I wonder how this will play out in industry and organizations (timely as we watched one of the original founders of La Leche League resign over the international breastfeeding support group’s kowtowing to males desires to breastfeed this past week)? Will the policy changes within these organizations and companies stand or just rot away as they realize they are “laggards” (what a word, btw!)?
I work at a large hospital system that is affiliated with an Ivy League medical school and I have to say that it feels the culture of transgender ideology is trickling downstream to how we operate more and more. I work on a mother baby floor as a nurse and even our charting systems have changed the word “breastmilk” to “human milk” where we got to chart a baby’s feeds. The resident doctors wear lanyards with the trans flag on it that hold their credentials. Managers have adopted “parent” instead of mother when leading meetings. When patients are admitted, there is a gender tab to fill out that literally has an “organ inventory” to fill out so we know what bits have been lopped off or not. I have all the hope in the world that the language of transgenderism will lag away into the ether but witnessing these things in a line of work that is specifically in service of women and babies is especially discouraging.
That all said, I do think the medical field is bound to be a laggard as this is the field that is profiting the most off of it. In addition to this, there seems to be a strange Stockholm Syndrome-esque affinity that many, many women who work in birth work and lactation support have for the cause.
I’m also a maternal-child nurse. I work exclusively with low-income, mostly black mothers in the home setting. When I started nearly a decade ago, we were all about talking about mothers. Now the words “mother,” and “breastfeeding,” have been replaced by “pregnant or birthing person,” the generic “parent or caregiver” and “chestfeeding.” No one but me says mother at work: from the newest to most seasoned nurse, saying mother is verboten. Our state-mandated data collection wants us to ask if a newborn is non-binary. I’d say the full transgender capture of medicine happened last—when I was in nursing school in 2012, we did not talk like this but one of classmates was a trans-identifying woman. But now everyone does. Like any hulking bureaucracy, change is slow and then all of a sudden and then it’s nearly impossible to change again. I imagine healthcare will hold onto this for dear life and there will be much more damage and destruction to come.
Wow. We have a similar timeline, I graduated in 2014 and have noticed the shift as well, and it has only gained momentum in the last 3-4 years I would say. Non-binary babies! What nonsense. Thank you for still saying “mother”.
A lot of my friends (ironically) are enthusiastic trans supporters, and it is becoming a financial liability rapidly, but they continue to do it because they are bound by ideology. People bound by profit motive don't tend to befriend me, because my utter impracticality frustrates them. These docs are honest-to-God, True Believers. They really think they will kill the kids if they don't affirm the trans identity, no matter how well adopting the trans identity fits borderline personality disorder, a PTSD-reaction to a sexual assault's acute change to their sense of invulnerability, or a screaming obvious case of Polycystic Ovaries that they ain't gonna treat before they affirm that gender. if I try to debate them, they will either complain to HR, shun me or do whatever the atheist equivalent of praying for my soul is. They aren't the enemy, the ideology is the enemy, they are just the pawns unable to conceive of a world outside of their views.
Wow. Have you written about your experience at work on your Substack and I’ve missed it? Really interesting point about medicine itself being the probable last holdout as it continues to financially benefit from transgender ideology.
Won’t go into detail because I think this might technically be a crime, but: I know or know of multiple self-described liberal/Democratic people who are in positions of hiring, either as recruiters or senior managers etc, different industries, who have told me privately they immediately throw away resumes that have pronouns listed. I think they regard it as a red flag that the job candidate may cause problems or be difficult to work with, like instead of coming to work and doing the job they might try to subject the office to some weird moral reformation project and just be a lot of drama. It’s interesting because when I was a consultant for a well-known software consultancy a few years ago, we were strongly encouraged (basically required) to include pronouns in our email signature. This is all anecdotal obviously, but it makes me wonder how much under-the-surface shifting of attitudes has already been going on.
did you see James Carville's rant on the younger Gen Z staffers? It's epic, and it reflects exactly what you are saying. I do not endorse _Carville's language or precise attitude, but this is an influential Democrat who was critical to several election victories: https://youtube.com/shorts/yuC_Y7_kEZk?feature=shared
I respectfully disagree. While the rise of transgenderism may bear a resemblance to fashion, it goes much deeper than the color of a sweater. It’s based on a monstrous lie, a lie that has captured the allegiance of many institutions as well as rank and file supporters. It will not be so easy for them to crabwalk away from this lie.
