And given the industry's all-pervasive reach and incredible sophistication, it may be promoting gender dysphoria in a million little ways throughout culture, such that the advertising campaign is easily mistaken for a more organic increase in societal awareness of trans issues.
Powerfully written! This reminds me of the article we summarized a few newsletters back about the BIg Pharma social media patient influencers, especially on TikTok which is the most commonly used app among youth. And that New York Post article you mention is forsure something to read...
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. This post serves as an antidote to all the polarizing red vs. blue political noise about this important issue. You raise significant concerns, and we wouldn't be doing justice if we're not discussing controversial matters that concern the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people in the face of so much corporate profit.
Recently, Washington passed a law that allows kids to seek gender-affirming care without parent consent. It makes sense we're having debates about this. Yet very few debates I've seen are capable of taking the emotions out enough to think critically and process conflicting and complex information. Especially for trans issues, we need to be asking deeper questions together in order to make sense of this changing human reality and prevent it from being co-opted by corrupt power structures under the guise of social justice.
A democratic 'inclusive' society would care about presenting the whole picture to the public to invite open dialogue. You're doing that with this blog post. Thanks for starting this ongoing, complex conversation, Mark.
Hey thanks! The patient influencers on social media are a perfect example of Big Pharma manipulating culture.
The article on the Washington law gives me pause. It says, "licensed youth shelters no longer have to report the location of a runaway child to the child’s parents if the child is seeking gender-affirming or reproductive care. " So gender-affirming medical treatments are now being regarded as in the same category as unwanted teen pregnancies. That seems pretty off to me.
What was really striking when researching this post was how how hard it was to find even basic information on the topic. It's as if the whole conversation is being manipulated at a very high level. Hopefully this post cuts through some of that.
I definitely think your post is cutting through the manipulation. Finding a media platform that's giving voice to all perspectives on this issue is almost non-existent. Lack of open dialogue + government scare tactics + inciting social division makes it a piece of cake for special interests to manipulate us. Gender identity issues are deeply politicized, which means we're already pushing bills and new policies without even talking about it in-depth as a society. Consider this excerpt from a Reason article:
Wow. Good points. People on both "sides" of this polarized topic seem determined to just make everything worse.