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NY Times Inverts Reality on Transgender Issues

Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2023
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by David Lewis Schaefer
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63 Comments
transgender

AMAC Exclusive – By David Lewis Schaefer

Recent media coverage of transgenderism and in particular the “transitioning” of children has characterized the issue as a conservative overreaction to “normal” and even “life-saving” treatments and medical practices. Once again, it seems, progressives, backed by the mainstream press, academics, and billionaire philanthropists, are engaged in an effort to reconstruct our society and even our very natures in ways that would previously have been dismissed as outlandish fantasies by almost everyone – and then insist that any opponents of this effort are the real “extremists.”

One recent example of this phenomenon was the front page story in the April 16 edition of the New York Times, entitled “How Transgender Issues Became a New Rallying Cry for the Right.” According to the column, the Supreme Court’s announcement of a newly “discovered” Constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago had the effect of leaving social conservatives “adrift.”

Now being “stripped” of an issue that they had previously “used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors,” conservatives were compelled, in the words of a “social conservative advocacy group,” to “find an issue” that conservative candidates “were comfortable talking about.” That issue, the Times says, is “transgender identity,” particularly its inculcation among young people.

As a result, “at least 20 states, all controlled by Republicans, have enacted laws” reaching beyond original issues such as gender-shared bathrooms “and into medical treatments,” sports participation, and “policies on discussing gender in schools.”

As a consequence, says the LGBTQ program director for the left-wing lobby group Media Matters, “as a transgender woman… she feels unwelcome in whole swaths of the country where states have attacked her right ‘just to exist in public.’”

This account of the political challenge to the transgender movement (along with its predecessor, the gay marriage cause) gets things precisely backwards.

Of course, politicians and activists on both sides of the political spectrum will always be looking for issues to galvanize their supporters. But socially conservative – that is, morally traditionalist – opponents of legal authorization of gay marriage and more recently, the introduction of challenges to one’s “gender identity” in elementary-school classrooms, didn’t oppose these causes because they were provoked to do so by greedy and purely self-interested politicians seeking their money and their votes.

Rather, conservative politicians and lobby groups appealed to voters on these issues precisely because they perceived widespread opposition to attempts by “progressive” politicians, lobby groups, and educrats to remake the American family in socially detrimental ways. Even more extreme is the move to encourage parents to consider having their offspring as young as eight years old undergo life-altering and permanent gender-changing treatments, including hormones and eventual surgery.

In some cases, these treatments and procedures are even administered without parental consent. Thanks to a bill passed by the Democrat-dominated legislature in 2022, insurers in Washington state are now required to cover “gender dysphoria treatment and gender-affirming care” without parental consent or knowledge. California has also passed a law declaring itself a “safe haven” for transgender surgery for minors.

Who, prior to the dawn of the present century, deemed it appropriate or desirable to introduce the notion of gender fluidity to children who haven’t even hit puberty? Prior to a few years ago, who would have thought that politicians, even avowed liberal ones, would have been openly arguing for sending children under the knife to “affirm” their “gender identity”? (As one wag noted, if 7-year-olds knew their “true” identity, as distinguished from their biologically given one, the entire population would ultimately consist of princesses and space rangers.) And who would have thought it reactionary to ban “transgender women,” that is, those born with and still possessing male size and musculature, from competing in women’s sports, as South Dakota just did, so as to allow biological women the fair opportunity to compete?

Today’s movement toward social as well as economic progressivism – both entailing the ever-increasing control and reordering of our private lives by largely unaccountable judges and bureaucrats – reflects the fulfillment of the “march through the institutions” proposed in Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (composed in the 1930s) to revolutionize society through the nonviolent spread of increasingly radical ideas. Gramsci’s plan advanced widely in the academy through the New Left of the 1960s, following its espousal by the German Communist Rudi Dutschke. Its circulation in America was spearheaded by academics like the Marxist expatriate Herbert Marcuse (the mentor of Angela Davis, among others). Since that time, the “progressive” plan has continued to widen its scope.

By definition, the progressive movement can never reach its completion: there will always be new goals to invent, in the Rousseauean project of remaking human life. Supposing that the very notion that human beings have a fixed gender which corresponds to their biological sex at birth is destroyed through some combination of Gramscian education, “medical” treatments, and judicial fiat, what might be next?

