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Pitiful little collection of transphobes outnumbered by cops, photographers across from Children's, and never mind all the people supporting the hospital across the street
By adamg on Sun, 09/18/2022 - 1:07pm
James Meickle took a gander at the little knot of transphobes standing on Longwood Avenue across from Children's Hospital this morning. He reports:
Today's fascist transphobe protest at Boston Children's is outnumbered at least fivefold - and that's counting the cops protecting them.
The transphobe's numbers, of course, were reduced when one of them was arrested Thursday on charges she called in a bomb threat to the hospital last month. She was released on personal recognizance on Friday, but ordered to stay away from Children's Hospital, and to wear a GPS device to make sure she complies.
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Comments
love to see it
love to see it
too stupid for words
Such a waste of a beautiful day.
Searching for purpose in all the wrong ways
I can believe that these folks believe their complaints, criticisms and concerns are valid and legitimate. As far as I know now are running for a political positions and so having to perform for votes. So unless they are paid protestors then I figure they are genuine in their beliefs in this context.
What gives the beliefs validity and legitimacy? Purpose. Somehow they learned, were taught, bought into the idea that what they perceive as happening helps to fill their sense of purpose in life. Same e the everyday person who calls themself Evangelical. I exclude from this sense the leaders of Evangelicals who are performers and taint their claims of belief with the lusts for prestige, fame and power.
Yet in fulfilling their purpose they are doing wrong and causing harm.
Is purpose in life something that originates from the individual? Is it a quality that is put into the individual? I'd argue it is both nurture and nature. No one can change the nature part except for the individual themself (a term that really sounds clunky but I'm trying to avoid even clunkier inclusive pronouns). But the nurture part - we all get to play in that domain.
So to me the larger question is what in our larger and smaller societies, in communities both geographical and social, gives either helpful or harmful direction to life purpose? Whatever the answers, I believe that these folks are still looking in harmful directions to fulfill their needs for life purpose.
Spectacular Failure
These people seem to have forgotten that minding their own goddamn business is a traditional value.
Maybe someone should mark up their medical files and ask the internet about any medical decision they need to make?
What really pisses me off is that they completely ignore the issue that their transphobia swells to encompass the difficult decisions imposed by nature on the bodies of intersex children - people who already have difficulty navigating the medical system to maintain their bodies as nature made them or get support for their decisions as they themselves choose them.
Gee, Swirls!
If only you got in Billboard Chris' face at this protest.
Like I did.
Good for you!
Nice work.
Link
https://twitter.com/wtfdic_hour/status/1571530897371074566
Are you
The guy that was on turtleboy?
No, I’m
the guy who got Turtleboy kicked off PayPal, Fundrazr and GoFundMe. I’m also someone that little racist ferret lives in abject fear of.
Thank you.
You know what perpetuates it?
People such as yourself who suggest that there's any point whatsoever to trying to listen to or understand these folks perpetuate and legitimize these terrorists. They're transphobes, and their only motivation is harassing and terrorizing people who are trans. The only appropriate response to transphobes and their enablers is to name them as transphobes and tell them their behavior and views are unacceptable. If your response is anything else, you're enabling and legitimizing them, and I suggest you think about why that is.
Given the threats...
...and the fact that the crazy woman from Westfield was certainly not the only one making them, I hope that the appropriate authorities are taking careful note of who's showing up at this display of jackassery.
Local ones are not, unfortunately
Various antifascist groups have been identifying these folks in footage, following their organizing efforts, and are filing frequent reports. They're focusing on communicating with the FBI, since there's a tiny chance the FBI may make the obvious connection that these are people who are making threats and terrorizing families and healthcare providers. (I'm a frequent recipient of their communications, as are many of my colleagues who provide healthcare to trans youth or defend families of trans kids in court.) BPD has typically done absolutely nothing, won't take reports, maintains that no crime has occurred*, and has no interest in intelligence regarding patterns associated with hate crimes and terrorists. "They have just as much right to their views as you do" and similar bullshit, because, you know, supporting children is exactly the same as stalking children and healthcare providers. Oh, and also, it's of course not a coincidence that large numbers of cops share the same far-right fascist views.
