The Politics of Scale
I’ve talked about scale before. Yet, the thrust on that day was the impressive math skills of Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. In that case, somehow dozens had turned into millions and millions had turned into billions. I suppose we can call that the politics of hyperbole or exaggeration. Numbers are confusing you know. They tend to point to facts and facts are so useless when you are crafting an alternative narrative.
In this case we have seen two news stories that are obviously related. First, Ken Paxton has launched yet another investigation into Texas Children’s Hospital. This is not the first time. It’s usually at this point where we would remind the studio audience that gender affirming care is not illegal in Texas…yet. However, that is about to change. We can easily go down the rabbit hole and debate this issue back and forth. I suspect that most of the readers here are on the same side. Why is the party of “personal responsibility” and civil liberty somehow in favor of taking away autonomy and limiting freedom? It’s obvious that the GOP is no longer conservative in any traditional sense.
Yet, that’s not the question for today. The question for today is why we are even bothering in the first place. Lost in the maze of cruelty, drastic overreach, and religious zealousness is the fact that this impacts so few people. I have been on my current campus for nine years. We graduate between 300 and 400 students every year. That’s eight graduating classes (the first year we only had up to 11th grade). We have three more classes right now of the same size. Basic math tells me that we have had between 3500 and 4500 students roll through this campus. Let’s make it an even 4000. I know of only a handful of students that have been openly transitioning. That’s one hand. That’s 0.1 percent of the students that have rolled through this campus. I have no idea if we are indicative of the entire population or not, but I can’t imagine it is that different.
I will grant that there are any number of students that are privately grappling with their identity. Obviously, the state of Texas and those that govern it aren’t helping. Still, we aren’t talking about a lot of people. It’s the same thing as those conservatives that want to fondle girls because they want to make sure that some girls are actually girls when playing sports. Beyond the abject horror of these ideas is the extreme impracticality of it all. Are you to tell me that there is nothing else going on Texas or your state that you need to spend time on this? How many girls are we talking about here? My daughter played junior volleyball from the age of ten to the age of 15. I counted one boy that played and no one cared.
The cruelty is the goal. It’s a feature and not a bug. Beyond that is the ridiculousness of it all. We aren’t solving problems. We are inventing them. There isn’t a whole hoard of boys dressing up like girls and going into the girls bathroom. There isn’t a hoard of girls dressing like boys and going into the boys bathroom. Of course, no one has a problem with that for some reason. I don’t know anyone that has even seen a drag queen story hour being advertised much less attended one. Yet, this is what we spend time on. These have become our legislative priorities.
They have also become the battle lines we fight with family and friends over. We don’t fight over whether we should keep our democracy. We don’t fight nearly enough over military grade weapons killing our kids. We don’t fight to save the environment, pass true educational reform, overhaul the health insurance system, or combat the wealth gap. Nope. We fight over stuff that affects less than one percent of the population. Don’t get me wrong. We all know people we love and respect that deserve to be protected. They deserve to be themselves. They deserve their dignity. Sadly, many don’t agree. However, what we can all agree on is that government shouldn’t be spending time on any of this. Whether you think a girl should become a boy or vice versa is certainly a personal preference. Spending valuable time and resources litigating this in the public sphere is just proof the GOP isn’t serious about addressing any actual problems
The GOP has no comprehension of what a trans person goes through. I know two adults who have transitioned, one thought he would but then changed his mind, and one late teen who is on the path. These people go through YEARS with a psychologist, along with a medical doctor, to be sure this is really what they want; it’s not in any way a quick path. If our GOP overlords spent even a tenth of the time these folks have with a psychologist to help them understand themselves — well, we would have a much different GOP.
1Like a lot of things in the far right sphere, transgender rights is a popular topic that gets their voters all riled up. Whether it’s Texas or Florida or in a lot of other areas (check out local suburban school boards), it’s a way to trigger small minded R voters. I was pleasantly surprised this election season around here where conservative school board candidates that were all hot and bothered about anything like transgender rights, LGBTQ and BLM symbols, school curriculums and books were soundly defeated. Many of these candidates were previously voted in. Maybe there’s hope.
2The NSGOP has always been the party of “Do as I say, not as I do,” never the party of personal responsibility. Well, that’s not exactly true. They’ve been the party of responsibility for thee, but not for me. Obeying the law and being a decent person, well, that takes a lot out of a man.
Besides, it’s hard keeping that mask on all the time. One would have hoped that the mask would have attached itself permanently to the face, but those people have shown time after time that they’re coated with Teflon. Let us hope that the Teflon eventually wears off.
3AMEN!
4We need to up our narrative. We need to redirect the conversation to the thousands of kids who are killed in school shootings. And just keep hammering that home.
5This is why Pat Buchanon declared the “culture war” during the 1992 GOP convention. It wasn’t to benefit anyone, it was to distract from the real issues at hand.
If someone is riled up about a minority of a minority, then they are less likely to be riled about the fact that they don’t have universal health coverage.
If someone is riled up about LGBTQ themed books, then they are less likely to be riled up that the wealthy keep getting all these tax cuts while their own sales and property taxes keep going up.
If someone is riled up about CRT, then they are less likely to care that children are being massacred by military style weapons of destruction.
6Anything that threatens the White patriarchy, even in a small way, is unbearable to them. Women using contraception & getting abortions: Dangerous heresy! Gays and trans people being accepted as a normal part of society: even more Threatening! Children learning facts about the world they live in, facts at odds with White Christian Nationalism? Rev up the HateMachine to 11!