A New York court case from 2022 might provide some hints. In a case that would have been somewhat humorous if it weren’t such a depressing comment on the state of the American legal system, the Nonhuman Rights Project brought suit for a writ of habeas corpus before New York State’s Court of Appeals on behalf of Happy the Elephant, a 51-year-old Asian pachyderm currently residing in spacious quarters in the Bronx Zoo, citing an online petition signed by 1.4 million people maintaining that Happy has the same right to freedom as human beings – and that she consequently deserves to be moved from the zoo (along with, presumably, all other members of her species) to an elephant sanctuary either in Tennessee or California, where there will be more space and opportunities to socialize with her fellows.

Unfortunately for the Nonhuman Rights Project (if not for Happy herself), the appellate court rejected Happy’s suit last June, with a 5-2 majority saying that, while she merited kindness and compassion (not that there was any evidence that she had been denied such treatment), elephants don’t have the same legal right to freedom that human beings do. However, two dissenting judges denounced the majority’s ruling, with one contending that Happy is being held in “an environment that is unnatural to her and that does not allow her to live her life.”

According to the judge, “her captivity is inherently unjust and inhumane. It is an affront to a civilized society, and every day she remains a captive — a spectacle for humans — we, too, are diminished.” The other dissenter, Rowan Wilson, asserted, “We should recognize Happy’s right to petition for her liberty not just because she is a wild animal who is not meant to be caged and displayed, but because the rights we confer on others define who we are as a society.” He held her “confinement” in the zoo to be comparable to that of abused women and enslaved human beings.

Rowan Wilson has just been named by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, in response to demands from the progressive wing of the state’s overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, to serve as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals.

New Yorkers who wanted to see Happy and her fellow pachyderms without undertaking a long air flight may have to schedule their visit to the Bronx Zoo soon.

Far more ominous, however, is the judgment by two members of the state’s highest court, including its incoming chief, that denies any clear line between the rights inherent to human beings and those supposedly possessed by nonhuman species. After all, if the division between the sexes is purely a human construct, why not the division between humans as a whole and other animals? For that matter, how will judges then draw the line between the rights of elephants and, say, city rats – against whom New York City Mayor Eric Adams has just pronounced a war of extermination? (PETA has already protested the mayor’s campaign.)

Doubtless, retrograde politicians and their allies will continue their demagogic opposition to the march of “progress,” such as the erasure of fixed distinctions between the sexes and of parental rights to supervise their children’s medical treatment, but also including the policies advocated by the Nonhuman Rights Project, and will thus earn continued denunciation by the Times and other progressive intellectuals and institutions. But without their resistance, who will preserve our humanity?

David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.

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Lynn Brunotts
Lynn Brunotts
10 months ago

If transgenders are afraid of Right States it’s because the media and Biden and the twisted Woke have perpetrated upon them their divisive hateful agenda. Wise up transgenders, they are not on your side. You’re just a useful tool.

Rob Brown
Rob Brown
11 months ago

Has anyone ever seen a young woman that identifies as a man?

PIDL
PIDL
11 months ago

Take the meat away in the cities. Rats will become a staple and hunted for dinner!

Jimmyd
Jimmyd
11 months ago

People say, well men have cross-dressed for years…and yes they did for laughs, even on
tv….well a lot of men are doing now, they think it is real…WE ARE STILL LAUGHING !!!

Pretend if you want…don’t expect ME to pretend with you…sorry still laughing !!!

Randall L. Beatty
Randall L. Beatty
11 months ago

This the downfall in this country the Dems under Biden and Harris will bring this country to its knees and we the people will not stand for this, Our great president and his VP have destroyed this country just nothing but hate here. The media is also at fault with there lies to cover up what the Dems are doing they have backed the trans movement real females have to loose to trans female men, what is wrong with Washington shows what is happening in this country just sick.

Fred
Fred
11 months ago

We should all realize that this is another made up issue to foster more divisiveness and add to the crises Bidum has created in America. Everything he does is for that purpose, not to make America or our lives better.
God created us as either male or female before we were born. That is absolute and cannot be changed no matter what some think or may want. A man will never give birth and a woman will never impregnate a man with sperm. Anyone who disagrees has a serious mental problem.
A child should never be allowed to undergo trans surgery or treatment until of legal age of 21 or more. And anyone in the medical profession who advises for or performs such treatment should be jailed for life.

Nancy
Nancy
11 months ago

The democrats and others who are supporting unnatural sex have missed an important historical occurrence. Both Sodom and Gomorrah were obliterated by God for these same practices. Democrats and all of what I call the Alphabet Soup group may cause doomsday for this country before climate change does!