*The transphobes have readily admitted to filing false child welfare reports and false license complaints against providers, which is a crime, but these activities are extremely protected in this state as long as the complainant maintains they believe that there are concerns about maltreatment
what's funnier still
Is that these people didn't give a shit about this "issue" or any of these long-standing legitimate medical practices until the interwebs people told them to be mad about it.
Video of event; anti child mutilation is not Transphobia
Being against the drugging and genital mutilation of mentality confused children is not "Transphobia."
Most of those who are against pediatric gender altering surgery think people as adults should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies.
https://twitter.com/BillboardChris/status/1571640306017124356
Fuck off, transphobe
And guess what: Boston
And guess what: Boston Children's Hospital doesn't do that. As you would know if you bothered to do a simple Google search. So whatever sources told you BCH (or anyone else) does gender affirmation surgery on minors, you now know they're lying to you. I trust that you will learn from this and ignore such garbage in the future.
65 mastectomies on minors
They did 65 mastectomies on minors as young as 15 between 2017 and 2020, proudly discussed in their own academic paper
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9000168/pdf/jcm-11-01943.pdf
Who's being lied to?
Ever hear of Gynecomastia?
Empathy case study 101: Danny
Your name is Danny. You are a 15 year old boy and you have always been a very male-identified truck and dirt and sports boy's boy.
But when you turned 14 you noticed some strange changes in your body - you started growing boobs! You screw up the courage to tell your parents, who bring you to the doctor.
The doctor explains that sometimes things don't go as planned in puberty, and you have what is called gynecomastia: breast-like tissue on a male chest.
The boobs keep growing. The doctor says they pose an outsized threat of breast cancer. Meanwhile, you are becoming very uncomfortable in the locker room and feel pressured to quit football, which you love.
The doctor sends you to a surgeon to correct the issue. But the surgeon says that you will have to wait until you are 18 because some people decided that your mastectomy classifies as "gender surgery on a minor" and she can go to jail if she helps you because some highly ignorant people are creating laws that control people's access to medical care. You could go to a state that has rejected these folks stupidity, but you'd have to pay for the surgery out of pocket. The nature of the problem makes a GoFundMe unlikely.
At home, things are getting worse. You are getting bullied and now some people in your town are emboldened by anti-trans laws and openly threaten to "neutralize that tranny freak" and burn down your house with your family in it.
This is the world that you want Deselby. You are the one that is lying.
read their own paper before you comment
SwirlyGrrl, you keep pushing this idea that the mastectomies and puberty blockers are mostly being given to the tiny tiny proportion of kids born intersex.
In the paper I cite above, CH's own gender surgery team says 90.7% of all the surgeries, top and bottom were done on identified "transmen." 95% had healthy bodies before surgery. Not men or boys with gynecomastia.
Your clinging to this story indicates to me you are uncomfortable with the reality of minors born female, with normal female bodies, being mutilated.
"tiny proportion"
Up to 2% of the population is a tiny proportion? Really?
Even if intervention is needed for a subset of these folks, it isn't a "tiny proportion".
You need a math class. You also need to stop throwing these children under the bus because their existence makes you uncomfortable.
3% of XX females carry genes that make them sensitive to their own testosterone. These people are overrepresented in transgender populations, as this sensitivity doesn't stop at the neck. If you are transitioning and your first dose of T results in a luxurious beard ... yeah, nature baby!
Ever hear of a freemartin? Or is that too much reality of diversity in nature for you to handle?
Go away phobic
I don't see you protesting circumcision.
Most pediatric "gender affirming" surgery and medication is done for the millions of children born with intersex conditions. Meaning that they aren't male or female. Talking about 2% of the population here. That includes children with both chromosomal variations and phenotypic nonbinary physical presentation (e.g. hypospadias)
But, hey, you never let your dumbass ignorance of science and reality get in your way on other topics so your dangerous and hateful stupidity here aren't terribly surprising.
"Transphobia"
Transphobia. An inaccurate label in most cases. "-phobia" being from the Greek for "fear of."
Few are afraid of people who wish to express a gender other than that of their biological sex as adults.