It’s a bit more complicated than changing sweaters. A great many people will have to admit — either publicly or to even just themselves — that they not only swallowed this lie, but propagated it. A more likely response is doubling down, which is what the theory of cognitive dissonance predicts.
I am not claiming that I can predict the future. But there really is no historic precedent for the phenomenon of transgenderism and its swift capture of institutions. The future is uncertain, and to the extent that a will make a prediction, it’s
I have gotten more likes for this than anything else I have posted. And I think it’s aging well. Just look at how the Democrats are doubling down on trans insanity.
Child psychiatrists, and we are certainly NOT hot, have not received this memo. Our industry is continuing to transition teens, ask pronouns, badger parents into accepting the ideology because they are utterly convinced this is the only way to save their lives... and because the maternalization of the field has reached a point of excess, they cannot bear to cause distress to a kid by not giving them what they want when they want it. There is no slowing them down, and they remain as overconfident as ever.
Good piece, and I agree with the gist of it. But on the other side, just as it took years/decades for trans ideas to move from academia to mainstream institutions, I imagine it could take a similar length of time for those ideas to be abandoned. In fact it may take longer. Throwing away a dodgy sweater is one thing. It's much harder to admit you were completely wrong about an issue like this. Plus, now that institutions and bureaucracies have spent years embedding these ideas in their systems - procedures, documentation, HR policies etc. - it's unlikely to be easy to extricate them.
The vibe may be moving elsewhere but the hard work of combatting institutional capture is far from finished. Late adopters often cling tightly onto a fashion, and the same will be true of the corporate adopters of transgenderism. And because the new thing that’s happening in the discourse (I think Louise is right that race isn’t going anywhere in progressive discourse) will be more exciting, those doing the unglamorous work of getting hospitals to provide women only changing rooms, or schools to stop pronouning, or sports bodies to adopt open categories — this will seem boring and last year, like a frumpy jumper.
What's interesting to me is those of us that refused to jump on the trans bandwagon would have been labeled laggards, only for the AOCs of the world to see how many of us there were, and adopt our ideas. Such is the cycle.
I still know women who refuse to shop at Target because they started selling chest binders and tuck friendly bathing suits. The pulled those products pretty quickly off the racks when it hit their bottom line.
What a well-written article! Very thought-provoking. Thank you!
I had to smile at “some tragic casual corner” in the Miranda Priestly quote. Casual Corner was a retail women’s clothing store in America years ago. My sister worked at one in our local mall here in the midwest, in the 1980’s. 🤓
The (un) hype cycle I studied a while back was teenage girls -> gay men -> women / straight men -> boys
The visible charismatic people complaining are sports girls, whom many cheer for as underdogs. Who won’t supports girls swimming or women’s volleyball
When GLB organizations are announced you know it’s at stage 2, or will be hypermasculine fashion and emphasis on hot masculinity
When institutions remove female-demeaning terms, then watch for stage 3, where us of the term gender, pronouns are gone and you will hear the term “celebrating motherhood”. Emphasis on lesbian cool, and sex realism becomes part of feminism
Men will come out stronger than the current lukewarm woshywashy and declare women are women in their lives
When boys, particularly gay boys say “that’s so trans” it’s over.
I believe you are correct in your analysis. The tsunami of transgenderism hit the cultural shores with incredible impact, now its drawdown leaves the destruction for us to rebuild and heal. “It was never true” is true about many things today. So sad.
Marxism is over. But it's also not. It's still pervasive in educational institutions (ironically more common outside economic departments). It's still present in counter cultural signaling (punk bands, street fashion, bluesky bios).
Besides the poor transitioners are the women and girls whose sports careers were ruined, or whose time in prison included assaults who are damaged - sometimes beyond repair. A scholarship missed is just that. One real victim of this will be all media who refused to be honest about those damages, or the poor excuse of bogus scientific "research" that proved nothing. We will not trust them again.
I wonder how this will play out in industry and organizations (timely as we watched one of the original founders of La Leche League resign over the international breastfeeding support group’s kowtowing to males desires to breastfeed this past week)? Will the policy changes within these organizations and companies stand or just rot away as they realize they are “laggards” (what a word, btw!)?