Jayel
Jayel
11 months ago

It all began with same sex marriage eight years ago and you know the people who instigated that would not stop at that. Now they are trying to make a male a female and vice versa. That will never be done but they think it will. A man is a man and a female is a female regardless of what they do to mutilate their bodies. The more we kow tow to them, the more stupid things they will think of. Stop them in their tracks and say no to the mutilation of children or so called adults.

heil biden
heil biden
11 months ago

THIS MY FELLOW AMERICANS SHOULD NOT EVEN BE UP FOR DISCUSSION/THE ROT WITHIN THIS COUNTRY IS TAKING IT DOWN QUICKLY. THE MAJORITY SHOULD HAVE THE FINAL SAY SO.

Steven Tapper
Steven Tapper
11 months ago

It’s human nature to look at a problem and try to solve it. If someone is suffering from excruciating back pain we reach for the strongest over the counter pain meds or prescription meds to help. If that doesn’t help we seek physical therapy and pain management. The problem is that we are addressing the symptoms causing the pain and not the root cause of the pain which may be a herniated disk or spinal issue that would require surgery to correct. So what is the driving motive for all of the gender related issues? Money! This sex change agenda is all about money. It can cost a fortune, in some cases over a million dollars for a man to become a woman and vice versa. Then there are the hormones and drugs. It’s all about the money. That’s what is pushing this agenda. Just follow the money!

Carol
Carol
11 months ago

We still got to deal with the MAPS (minor attracted persons) coming down the line to the added alphabet group! The normalization of all things sexual has been a goal of the alphabet folks for a long time. If that happens, will rape no longer be illegal? Or incest? Very scary times!

Mark Bonner
Mark Bonner
11 months ago

The left always begins their statements with the premise that the argument is won. An example is the words, “as a transgender woman”. God created and Science agrees that there are two sexes in human beings, male and female. For a man to say that he is a transgender woman is a lie defying both God and Science’s Laws. His feeling he is a woman is a mental, not physical reality.

Granny 26
Granny 26
11 months ago

Should be illegal for anyone under 18 to go thru the sex change crap….and must see a psychiatrist for so many sessions before anything is done. Everyone that ‘thinks’ they are really other than that born with has a mental problem and needs to see a shrink before anything is done. Too many ‘knife happy’ doctors around today. And people that change their mind daily.

Myrna Wade
Myrna Wade
11 months ago

Washington state has increased the pressure by making it law taking the child away from parents

Gary
Gary
11 months ago

There is NO such thing as ” trans genderism ” .

There is NO such thing as trans gender .

No one can change their DNA or their RNA , or their genes , or their gender PERIOD No one . However , there are cross dressers and other mentally ill persons .

If any school or teacher or school administrator ever tried to change the gender of a child , they should be sued , arrested , fired , lose their pensions and benefits and put in jail for decades ! Who the hell do these people think they are ? Schools MUST keep to teaching reading , math , writing , science , language , history , and other normal traditional subjects .

Steven Tapper
Steven Tapper
11 months ago

What is “normal” is that there are only two genders, male and female. Unfortunately the New York Times champions the exploitation of our young, vulnerable children to confuse them into believing that they can be another gender if they don’t feel comfortable in their own bodies. This exploitation of our youth has been incrementally going on since the 1970’s in our public school systems.

Elaine
Elaine
11 months ago

Reply to ronald reagan, guess you are the dodo, look up human and animal in the dictionary to learn the difference.
Get out your dusty Bible and see why God, Creator of all, created mankind.
Stop drinking the political kool-aid!

matt
matt
11 months ago

The NYT was once a respected newspaper publishing unbiased news and materials. Now it has become an untrustworthy reporter of Biden’s socialist nonsense. It is sad to see a once great newspaper turn into a slimy political tool. Too bad many of our once respected papers are now tools of the socialist agenda. They will just continue to lose readers.

Gabe Hanzeli
Gabe Hanzeli
11 months ago

the New York Times shoudl have their business license revoked.

anna hubert
anna hubert
11 months ago

How can a handful of people have such sway and not one public figure standing up to tell them be what you must but shut up about it and let others be what they are

Ann S
Ann S
11 months ago

Well the rainbow people have been busy with voting dislike on all the comments.
These people are not only depraved but mentally ill.
From the White House on down debauchery is rampant in America and is supported by the majority. Feel sorry for all these people who think that they are being hip by changing their gender and that they are supported by the government. You are a means to an end, depopulate the world. Genocide is their platform and their support is brainwashing you. A child of 8 cannot possible feel like a boy or a girl. Let them wait till after puberty to decide.
But then the government knows it is too late.
Why is this so rampant think the COVID vaccine and DNA changes has something to do with it.
We are a sick sick society if judges make animals equal with humans. And allow children to be mutilated without parental consent. They attack genocide from two sides. Mutilate the kids already born and people won’t procreate anymore for fear their children will be taken away from them. That is why they are such fervent supporters of abortion.

Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
Kyle Buy you some guns,and learn how to shoot
11 months ago

If you dont open your mouth,how would anybody know you are a tranny. ??? Kyle L. (or give a damn )

DT Williams
DT Williams
11 months ago

I’ve quite watching prime time TV because almost every program has an LGBTQ issue.

Sharon Ormsby
Sharon Ormsby
11 months ago

No one cares about adults who ACTUALLY change over. However, when you have men like Dylan Mulvaney who say they are transgender and who are actually just a transvestite or just a simple drag queen, being glorified to sell tampons, beer, and beauty products-it’s a slap in the face to REAL women. Especially since a man can never and will never suffer from a menstrual cycle and have to wear a tampon in their paltry, little lives. Ulta Beauty can sell all the makeup they want to, to drag queens and Oil of Olay can sell their moisturizers to men, men need them too, at least moisturizers, but you don’t need a man, to sell the products. Doctors all over the world are stopping these surgeries on minors and it’s our country that’s backwards and pushing it forward and DENYING the science. We aren’t learning from other’s mistakes and the people who are actually warning us about it. They are being SUED, so expect this administration and our own doctors and staff to be SUED in the near future as well, by each and every child and they will also sue every teacher, and adult, who counseled and pushed them into this lifestyle.

Nancy
Nancy
11 months ago

God will be waiting for these people!

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
11 months ago

Why cant Russian take a NYT reporter captive??

Roy Ketcher
Roy Ketcher
11 months ago

All of the Democrat politicians in the house voted no to protect women in sports. I really laugh at the Muslim representatives in the house who voted no for the same thing. They must feel it’s OK to throw homosexuals off the tops of buildings but not OK to have an equal playing field in sports, could somebody please explain this to me

Richard Hennessy
Richard Hennessy
11 months ago

There is nothing NORMAL about transgenderism. It is a mental disability, period. It requires treatment, not celebration or support. Normal is recognizing the reality of what a person is.

james e benning
james e benning
11 months ago

the NYTimes inverts reality on virtually every topic.

PaulE
PaulE
11 months ago

Keep snorting those drugs and popping whatever pills you’re taking. You’re a wonderful representation of America’s future. Just learn a little Chinese though, as your new masters won’t be speaking English.

现在吃屎的蚱蜢。:-))

David Millikan
David Millikan
11 months ago

The NYT’s is just like TikTok, they lie.
TikTok announced that it is CENSORING any opposing views on the Global Warming lie pushing only the Fascist democrats view. Just as that CHATBot garbage pushes only the Fascist democrats view.
The NYT’s is backed by Communist Soros and Communist China.
This ragweed paper is a joke. The only thing that the NYT’s has gotten right is calling themselves the NYT’s.
As for the so-called transgender garbage only idiots believe that crap especially if it came from the NYT’s.

Danny Boy
Danny Boy
11 months ago

… transgender issue, this is yet another CIA psy-op, targeting sexual ambiguity. They know they can’t get you. So, they’re making a grab for your children. Our CIA gone berserk, we need a congressional committee assigned to assert a top-down audit of the CIA –

TMarie
TMarie
11 months ago

What happened to the Science?

It’s clearly stated in our US Constitution:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

All men (humankind) are created equal.

Our DNA proves humans and animals have different genetic DNA.

Our Scientific DNA proves we are created from both parents: Male

CB
CB
11 months ago

Simple solution. Boycott the times and every advertiser.

Michael DeCrane
Michael DeCrane
11 months ago

Beware, this transgenderism is nothing more than government sanctioned sterilization of the population. After the transition is done, the individual cannot have children.

Mary Dickens
Mary Dickens
11 months ago

Lots of nuts out there. Why don’t the transgenders compete against transgenders? Leave males and females sports alone? That would be fair. Why do we (taxpayers) have to pay to translate everything into several languages when Americans speak English? I suppose next we will all have to learn 60 languages to live here. Put prayer back in schools. Leave America alone.

John
John
11 months ago

This is simply the march and onslaught of evil from the Left. These are the Last Days and the Left is possessed of spirits not of God. They defy every moral principle, celebrate abortion, seek destruction of the Family, oppose God and especially Christianity, our Constitution means almost nothing to them, the rule of Law is violated when convenient, and any lie that gets them power is used without the slightest hesitation. What I am saying is not exaggerated and might well be understated. The people of the USA need to repent and turn back to God. Their Godlessness will lead to destruction and we are already on that road. It is sad, but it is clear and that lets us know where the problems lie. Beware those who do not see this, the signs are glaringly clear.

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