Your culture war update from around the interwebs:
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Once again ignoring the massive body of evidence indicating that adult stem cells have been far more useful than fetal stem cells, BuzzFeed is outraged that “Trump Just Stacked A Fetal Cell Research Panel With Abortion Opponents.” Claiming that fetal stem cells are the “gold standard” for coronavirus research, their intrepid science reporter was furious to discover that those on the ethics panel did not agree with him: “On Friday, a Trump administration panel erected to judge the ethics of federally funded research relying on fetal stem cells met more than a year after it was first announced. Just hours before the meeting, the panel was revealed to be stacked with abortion opponents hostile to such research.”
It bears mentioning that President George W. Bush banned government funding for fetal stem cell research over a decade ago.
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On the heels of the UK government announcing a possible ban on transition for minors and scandals rocking the Tavistock Clinic, there’s this, from The Times:
The BBC has dropped leading transgender charities from its Advice Line for viewers. Mermaids, which supports transgender children and young people, is the best-known trans group to be removed from the service, which provides guidance to audiences after they have seen a programme. The Gender Trust and the Gender Identity Research and Education Society have also been removed. The BBC said that it had removed the groups after receiving complaints about its gender identity information and the need to “remain impartial”.
What a pleasant surprise.
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Exodus Cry, which is consistently exposing the vile crimes of PornHub, has published a particularly disturbing article titled “Why PornHub is a Pedophile’s Paradise”:
Over the last year, an abundance of evidence has surfaced showing Pornhub’s complicity in sex crimes. One of the most shocking and disturbing of these revelations has been the amount of child sex abuse material discovered on the site. Mind you, content they are profiting from.
The Internet Watch Foundation investigated and confirmed 118 cases of child sex abuse material on Pornhub, in only in 2 years.1 Half of the cases were Category A level abuse—meaning penetration and/or sadism. That is disturbing to say the least. I would add that when it comes to child sex abuse, one case is too many. But as we’ve pulled back the curtain further, the discoveries have been devastating.
Interestingly, it is The Guardian in the UK drawing attention to the story of “Anti-abortion centers receive at least $4m from US coronavirus bailout,” primarily because “Payouts of forgivable federal loans to crisis pregnancy centers may total up to $10m while Planned Parenthood had to return $60m.” From the article:
Anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers across the United States received at least $4m and possibly more than $10m in forgivable federal loans as part of the government’s first coronavirus bailout package, called the paycheck protection program (PPP). Formally part of the Cares Act, the program was meant to give employers a cash infusion to retain employees just as coronavirus lockdowns caused revenue to nosedive. It allowed religiously affiliated and faith-based non-profits to apply.
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You won’t read this in the mainstream media, but once again, it turns out that a much-touted bit of evidence supporting transgender ideology has once again turned out to be false. From Ryan T. Anderson (author of When Harry Became Sally) over at The Heritage Foundation:
The world’s largest dataset on patients who have undergone sex-reassignment procedures reveals that these procedures do not bring mental health benefits. But that’s not what the authors originally claimed. Or what the media touted. In October 2019, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a paper titled, “Reduction in Mental Health Treatment Utilization Among Transgender Individuals After Gender-Affirming Surgeries: A Total Population Study.” As the title suggests, the paper claimed that after having had sex-reassignment surgeries, a patient was less likely to need mental health treatment.
Well, over the weekend, the editors of the journal and the authors of the paper issued a correction. In the words of the authors, “the results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care.” But it’s actually worse than that. The original results already demonstrated no benefits to hormonal transition. That part didn’t need a correction.
So, the bottom line: The largest dataset on sex-reassignment procedures—both hormonal and surgical—reveals that such procedures do not bring the promised mental health benefits. In fact, in their correction to the original study, the authors point out that on one score—treatment for anxiety disorders—patients who had sex-reassignment surgeries did worse than those who did not:
individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence who had received gender-affirming surgery were more likely to be treated for anxiety disorders compared with individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence who had not received gender-affirming surgery.
You would think patients suffering from gender dysphoria would want to know that. What led to the correction? A deluge of criticisms and letters to the editor.
Anderson emphasizes three key takeways, for those who don’t feel like reading the whole thing:
The largest dataset on sex-reassignment procedures—both hormonal and surgical—reveals that such procedures do not bring the promised mental health benefits.
People who experience a gender identity conflict should be treated with respect and compassion. And they deserve to know the truth.
We need to find better, more humane, and effective responses to those who experience dysphoria.
Read it here, because you won’t read it anywhere else.