I remember back in the day the trans sex workers who would sometimes be arrested and in the Boston Municipal Court for your sex-for-fee or common nightwalker offenses. Sometimes minor larcenies or assaults. Nothing major. Usually brought in from around Bay Village. They were treated leniently by the likes of the late Judge Elijah Adlow and Judge Hershfang, albeit sometimes with some arch commentary.
Jacque's has been operating there for 50+ years without problems, freely entertaining people with diverse gender expressions. Nobody's afraid of it.
Who in Boston hasn't met the Hon. Althea Garrison, now celebrated as the first trans elected official in the USA? As far as I saw, she was a dedicated public servant during her one elected term as a State Representative in Dorchester and during her civil service career. Of course I've voted for her during her At-large City Council campaigns, in preference to the poltroons on the ballot.
You can acknowledge that this has been a disorder or dysphoria which has blessed or afflicted a small minority of people throughout history without signing on to medical interventions and surgeries on minors.
Is it really in dispute that it's better to be comfortable in the body you're born in, and that with children every measure and delay toward cognitive maturity should be taken to help them be comfortable in their own bodies, in preference to potentially-crippling puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery?
Oh I understand your position now
You don't have an issue with children who are transgender, you just wish to deny them healthcare. Got it.
"healthcare"
stopping a child's puberty (sexual and reproductive development) and cutting off the breasts of 15-year-olds on the basis of an adolescent stated preference is not healthy.
Before I hear the "suicide" argument, spare me. There are a lot of post-operative, post-transition suicides.
"Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population."
Ref: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885
There's never been a comparative study as far as I know. It's difficult to determine what the real reason for suicide is in most cases of adolescents anyways.
The "but suicides" rationale is hollow. You're chemically and surgically mutilating kids for what?
Empathy Case Study: CAIS
Your name is Courtney, and you are sixteen years old.
You are very pretty and very femme. You are even being recruited for modeling contracts.
But you have a serious issue: you get so many UTIs that you are in danger of losing kidney function.
This is because you were born with "ambiguous genitalia", which was partially altered to be more "female" shortly after your birth. This mostly worked, but there is another issue - you have never had a period and you don't have a female reproductive system at all.
This is because you have XY chromosomes but lack receptors for testosterone - Complete Androgen Insensitivity syndrome.
In order to correct the urinary tract issue resulting from the infant-sized reconstruction and scar tissue it is necessary to now create full adult female external anatomy. But there's a catch - ignorant people with "feelings" about medical care of others who couldn't just mind their own business made a bunch of laws about what surgeons can do to help you.
Do you wait until you are 18 and risk needing bilateral kidney transplants? Take a modeling contract and hope that you can hold out long enough to make enough money to get the surgery that you need to save your health in another state or country? Drop out of school, move to France to model and have their health care system give you the care that you need?
This is the situation that YOU want Deselby. OWN IT.
p.s. I have a doctoral degree in epidemiology. You don't know shit from fecal matter what you are talking about with these "studies" you dredge up in singular.
see my reply to your comment above
These surgeries are almost all being done to people without genetic or congenital aberrations.
Embrace the reality if you're going to support it.
Once again
You have no clue how prevalent intersex conditions are, and how they overlap with transgender identity (particularly when kids are "assigned" and identity at birth when intersex).
You are not a doctor or an epidemiologist. That much is clear.
Own the consequences of your hate.
I prefer Hippocrates to Hypocrites
I don't see you opposing circumcision - by far the most common elective pediactric genital surgery - on those grounds.
At what point is your ignorance intentional
Ok, maybe once you clung to your study giving you a solid number of cases where trans individuals were given surgery to reduce the harm of their problems, you didn't understand that the terms in the paper were not as specific as you thought.
You indicate that you think they're "people without genetic or congenital aberrations" used in the article. But there's nothing in the article to indicate this or the backgrounds of the patients in the study. Furthermore, the article states (and gives its reference) the following: "In addition to emotional and behavioral issues, transgender patients frequently have co-existing morbidities such as obesity, substance abuse, and congenital disorders, which could affect surgical planning and outcomes" (emphasis mine). So, you're not even reading your own source material well.
Swirly has even given you a few prime examples. I'll give you another one. A person born with a genetic defect called Turner Syndrome gets a single X chromosome. The child presents as female at birth. This is 1 in 2000 women.