I work at a large hospital system that is affiliated with an Ivy League medical school and I have to say that it feels the culture of transgender ideology is trickling downstream to how we operate more and more. I work on a mother baby floor as a nurse and even our charting systems have changed the word “breastmilk” to “human milk” where we got to chart a baby’s feeds. The resident doctors wear lanyards with the trans flag on it that hold their credentials. Managers have adopted “parent” instead of mother when leading meetings. When patients are admitted, there is a gender tab to fill out that literally has an “organ inventory” to fill out so we know what bits have been lopped off or not. I have all the hope in the world that the language of transgenderism will lag away into the ether but witnessing these things in a line of work that is specifically in service of women and babies is especially discouraging.
That all said, I do think the medical field is bound to be a laggard as this is the field that is profiting the most off of it. In addition to this, there seems to be a strange Stockholm Syndrome-esque affinity that many, many women who work in birth work and lactation support have for the cause.
I’m also a maternal-child nurse. I work exclusively with low-income, mostly black mothers in the home setting. When I started nearly a decade ago, we were all about talking about mothers. Now the words “mother,” and “breastfeeding,” have been replaced by “pregnant or birthing person,” the generic “parent or caregiver” and “chestfeeding.” No one but me says mother at work: from the newest to most seasoned nurse, saying mother is verboten. Our state-mandated data collection wants us to ask if a newborn is non-binary. I’d say the full transgender capture of medicine happened last—when I was in nursing school in 2012, we did not talk like this but one of classmates was a trans-identifying woman. But now everyone does. Like any hulking bureaucracy, change is slow and then all of a sudden and then it’s nearly impossible to change again. I imagine healthcare will hold onto this for dear life and there will be much more damage and destruction to come.
Wow. We have a similar timeline, I graduated in 2014 and have noticed the shift as well, and it has only gained momentum in the last 3-4 years I would say. Non-binary babies! What nonsense. Thank you for still saying “mother”.
A lot of my friends (ironically) are enthusiastic trans supporters, and it is becoming a financial liability rapidly, but they continue to do it because they are bound by ideology. People bound by profit motive don't tend to befriend me, because my utter impracticality frustrates them. These docs are honest-to-God, True Believers. They really think they will kill the kids if they don't affirm the trans identity, no matter how well adopting the trans identity fits borderline personality disorder, a PTSD-reaction to a sexual assault's acute change to their sense of invulnerability, or a screaming obvious case of Polycystic Ovaries that they ain't gonna treat before they affirm that gender. if I try to debate them, they will either complain to HR, shun me or do whatever the atheist equivalent of praying for my soul is. They aren't the enemy, the ideology is the enemy, they are just the pawns unable to conceive of a world outside of their views.
Wow. Have you written about your experience at work on your Substack and I’ve missed it? Really interesting point about medicine itself being the probable last holdout as it continues to financially benefit from transgender ideology.
I have not yet! It is one of my many drafts begging for my attention 😂 I do plan to though.
Won’t go into detail because I think this might technically be a crime, but: I know or know of multiple self-described liberal/Democratic people who are in positions of hiring, either as recruiters or senior managers etc, different industries, who have told me privately they immediately throw away resumes that have pronouns listed. I think they regard it as a red flag that the job candidate may cause problems or be difficult to work with, like instead of coming to work and doing the job they might try to subject the office to some weird moral reformation project and just be a lot of drama. It’s interesting because when I was a consultant for a well-known software consultancy a few years ago, we were strongly encouraged (basically required) to include pronouns in our email signature. This is all anecdotal obviously, but it makes me wonder how much under-the-surface shifting of attitudes has already been going on.
did you see James Carville's rant on the younger Gen Z staffers? It's epic, and it reflects exactly what you are saying. I do not endorse _Carville's language or precise attitude, but this is an influential Democrat who was critical to several election victories: https://youtube.com/shorts/yuC_Y7_kEZk?feature=shared
I respectfully disagree. While the rise of transgenderism may bear a resemblance to fashion, it goes much deeper than the color of a sweater. It’s based on a monstrous lie, a lie that has captured the allegiance of many institutions as well as rank and file supporters. It will not be so easy for them to crabwalk away from this lie.
It’s a bit more complicated than changing sweaters. A great many people will have to admit — either publicly or to even just themselves — that they not only swallowed this lie, but propagated it. A more likely response is doubling down, which is what the theory of cognitive dissonance predicts.