No matter what they do, the rich white guys are going to be engulfed by human diversity: women, gays, trans, other races want a say in running the world!!!!! Even the rights of other animal life on Earth will be given as much validity as that of wealthy white men! (Oh the humanity!)
So they’re turning to fascism… after all, look how well it worked for Hitler and the Germans, Italians. Oh wait. It didn’t work. Huh. Try, try again I guess.
7The GOP have over-stepped themselves on a woman’s right to make own private health decisions with a physician, the rights of parents to provide medical care for a child who is transitioning and limiting the medical treatment that physicians can provide. Has anyone filed legal suit against these morons? How are politicians/lawmakers legally qualified to make medical decisions for anyone? These decisions can only be made by a licensed physician with the patient and as needed, with the parents of a juvenile.
8I can remember a time when people were alarmed that such a slight girl (me) who could climb damn near anything, ride horses and run like a deer was publicly shamed even by strangers for such athleticism. Back then there weren’t any female athletes in the newspaper and certainly not on the radio. And, no, TV in the livng room was in its infancy with exceptionally small screens. It seems that I wasn’t conceding to anyone and everyone’s idea of what a girl could or should do and was considered strange. Get that? Strange! I was seriously aware of how boys could do any damn thing they wanted, good or bad, and were simply considered “boys”. Not one of them got the observations laid on me. Did I ever want to be a boy? No, simply because I had no idea of how to really become one, so I let that fluttering idea go. And I still tended towards athleticism, just like my dear and favorite aunt who was a champion swimmer, bowler, etc. etc. and it didn’t hurt her life one damn bit. No, she never once wished herself to be a boy. You see, she had brothers and after living with them growing up decided she was damn lucky to be who she was. My best wishes to all the kids out there who are dealing with their identities. Best of luck to them all!
9I am going to make everybody else mad, but as holder of a degree in English literature and repository of a lifetime’s reading of history and ethnology, the idea that young people ‘know’ what gender they are is bollocks.
There is no grounds for supposing that people follow fashions in sexuality any less than they do in shoes, religion or careers.
It should not be necessary to point this out to people who argue that sex categories are not organically determined but are social constructs.
10That doesn’t make me mad Harry. I suppose my point was that government has better things to do than legislating this issue. If I am unqualified to determine my own gender identity then why would we expect the government to have the wisdom to determine this?
The fact is that gender reassignment is a long and difficult process. You don’t waddle into your doctor on a Friday and then walk out on Monday transformed. You see a ton of mental health professionals and health care professionals before even beginning the process. As long as there is an established process within the medical community and people follow that process then the government really shouldn’t get involved.
11We don’t even trust people that age to use TikTok.
And if gender identity is a social construct (I agree with the libs about that), then what’s with the puberty blockers?
The confusion about this issue is profound, on all sides.
12The solution is simple but not easy. I’m not qualified to tell a child or a family what is right or wrong. I think doctors are. Psychiatrists and psychologists are. The child’s parents are more qualified than any of us. That includes the mostly old white guys in Austin.
I get the urge to protect children from a potentially irreversible course that could make them miserable. The thing is that not allowing them to transition could also make them miserable. The AMA and pediatric organizations have protocols and processes laid out for this that’s based on medical research, best practices, and expert opinions that have been vetted by other experts. Perfect? No. Nothing is. However, it’s a damn sight better than some jackass with a law degree, business degree, or no expertise at all making sweeping decisions for all children.
13Remember the Amirault case? I sure do. Liberal experts all over that one.
The ‘tell’ — as we call it nowadays — that we’re in a panic is the claim that children as young as 4 years are capable of understanding that their real sexuality is different from the one assigned based on physical traits four years earlier.
When my grandson was 4, he was sure he was Batman, but he wasn’t really.
The other tell is NPR. If you are right that the rate of — what shall we call it? gender dissatisfaction? — is around 0.1%, then the proportion of trans people in NPR’s interview subjects is 8 or 9 sigmas unlikely.
14I’ll repeat myself until I’m heard and understood. Families in concert with medical doctors and mental health professionals are best equipped to make these decisions. Period. That goes for conservatives that want to bar these kids from getting it done or so-called liberals that want everyone to do it that wants to.
I don’t know how many of these so called liberals exist. I think it’s a straw man that helps ease the conscience of conservatives. These people don’t exist in large proportion but we will act like it’s some kind of widespread movement so our holy crusade has some deeper meaning.
99 percent of parents want what’s best for their children. They want their children to be happy. The other one percent can be divided into parents that might mistakenly think it’s a phase and that rare one in a million parent that will shove this on their kid. However, let’s consider this. Not only would the parents have to force this on a kid, but a medical doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist, and probably more than that would have to do the same. What are the odds? So instead of trusting all of those people we will trust a bunch of old white guys that have no expertise and have never met the child to decide for them. Does this honestly make sense?
15I say both sides are deluded.
16Um, I don’t really have much to add here, so I’ll just toss in a bit of an anicdote. My DIL has taken my grandkids to a drag book reading or two, everyone seems to have weathered it just fine. Oh! well! I almost forgot. When one of the grandboys was about 3, his sister, about 5, started taking dance classes. She got to wear a tutu, guess what, the boy wanted a tutu too too. So Mom gave him one, he apparently loved it. Wore it all over. No one ever said anything about it! And, well, that boy is about 6 now, doesn’t seem to be interested in tutus anymore and everyone’s just as happy as a buncha clams in a rug.
Also, I suppose it’s possable that I’m just ignorant or stubborn, but I don’t have any idea what Harry Eagar is trying to say here.
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