To be a minor in your quoted study, they could have been anywhere from 17 in 2017 to 15 in 2020 or, stated otherwise, born between 2000 and 2005.
So, over those 5 years, there were about 10,000,000 women born in the USA alone. About 5000 of them have Turner Syndrome. And if the Turner Syndrome women had transgender issues at the same rate as estimated in the general population of 0.5% (I'd argue it's more than the general population), then that's 25 Xo women who identify as men. 25 transmen with a genetic abnormality who might have been in the study set.
How many other genetic or congenital abberations should we include in the same sort of calculations when all you have to go on is they were deemed female at birth and identify as male now?
You have designed a prototype...a stereotype...of a confused little girl who has been convinced she wants to be a boy and is having her breasts removed. You attribute that to all 65 people in the study you cling to as evidence of profit-driven(?) evil going on at the hospital. You have no idea what the situation of those 65 people were, the psychosocial screening done, the genetic determinations, the odds of any of it. You just want your preconceived notion to hold out. Your conviction is making a fool of you.
Excellent Example
There are a lot of adults with Turners who were assigned "female" at birth due to superficial reasons. Many do not identify as female, but are then considered transgender when they are really nongender and always were.
Now that the genetics are better understood and genetic testing is widely available, there are considerable efforts being made to not assign a gender at birth to an XO person.
I know a man with Turners who struggled with that assigned female identity versus their interior reality. Note that standard treatment for Turner Syndrome involves hormone therapy to bring out secondary sex characteristics regardless of selected gender.
But, lets be honest: Transphobic people aren't interested in complicated reality. They just want people who challenge their beliefs and fears to die.
Yep
Agender/genderqueer/nonbinary, not nongender, but yes, we're talking about folks who were assigned a binary gender by society when this doesn't align with what their brain is telling them.
Fuck off, transphobe
Yeah, I can't imagine why a group of people who have strangers posting online and protesting at hospitals that they shouldn't have access to healthcare has high rates of suicidality.
You'll notice...
that Mr. Transphobia fails to mention how many of those Bay Village trans street walkers caught beatings from drunken suburbanites that thought they were getting someone they didn't get.
Adam, block this phobe
Adam, please block this phobe. It's going to keep posting transparently bullshit remarks like the one above as if they were truth. It is harmful and it should be banned.
Seconded
Adam, you took down the anti-Muslim comments that, while bigoted and inappropriate, were tame in comparison to these 2-3 people who are obsessed with trans children and so bigoted that they can't even use the community's terminology and insist on inaccurate scare tactic language. If you want your site to be a safe place for trans folks, can you please delete and ban these transphobes?
Please. Both of them.
Anyone wanting to see kids die because they can't do math, don't understand science or population prevalence, and want their hate to determine health care for others should not be welcome here.
Phobes contribute nothing to the discussion.
Waiting
At this point I am just waiting for it to happen. It will. He keeps digging his hole deeper and deeper.
Hi, as a gay cis man I am not
Hi, as a gay cis man I am not fully in the know on all issues affecting other parts of the LGBTQ umbrella but I suspect I may know more than many who are outside of the circle.
Your Disney version of the history of Boston gay nightlife is entertaining but not true. While many are popular destinations now they faced multiple threats to their existence over the years. Theres a reason why they tend not to be right on the main boulevard with big flashing lights. Look at the Alley Bar , it literally is in an Alley and most people do not even know it exists because during the day it vanishes into the wall. Jaques had multiple times it was threatened.
The Phobia is a real thing. I can tell you I feel it as a gay man I can only imagine how trans people feel. People feel literally threatened because you do not do things the way they do them. Yes even in 2022 Boston I encounter this and even in the rather liberal city I live in. When Chelsea first raised the flag several years ago I personally dealt with a lot of very aggressive angry and people who I felt were lashing out because they were phobic. I still occasionally deal with that stuff.
As for Garrison, has she come out? I don't recall ever seeing any sort of admittance on her part that she is anything but a woman. So I call her a woman and will continue to do so. IF she was in fact trans then I would acknowledge that . And if she somehow was transgender but is not ready to say it I would imagine it could have something to do with the time frame she was brought up in. Because yes even in Boston its not hunkydory
not denying aggression
There have been many cases of attacks on gay and trans people in Boston, no denial of that.
