(07-26-2017, 02:57 PM)samhain Wrote: I think he he should keep pushing it. Ban all gays. Ban women. Get rid of blacks and Jews, too to please his base. Gotta make the Jerry Falwell/Richard Spencer crowd happy. The more emboldened his most fervent supporters become, the more comfortable they'll be showing their true colors in more public forums. Get as many groups as possible mobilized against this unfit clown before midterms.
He needs to think bigger and go for the prize that his people truly want.
That's odd, I voted for Trump, yet I don't agree with any of those things. It almost seems as if you're writing simply to elicit an action..
Volson is meh, but I like him, and he has far exceeded my expectations
(07-26-2017, 07:58 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: I hate this discussion because i cant get past my belief this is a mental issue.
Plenty of mental issues disqualify you from military service.
Body mutilation like some guy who wants to look like a cat or some girl who wants to look like barbie is a mental issue.
Behave however you want to behave. But your sex is your sex. Once you start lopping off genitals and insisting your chromosomes are wrong i cant help but think there are some mental issues going on.
Ehh, could be...but then again there are still people out there who think being left-handed and being attracted to a person of a different race are still "mental issues" too.
(07-26-2017, 06:37 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: The military spends more on Viagra than it does accommodating trans service members. Trump spends more on one trip to Mara-a-Lago than the annual budget to accommodate trans service members.
It's not about money at all.
Needed something to appease the far right crowd. His presidency has been one big tire fire with Russia looming over it. He can't get any major legislation passed and the conservatives aren't liking all of these attacks on good ol' boy Jeff Sessions.
The front runner for Jeff's vacant seat just said today he'd bow out of the race if Jeff wants to run.
Original at the top DW has condensed it to make it a quicker read.
Quote:I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse.
Michelle Cretella / July 03, 2017 / comments
Transition-affirming protocol tells parents to treat their children as the gender they desire, and to place them on puberty blockers at age 11 or 12 if they are gender dysphoric. (Photo: iStock Photos)
Michelle Cretella
Michelle Cretella, M.D., is president of the American College of Pediatricians, a national organization of pediatricians and other health care professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children.
Transgender politics have taken Americans by surprise, and caught some lawmakers off guard.
Just a few short years ago, not many could have imagined a high-profile showdown over transgender men and women’s access to single-sex bathrooms in North Carolina.
But transgender ideology is not just infecting our laws. It is intruding into the lives of the most innocent among us—children—and with the apparent growing support of the professional medical community.
As explained in my 2016 peer reviewed article, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate,” professionals who dare to question the unscientific party line of supporting gender transition therapy will find themselves maligned and out of a job.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can't be done alone. Find out more >>
I speak as someone intimately familiar with the pediatric and behavioral health communities and their practices. I am a mother of four who served 17 years as a board certified general pediatrician with a focus in child behavioral health prior to leaving clinical practice in 2012.
For the last 12 years, I have been a board member and researcher for the American College of Pediatricians, and for the last three years I have served as its president.
I also sat on the board of directors for the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity from 2010 to 2015. This organization of physicians and mental health professionals defends the right of patients to receive psychotherapy for sexual identity conflicts that is in line with their deeply held values based upon science and medical ethics.
I have witnessed an upending of the medical consensus on the nature of gender identity. What doctors once treated as a mental illness, the medical community now largely affirms and even promotes as normal.
Here’s a look at some of the changes.
The New Normal
Pediatric “gender clinics” are considered elite centers for affirming children who are distressed by their biological sex. This distressful condition, once dubbed gender identity disorder, was renamed “gender dysphoria” in 2013.
In 2014, there were 24 of these gender clinics, clustered chiefly along the east coast and in California. One year later, there were 40 across the nation.
With 215 pediatric residency programs now training future pediatricians in a transition-affirming protocol and treating gender-dysphoric children accordingly, gender clinics are bound to proliferate further.
Last summer, the federal government stated that it would not require Medicare and Medicaid to cover transition-affirming procedures for children or adults because medical experts at the Department of Health and Human Services found the risks were often too high, and the benefits too unclear.
Undeterred by these findings, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health has pressed ahead, claiming—without any evidence—that these procedures are “safe.”
Two leading pediatric associations—the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Pediatric Endocrine Society—have followed in lockstep, endorsing the transition affirmation approach even as the latter organization concedes within its own guidelines that the transition-affirming protocol is based on low evidence.
They even admit that the only strong evidence regarding this approach is its potential health risks to children.
The transition-affirming view holds that children who “consistently and persistently insist” that they are not the gender associated with their biological sex are innately transgender.
(The fact that in normal life and in psychiatry, anyone who “consistently and persistently insists” on anything else contrary to physical reality is considered either confused or delusional is conveniently ignored.)
The transition-affirming protocol tells parents to treat their children as the gender they desire, and to place them on puberty blockers around age 11 or 12 if they are gender dysphoric.
If by age 16, the children still insist that they are trapped in the wrong body, they are placed on cross-sex hormones, and biological girls may obtain a double mastectomy.
So-called “bottom surgeries,” or genital reassignment surgeries, are not recommended before age 18, though some surgeons have recently argued against this restriction.
