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[Photos © Daniel Tjongari]

participants persisted in their gender dysphoria, and the remaining 122 (87.8%) desisted.

82 (63.6%) of the participants were ascertained to be bisexual or gay and 43 (33.3%) were heterosexual.

The study makes it clear that this dates back a bit.

The authors noted that the boys in the study were seen “during a period of time when treatment recommendations, if such were made, often aimed to reduce the gender dysphoria between the child’s felt gender identity and biological sex.” Recommendations often included “psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, behavior therapy, group therapy, parent-counseling, and interventions in the naturalistic environment, such as encouragement of same-sex peer relations.”

In other words, back to a time when reasonably sensible policies were in place. Nowadays at the first whiff of so-called gender dysphoria the wretched teens are whisked off to a gender clinic, stuffed full of puberty blockers, and before they've even had time to think of their new girl-name they're on life-changing cross-sex hormones and possible surgery. Whereas if they'd just leave well alone the teens would grow up normally, as teens do.

It's a kind of law of medicalisation: give something a scientific-sounding name and a whole medical sub-speciality develops to deal with this new disease. So not feeling comfortable with your sex at puberty – possibly because you're gay, possibly because of the overwhelming pressure to conform to gender stereotypes pushed by social media, or possibly because that's just what it's like to be an adolescent – becomes "gender dysphoria". And medical treatments get developed, in the hands of specialists who are committed to forging a career in this exciting new field, and the treatments they develop tend to be based on powerful drug-based interventions, because that's what the medical model decrees. And off you go.

Put that together with the new pseudo-science of gender identity and you're in business.

Dearborn, Michigan, 1946. "Ford Rouge B-Building. Cars leaving assembly line." Ansco color transparency from the Ford Motor Co. photographic archives:

[Photo: Shorpy/Ford Motor Co. photographic archives]

own/”>doubled down:

Classy.

e BMJ:

Puberty blockers used to treat children aged 12 to 15 who have severe and persistent gender dysphoria had no significant effect on their psychological function, thoughts of self-harm, or body image, a study has found.

However, as expected, the children experienced reduced growth in height and bone strength by the time they finished their treatment at age 16.

So, no evidence of good effects, but plenty of evidence for some serious bad effects. And, as we've seen, once the puberty blockers are given, the course is set for the cross-sex hormone treatment. In practice it's a one-way street to transitioning.

From this BBC report:

The evidence for using puberty blocking drugs to treat young people struggling with their gender identity is "very low", an official review has found.

The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said existing studies of the drugs were small and "subject to bias and confounding". […]

The NICE evidence review looked at what impact puberty blockers had on gender dysphoria, mental health – such as depression, anger and anxiety – and quality of life.

NICE, which provides national guidance and advice to improve health and social care, said: "The quality of evidence for these outcomes was assessed as very low certainty." […]

NICE also reviewed the evidence base for gender-affirming hormones – sometimes known as cross-sex hormones.

These can be given to young people with gender dysphoria from age 16 in the NHS.

Oestrogen may be given to people who are registered or assigned male at birth, and testosterone to females, to start the development of the physical sex characteristics of the gender with which they identify.

The aim is to improve mental health, quality of life and body image.

The review found the evidence of clinical effectiveness and safety of gender-affirming hormones was also of "very low" quality.

"Any potential benefits of gender-affirming hormones must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria," NICE said.

Everything's out on the street, including the piano – and Lynn Albritton:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QPeChYPU_M&w=550&h=309]

A Soundie from 1943, with the Soundies Harlem Dancers.

All the talented Ms. Albritton has left to history are the three Soundies.

In Block Party Revels the situation seems to have developed nicely as everyone's having a good time out on the street, including Lynn herself, plus Billy and Ann, The Six Knobs [!], and The Harlem Cuties.

Backstage Blues features Lynn plus Lou Ellen and the Harlem Cuties.

All the while she demonstrates her particular talent for playing great boogie piano without ever looking at the keys.

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[Photos © Neil McDonald]

l people on the planet by Time magazine if he can get reputable news sources to report this nonsense with a straight face.

Oh, and look – here's another CNN report:

South Dakota's Republican Gov. Kristi Noem banned transgender girls and women from competing on women's sports teams at public high schools and colleges via a pair of executive orders issued Monday….

Though the two executive orders signed by Noem do not explicitly mention transgender athletes, they ​reference the supposed harms of the participation of "males" in women's athletics — an echo of the transphobic claim, cited in other similar legislative initiatives, that transgender women are not women. The orders also reference "biological sex," a disputed term that refers to the sex as listed on students' original birth certificates.

It's not possible to know a person's gender identity at birth, and for some people, the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have.

While sex is a category that refers broadly to physiology, a person's gender is an innate sense of identity. The factors that go into determining the sex listed on a person's birth certificate may include anatomy, genetics and hormones, and there is broad natural variation in each of these categories. For this reason, the language of "biological sex," as used in this legislation, can be overly simplistic and misleading.

Ring any bells? I think we've been here before. Dictated by Chase Strangio, no doubt.

"As trans people, we still very much live in a world where our existence is an act of resistance and our visibility is an act of bravery," said Carrie Davis, the chief community officer at The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth.

"In the face of such constant, vitriolic rhetoric and a record number of anti-trans bills, it is crucial to show up and show support for transgender and nonbinary youth year-round," she added.

The Human Rights Campaign, one of the nation's largest LGBTQ rights groups, also opposes Noem's orders, which they say are unconstitutional.

"These orders cannot withstand legal scrutiny," Alphonso David, the group's president, said in a statement. "Transgender kids are kids, and they deserve the right to live full lives free from abuse, stigmatization, and danger."

You'd think trans youths were being herded into fields and shot by rabid Republican madmen armed with machine guns, instead of, you know, attempts being made to preserve women's sport and safeguard vulnerable teenagers. It's just extraordinary.

CNN have farmed out their news reporting to trans activists. Some kind of cost-cutting exercise, perhaps.

On the water with Theodor Horydczak, ca. 1950. Screw-pile lighthouse on the Potomac River, Chesapeake Bay. Maryland. ""Water scenes. Boat in foreground, lighthouse in distance…" 

[Photo: Shorpy/Theodor Horydczak]

inviolable—the ACLU is no longer itself. The organization known as the ACLU is now led by people beholden to an ideology purporting that the essential function of the Constitution has been to serve as a blueprint for white supremacy, and that its broad free-speech protections are not a tool of emancipation for society’s underdogs but rather the handmaiden of their oppression.

To get an idea of where they are now, the ACLU's latest effort is to complain that Arkansas has "become the first state to ban health care for trans youth". What Arkansas has actually done, in fact, is to stop Arkansas youth from undergoing gender reassignment surgery or hormone supplements until they're 18 by passing the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act – an entirely praiseworthy move, taking a cue perhaps from the Keira Bell case here last autumn. So the ACLU are, basically, lying.

From the Glinner Update:

It's a sad decline.