Gangs roaming, looking for targets.
That's not the subject at hand in this news item.
People who question radical medical interventions on children are not doing so because of fear.
As for Althea, the case was definitively made in the Herald years ago. There was no libel suit against the paper.
Props on her for being discreet and not using her status to become some kind of icon, but if you're a public figure you don't get to keep all aspects of your private life private.
It’s not because of fear?
So it’s bigotry then. Got it.
What makes you think that you know better than the patient, several physicians, and the patient’s mental health provider(s)? You don’t seek our opinions after discussiing options on treatments discussed with your healthcare providers.
Not your kid. Not your patient. Not your body. Not your business.
"Props on her for being
"Props on her for being discreet"
Oh my god, you absolute trash person. For all the bullshit you're spewing about "mutilation," this says more about how you really feel about trans people existing in public than all your other idiotic comments combined.
This, and
Their clearly stated willingness to deprive children of needed and lifesaving healthcare for intersex conditions as a consequence of their transphobic hatred.
Hey that’s uncalled for
How dare you suggest deselby objects to trans people existing. They only object to trans people existing while under 18 and/or still alive. Jeez.
* As per my conversation with
* As per my conversation with them it appears that as long as they do not acknowledge it and are discrete about it they are cool with Transgender people in general.
Oh right
Yes, trans people are fine as long as they don't go around being all trans about it!
"the case"
I see the citations on Wikipedia but haven't found a readily accessible copy of the source article from 30 years ago [Fehrnstrom, Eric (November 5, 1992). "New state rep leaves questions about past life unanswered". The Boston Herald. p. 29.]
From the headline and your assertion, I'm going to assume what you meant to say was that the Herald outed her against her will in a story.
Thank you... Yes there is an
Thank you... Yes there is an active open rumour a out her life. It's hard for me to respect her privacy because there was a time she was very actively not pro LGBTQ rights but I think there is a difference between having the Boston Herald hunt down evidence and acknowledging something yourself. As you said that was a forced outing.
In a hypothetical world if we had someone in the semi public eye who did not want to discuss their gender it's very possible that is due to people like the original commentor who are design all sorts of rules that need to be followed and apply shame.
Exactly
Granted we're dealing with people in this thread who don't do nuance, but two things can be true at the same time. 1) Trans/queer people always have the right to self-determine where, to whom, and to what extent they are out, and it's never OK to out someone. 2) Althea Garrison has a record of doing harm to the queer community, and since it's pretty established that she's trans, trans/queer folks get to have feelings about one of our own undertaking harmful actions toward other queer folks. We don't get to decide that someone has to be out, or police how they express their identity, but once they speak out against queer rights, yeah, it's appropriate for us to have feelings as to whether their views represent our broader community.
Outing
I have always believed that it was good to out closeted gay people who use positions of power and authority to harm gay people, for example closeted gay politicians who promote anti-gay hate.
But eeka you have studied and thought about this set of issues a ton more than I have, and I would take your input on this topic seriously.
Sigh
Here I go again, trying to explain to straight folks why it just isn't that simple. It sure seems like it should be, though, right? They're homophobic, so surely if you out them, they'll stop being homophobic, or stop being powerful, or stop being able to do harm, or...something. Right? Right?
It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way because the weapon you're trying to use to check them isn't truth. Truth, the calling out of hypocrisy is, and always has been, a stunningly ineffective weapon against harmful people, because they are indifferent to the truth and untroubled by the fact that they do harm. The weapon you're using is not truth. It's homophobia.
Think about it. You're not outing them in order to call down the wrath of the International Gay Conspiracy; you're doing it to expose them in the eyes of other homophobes. You're hoping that homophobic straight people will punish this person. And what would they punish them for? Not for being hypocritical. They'd punish them for being gay.