I am not claiming that I can predict the future. But there really is no historic precedent for the phenomenon of transgenderism and its swift capture of institutions. The future is uncertain, and to the extent that a will make a prediction, it’s
that any retreat will be a bump ride.
sadly, I believe your analysis will prove to be correct. So much more work to do to stamp out this first modern mind virus pandemic.
I have gotten more likes for this than anything else I have posted. And I think it’s aging well. Just look at how the Democrats are doubling down on trans insanity.
Child psychiatrists, and we are certainly NOT hot, have not received this memo. Our industry is continuing to transition teens, ask pronouns, badger parents into accepting the ideology because they are utterly convinced this is the only way to save their lives... and because the maternalization of the field has reached a point of excess, they cannot bear to cause distress to a kid by not giving them what they want when they want it. There is no slowing them down, and they remain as overconfident as ever.
I just want this madness to end
Good piece, and I agree with the gist of it. But on the other side, just as it took years/decades for trans ideas to move from academia to mainstream institutions, I imagine it could take a similar length of time for those ideas to be abandoned. In fact it may take longer. Throwing away a dodgy sweater is one thing. It's much harder to admit you were completely wrong about an issue like this. Plus, now that institutions and bureaucracies have spent years embedding these ideas in their systems - procedures, documentation, HR policies etc. - it's unlikely to be easy to extricate them.
The vibe may be moving elsewhere but the hard work of combatting institutional capture is far from finished. Late adopters often cling tightly onto a fashion, and the same will be true of the corporate adopters of transgenderism. And because the new thing that’s happening in the discourse (I think Louise is right that race isn’t going anywhere in progressive discourse) will be more exciting, those doing the unglamorous work of getting hospitals to provide women only changing rooms, or schools to stop pronouning, or sports bodies to adopt open categories — this will seem boring and last year, like a frumpy jumper.
What's interesting to me is those of us that refused to jump on the trans bandwagon would have been labeled laggards, only for the AOCs of the world to see how many of us there were, and adopt our ideas. Such is the cycle.
I still know women who refuse to shop at Target because they started selling chest binders and tuck friendly bathing suits. The pulled those products pretty quickly off the racks when it hit their bottom line.
What a well-written article! Very thought-provoking. Thank you!
I had to smile at “some tragic casual corner” in the Miranda Priestly quote. Casual Corner was a retail women’s clothing store in America years ago. My sister worked at one in our local mall here in the midwest, in the 1980’s. 🤓
This needs to go viral BEFORE the hot women (of the sub species AWFLs, in this case) successfully memory hole their Trans dalliances.
The masses must not be allowed to forget what the likes of the AOC AWFLs were pushing once upon a time.
Lord deliver us all, especially the mentally weak, from their next political "fashion".
Excellent article and smart, exact.
The (un) hype cycle I studied a while back was teenage girls -> gay men -> women / straight men -> boys
The visible charismatic people complaining are sports girls, whom many cheer for as underdogs. Who won’t supports girls swimming or women’s volleyball
When GLB organizations are announced you know it’s at stage 2, or will be hypermasculine fashion and emphasis on hot masculinity
When institutions remove female-demeaning terms, then watch for stage 3, where us of the term gender, pronouns are gone and you will hear the term “celebrating motherhood”. Emphasis on lesbian cool, and sex realism becomes part of feminism
Men will come out stronger than the current lukewarm woshywashy and declare women are women in their lives
When boys, particularly gay boys say “that’s so trans” it’s over.
I believe you are correct in your analysis. The tsunami of transgenderism hit the cultural shores with incredible impact, now its drawdown leaves the destruction for us to rebuild and heal. “It was never true” is true about many things today. So sad.
Maybe?
Marxism is over. But it's also not. It's still pervasive in educational institutions (ironically more common outside economic departments). It's still present in counter cultural signaling (punk bands, street fashion, bluesky bios).
Besides the poor transitioners are the women and girls whose sports careers were ruined, or whose time in prison included assaults who are damaged - sometimes beyond repair. A scholarship missed is just that. One real victim of this will be all media who refused to be honest about those damages, or the poor excuse of bogus scientific "research" that proved nothing. We will not trust them again.
Brilliantly written