeliner is nothing new.

Ha ha! I remember being 12 and watching Top of the Pop, my eldest sister going, "Ee, Marc Almond - he's lush!"

My dad made a comment, which it's not possible to repeat on MN, as I don't want to be banned.

Both of them had crushes on George Michael, too. It seems to have been a waste of teenage lust!

I sometimes think the Guardian is trying to peak trans its own readers. The Mdaison Godfrey article is a classic of the genre.

Isn't it funny, though, how on one hand "gender affirming care" (also known as chopping off your genitals or breasts and taking cross-sex hormones for the rest of your life) is so important as to be life-saving, but on the other hand is completely unnecessary and nothing to do with what it means to be trans?

@NotTerfNorCis that piece made my brain explode. A woman who loves her female body but who is also trans? My eventual takeaway was "I'm not just some boring, run of the mill woman, I'm special. Yes I look like a woman - and enjoy looking like that. But I'm not realllllly such a run of the mill creature. So don't you dare make any rational assumptions about me. Let me on the bandwagon. I'm non binary too! Honest! I want to be in the paper too! Look at meeee "
I still have a bit of a headache.

So bad

The Guardian is TRA in paper form

Is the Guardian still self identifying as a 'news' paper?

This was my thought too.

When I first started exploring gender identity to support my gender-questioning daughter, I thought that gender identity was factual rather than a belief. I spoke to a biological female who was non-binary. So much of what they said resonated with me and how I felt about my own "gender". Being boxed in to what it means to be in the binary etc etc. I began to wonder if I could be non-binary too.

Then as I looked more deeply, I found myself going from gender identity believer to agnostic to non-believer. A very similar journey to Christianity and me, where everything was fact when I was in primary school (I went to a church school), then over the years I felt unsure about what was fact and what was belief, then finally sure that I was an atheist. Throughout all of that, I could still and do still "identify" with many of the aspects of being "a good Christian". There are some strong moral ethics about how to be a good and kind person within a society. Religion brings a huge amount of sensible guidance on this. There are also some questionable ones (to pick a low controversy one, you won't find many people following the Leviticus "moral teachings", such as stoning adulterers to death), plus I rejected the idea pretty early on in my agnostic days that I should do these things because God said so.

There are many Christians who are comfortable with and happy with their faith. The person in this article seems to be in a similar position with regards to her gender identity. That's fantastic. But just as a Christian's faith isn't dependent on me or others believing in their connection with God, nor should this person's gender identity be dependent on others accepting their belief as fact. (This extra level of clarity in my head came from another MN thread - thank you!).

So yes, irresponsible journalism for not framing it properly. It would be just as stark if they left in an unchallenged statement about why we should all be stoning adulterers.

The 'I must get a reference to my favourite pop group into this' in Madison's article is utterly cringey too. Is this person 15?

Madison Godfrey will be just fine when she grows up a bit and realises that she is not the universe's Main Character.

In the meantime, a full time job (a real one), some volunteering and some considered learning about the world, will doubtless help her to achieve the necessary humility that we all need in life.

Well Madison comes across as a pompous twat unfortunately

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · Today 08:41
Thank you for the poem, it is beautiful, and moving, and gives glimmers hope through those jewels.

'It's like watching a friend go mad and being powerless to intervene.'

Someone said this about the USA's decision to invade Iraq. But it fits with how I feel about the Guardian now.

I feel for Madison. That article is pretentious nonsense, but it's the sort of thing I could have written as an autistic teenager if gender ideology had been around then.

I always thought gender norms were bullshit. I remember having an argument with my mother about why my unshaven legs were apparently 'gross' but my brother's were unremarkable. It was totally illogical to me. I thought that I didn't understand 'being a woman' because it felt too much like 'being a passive sex object' - and the women in my own life who didn't fit stereotypes were sadly invisible to me at that age. They were old, so they didn't count. If someone had suggested that not fitting stereotypes meant I wasn't actually a woman? I could have taken to it, if I were young enough.

I wonder how much theory of mind issues play into being able to dismiss the majority of the population as undifferentiated 'cispeople' who clearly all think the same and agree with stereotypes. Stereotypes are pushed onto young women, either through people around them or the media, so it's easy to think, at 12 or 13, that everyone who seems to go along with them must accept and agree with them all. I was lucky that for my generation it was dressing in black and being 'not like other girls' that seemed like the escape, not surgery.

(I should clarify - I'm not trying to internet diagnose Madison, who could be entirely neurotypical for all I know - just reflecting on the parallels with my experience.)

I grew up a bit, ended up reading second-wave feminist texts in my mid-teens, and eventually figured out that I wasn't the protagonist of Life surrounded by NPCs, and that everyone else was just as complex on the inside as I was. No lasting harm done.

Jesus. That brought on a migraine. I think it is the high pitched "Its all about meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Lopping healthy body parts off kids & putting rapists in womens prisons aside, i find the po paced lack of humour around gender bollocks to be one of its least attractive features.

Yep.

It's fairly harmless to waffle on about gender, and if someone is actually talking about gender and not confusing it with sex then it's not anything other than perhaps self indulgent.

I say this. I can't bring myself to read the article, so I may be wrong.

Seconding all of this.