So, that's why I really wish that straight folks would just sit on their hands and not type whenever this issue comes up. Most of you come up with this same bad take based on the same flawed reasoning. If you did what you propose, it might do some small harm to a closeted homophobe. But you do much greater harm by even having the discussion. It's like a bunch of middle school kids sitting in the lunchroom and playing "who's the queer". By speculating about who is gay, and outing them, you are unlikely to do them much harm, or to check their harmful activities. What you will do is reinforce the stigmatized status of LGBTQ people. Outing is a weapon that derives its power entirely from homophobia. By using this weapon, or threatening to use it, or discussing its use, you are lending your support to its legitimacy. And that weapon will never be aimed primarily, much less exclusively, at closeted homophobes. It will be aimed at the rest of us.
Thank you
Thank you for taking the time to lay this out. And I take your argument seriously. One point I would dispute is your claim that outing gains it’s power from homophobia, and that the objective is to bring down onto the outed individual the wrath of, and harassment by, homophobes. I see it as an attempt to neutralize the influence of a public figure by making the hypocrisy clear; in this regard outing someone who promotes anti-gay hate is like outing Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick for holding loads of Black Rock in his personal portfolio while loudly calling for Texas to divest from Black Rock as part of his “anti-woke” agenda. The purpose of calling out hypocrisy by outing a closeted anti-gay politician is not to cause him personal harm, it’s to neutralize his message.
But, as I said in the part of my message that you didn’t quote, others have looked into this a lot more than I have, and I’m learning something here.
I'm not objecting to your
I'm not objecting to your argument but outing people who do harm to the community was the "Barney Frank Rule"(No relation besides we are both gay) , so it's not like straight people just suddenly stumbled upon it like it was something new. Just because he did it doesn't make it right but he was a pretty high profile gay guy.
In general no matter what it used to mean, these days I would veer to the side of not outing them. Because then people who would like to harm the community can point to these people as representative of us. If they are going to be awful I prefer they stay in their little closet and not be seen as a gay leader.
What lbb said
I mean, yeah, I laugh and enjoy a little schadenfreude every time a right-wing homophobe has a “male escort” scandal. But we shouldn’t out people for the reasons lbb said.
We need to be conscious of whether our actions toward a harmful person also cause systemic harm, which it does in this case, as lbb stated.
It’s like how Caitlin Jenner is a horrible person, but it isn’t OK to deadname her or say transphobic shit about her. And Trump is a horrible person, but it isn’t OK to use fatphobic or ableist rhetoric about him. These kinds of comments just aren’t OK to make, and we need to not send the message that they are. They hurt others who haven’t done a damn thing.
Sorry
Lost internet on the phone mid post press and it posted twice on a time delay and I don't know how to delete
Way to tell on yourself
Way to tell on yourself, phobe. Go kick rocks, elsewhere.
More nuance
In general, I think the best public policy is to let these decisions be made by individuals and their doctors, with oversight by the medical establishment, by which I mean peer reviewed journals, ethics committees of major teaching hospitals, medical professional societies, public health agencies, etc.
With that said, I acknowledge that the medical establishment has in the past got some things very, very wrong. A lot of lobotomies. Experiments on nonconsenting subjects. Medicating kids whose only pathology is inability to silently endure excruciatingly boring and meaningless curriculum.
Even so, mainstream consensus medicine remains the best path we’ve got.
And, if you disagree with a particular direction that the medical establishment is taking, there’s still the idea that we live in an actual society, where we have things like the rule of law to remedy wrongs.
Don’t like what Children’s Hospital is doing? Get your legislator on board. Take your case to the board of medicine. There is no context in which threatening violence against a kids hospital is the correct response.
Apples and, uh, different apples
The “we’ve gotten stuff wrong in the past” actually doesn’t negate the need to listen to experts. It emphasizes the need to really REALLY listen to experts.
The experts on trans people are trans people. Trans people have been telling us forever to let them live their lives. There’s no reason to listen to cis folks speculating about what-ifs. Trans folks are doing qualitative and quantitative research on what helps trans folks.
The experts on disabled people are disabled people. Disabled people have been telling us for hundreds of years to stop “treatments” that focus on abled people’s convenience and making disabled people seem nondisabled rather than helping people live full authentic lives. Disabled people spoke against lobotomies, and currently are speaking against ABA and the Judge Rotenberg Center’s use of cattle prods as punishment.