Helen Lewis in the Atlantic - Gender medecine and the suicide lie

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/transgender-youth-skrmetti/683350/

Archive

https://archive.ph/qDisi

'Trans-rights activists like to accuse skeptics of youth gender medicine—and publications that dare to report their views—of fomenting a “<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/qDisi/theflaw.org/articles/profiting-from-moral-panic/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">moral panic.” But the movement has spent the past decade telling gender-nonconforming children that anyone who tries to restrict access to puberty blockers and hormones is, effectively, trying to kill them. This was false, as Strangio’s answer tacitly conceded. It was also irresponsible.'

I've often seem posts like the above, but, touch wood, arch.ph has always worked for me, on my lap-top. Just tried that Washpo link and it worked fine.

Thanks everyone, it worked on my laptop!

Hislop’s reply to Linehan’s over the years casts Hislop as brittle and dismissive to Linehan’s ineloquent frustrated emails but I have never grasped why? Parents of transitioners in close circle ? Hislop was disdainfully uninterested

The ironic thing is that TRAs have always hated her as much as JKR or any of us. They don’t do it by degrees. She’s as much of a TERF to them as KJK.

Yes, HL gets criticised from all sides, and i think that's why i find her carefulness with words and 'small sips' way of writing so understandable and even appealling. I try to tread the same kind of tightrope... internally i'm ENRAGED by the last ten years, but externally i manage my language and feelings carefully in an attempt to persuade people slowly (not that i don't think there's a very important place for shouting in rage: agree re the overton window).

I think/hope that this is a space where we can hold each other to account in some way but also acknowledge that there are different roles people can play, and with different shades.

<Waves to Helen>

https://helenlewis.substack.com/p/the-bluestocking-375-evita-skrmetti

Oof, she really doesn't like that Evita. No fence-sitting there... (:

If Helen is reading this thread, I just want to say that I am looking forward to reading the 'Genius Myth'.

Well, now I feel bad. I wouldn't have imagined HL was reading, tbh.

It's wasn't so much bravery, and certainly not fieryness, that I was lamenting the lack of, but clarity. I'm not interested in a tribal or a trenchant position, I just want honesty and truth, that's all. And the piece that I quote in the OP frustrates me because it leaves out important parts of the argument.

However, if one is aiming for a centrist position then one will piss people off on both sides, pretty much by definition.

I understand why you may feel dismayed but I don’t believe your criticism of HL was of a nasty personal nature. You spoke about her writing/speaking, and what you know of her personal philosophy, and the elements of disagreement that you have with those things.

Wasn’t HL vilified by trans activists online many years ago? I’ve heard her refer to it since, she references it in her book about feminism and cites it as a reason for her caution in writing about it now. She is certainly hated by TRA’s and on numerous blocklists on Bluesky, as are anyone who follows her (me) for her perceived ‘transphobia’.

I admire her for trying to write dispassionately about something which attracts for too much heat. And as others have said, if it helps provide an off-ramp for people who need to change their minds then it can only be positive.