Jamie Reed is a gay, 42 year old Missouri woman married to a transgender female. Her situation seems to me barely distinguishable from that of a conventional heterosexual woman who likes men. But my intrigue with her complicated orientation is beside the point. She is entitled to love whom she will. No doubt convinced that most “conservatives” are intolerant monsters, she is decidedly to the political Left. But she is also an intelligent woman unwilling to participate in the Left’s seeming compulsion to mindlessly support the more inane machinations of every minority claiming to be a victim of oppression. Hence her decision to leave her job at the Transgender Center in St. Louis’ Children’s Hospital, claiming it was devoted less to the welfare of the kids in its care than to the politics of transgender activists. Her recent article in The Free Press explains her position.
Whereas until recently the hospital would receive approximately 10 calls per month from parents concerned with the gender confusion of their kids, that number, Reed says, has now risen to 50 or so. Her concern is that this trend is less a matter of need than of the propaganda being spewed by transgender activists. Quite aside from radical surgeries, doses of testosterone and estrogen can apparently have dire side effects. But while there may be any number of explanations for the psychological problems of the young kids in their care, the doctors at her clinic, she says, resort to sheer speculation, engaging in radical hormonal and surgical gender-altering procedures with reckless abandon, an abandon utterly inconsistent with their role as doctors. It is a an ideologically contaminated situation with which she no longer wishes to be associated.
At a Jan. 11 meeting of the city council in Santee City, California, 17 yr. old Rebecca Philips described her horror upon emerging from a shower in the girl’s locker room of the local Y, only to be confronted by an obvious male just a few feet away. Admitting she only saw him from behind, she immediately fled back into her shower. The individual in question is one Christynne Wood who came out as a transgender woman several years ago and was surgically altered in 2021. In “progressive” California, those of his/her identity are legally entitled to be treated as the gender of their choosing. But I challenge anyone of a rational perspective to watch the video of Wood defending his presence in that locker room and not admit that, whatever his gender-altering procedures, he looks like a fairly burly, well-muscled Black man with a voice to match! You see, while the Left loves to celebrate its devotion to science and facts, it utterly ignores such mandates when they do not support its devotion to the “oppressed.” Individuals born Male do not become Females by simply submitting themselves to certain procedures. This is a Biological Fact! The Santee City Y, I must admit, has reacted rationally, stating that it will in future seek to provide separate spaces for transgenders which will spare girls such as Rebecca their profound discomfort.
As reported on Fox News in mid Dec., lesbian Norwegian filmmaker Tonje Gjevjon was facing the criminal charge of hate speech in her homeland for having stated publicly that individuals born with penises cannot be lesbians. A typical Facebook posting read: “It’s just as impossible for men to become a lesbian, as it is for men to become pregnant.” She who roused her sense of indignation, apparently, is trans activist Christine Jentoft who, while born Male, now identifies as a Lesbian Female. Tonje’s argument is clearly that he/she is just a dysfunctional Man who continues to love Women! Informed on Nov. 17 that she could face up to 3 years in prison for breaking Norway’s hate speech laws, she has become a staunch critic of what she sees as her country’s absurd submission to a self-centered minority with no respect whatsoever for the formerly sacred Democratic Principle of Free Speech! Hers is a dilemma shared by millions throughout the Western World who dare not disagree, however rationally, with anything spewed by a designated oppressed minority, however questionable its agenda. While Tonje’s status as a lesbian makes her eminently defensible to “progressives” in any confrontation with the patriarchal majority, lesbians far outnumber transgenders who are therefore automatically granted greater empathy from those on the Left who subscribe to the ludicrous principle that underdogs are always right.
In my blog of Feb. 4, I cited a Globe and Mail newspaper article by Caroline Alphonso in which she ranted against the hateful rhetoric being leveled at transgenders by populist bigots. The Ron DeSantis piece of legislation forbidding the introduction of gender politics into the classes of kids 5 to 8 was among her targets. Yet The Blaze reported on Feb. 12 that two respected Florida medical boards, after conducting extensive research on the issue, concurred with a Nov. ruling which banned the application of puberty blockers and other such radical hormonal treatments to anyone in the state under the age of 18. Such treatments, they concluded, when imposed on confused adolescents, often resulted in more harm than good.
So we have legitimate medical experts along with two gay women, one of whom is in fact married to a former male, taking exception to what they see as the self-serving, unscientific and often harmful aspects of transgender activism. If you are of the opinion that such criticisms are, in the idiom of the Left, no more than veiled expressions of Hate, you are perhaps beyond the reach of Reason.
And oh, by the way, if you don’t think there are men out there who will feign crossing over so as to gain access to locker rooms filled with beautiful young girls such as Rebecca Philips, you might want to add pathological naivete to your list of personal shortcomings.