The transition-affirming approach has been embraced by public institutions in media, education, and our legal system, and is now recommended by most national medical organizations.
There are exceptions to this movement, however, in addition to the American College of Pediatricians and the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice. These include the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, the Catholic Medical Association, and the LGBT-affirming Youth Gender Professionals.
The transgender movement has gained legs in the medical community and in our culture by offering a deeply flawed narrative. The scientific research and facts tell a different story.
Here are some of those basic facts.
1. Twin studies prove no one is born “trapped in the body of the wrong sex.”
Some brain studies have suggested that some are born with a transgendered brain. But these studies are seriously flawed and prove no such thing.
Virtually everything about human beings is influenced by our DNA, but very few traits are hardwired from birth. All human behavior is a composite of varying degrees for nature and nurture.
Researchers routinely conduct twin studies to discern which factors (biological or nonbiological) contribute more to the expression of a particular trait. The best designed twin studies are those with the greatest number of subjects.
Identical twins contain 100 percent of the same DNA from conception and are exposed to the same prenatal hormones. So if genes and/or prenatal hormones contributed significantly to transgenderism, we should expect both twins to identify as transgender close to 100 percent of the time.
Skin color, for example, is determined by genes alone. Therefore, identical twins have the same skin color 100 percent of the time.
But in the largest study of twin transgender adults, published by Dr. Milton Diamond in 2013, only 28 percent of the identical twins both identified as transgender. Seventy-two percent of the time, they differed. (Diamond’s study reported 20 percent identifying as transgender, but his actual data demonstrate a 28 percent figure, as I note here in footnote 19.)
That 28 percent of identical twins both identified as transgender suggests a minimal biological predisposition, which means transgenderism will not manifest itself without outside nonbiological factors also impacting the individual during his lifetime.
The fact that the identical twins differed 72 percent of the time is highly significant because it means that at least 72 percent of what contributes to transgenderism in one twin consists of nonshared experiences after birth—that is, factors not rooted in biology.
Studies like this one prove that the belief in “innate gender identity”—the idea that “feminized” or “masculinized” brains can be trapped in the wrong body from before birth—is a myth that has no basis in science.
2. Gender identity is malleable, especially in young children.
Even the American Psychological Association’s Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology admits that prior to the widespread promotion of transition affirmation, 75 to 95 percent of pre-pubertal children who were distressed by their biological sex eventually outgrew that distress. The vast majority came to accept their biological sex by late adolescence after passing naturally through puberty.
But with transition affirmation now increasing in Western society, the number of children claiming distress over their gender—and their persistence over time—has dramatically increased. For example, the Gender Identity Development Service in the United Kingdom alone has seen a 2,000 percent increase in referrals since 2009.
3. Puberty blockers for gender dysphoria have not been proven safe.
Puberty blockers have been studied and found safe for the treatment of a medical disorder in children called precocious puberty (caused by the abnormal and unhealthy early secretion of a child’s pubertal hormones).
However, as a groundbreaking paper in The New Atlantis points out, we cannot infer from these studies whether or not these blockers are safe in physiologically normal children with gender dysphoria.
The authors note that there is some evidence for decreased bone mineralization, meaning an increased risk of bone fractures as young adults, potential increased risk of obesity and testicular cancer in boys, and an unknown impact upon psychological and cognitive development.
With regard to the latter, while we currently don’t have any extensive, long-term studies of children placed on blockers for gender dysphoria, studies conducted on adults from the past decade give cause for concern.
For example, in 2006 and 2007, the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology reported brain abnormalities in the area of memory and executive functioning among adult women who received blockers for gynecologic reasons. Similarly, many studies of men treated for prostate cancer with blockers also suggest the possibility of significant cognitive decline.
4. There are no cases in the scientific literature of gender-dysphoric children discontinuing blockers.
Most, if not all, children on puberty blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones (estrogen for biological boys, testosterone for biological girls). The only study to date to have followed pre-pubertal children who were socially affirmed and placed on blockers at a young age found that 100 percent of them claimed a transgender identity and chose cross-sex hormones.
This suggests that the medical protocol itself may lead children to identify as transgender.
There is an obvious self-fulfilling effect in helping children impersonate the opposite sex both biologically and socially. This is far from benign, since taking puberty blockers at age 12 or younger, followed by cross-sex hormones, sterilizes a child.
5. Cross-sex hormones are associated with dangerous health risks.
From studies of adults we know that the risks of cross-sex hormones include, but are not limited to, cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, strokes, diabetes, and cancers.
6. Neuroscience shows that adolescents lack the adult capacity needed for risk assessment.
Scientific data show that people under the age of 21 have less capacity to assess risks. There is a serious ethical problem in allowing irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young themselves to give valid consent.
7. There is no proof that affirmation prevents suicide in children.
Advocates of the transition-affirming protocol allege that suicide is the direct and inevitable consequence of withholding social affirmation and biological alterations from a gender-dysphoric child. In other words, those who do not endorse the transition-affirming protocol are essentially condemning gender-dysphoric children to suicide.
Yet as noted earlier, prior to the widespread promotion of transition affirmation, 75 to 95 percent of gender-dysphoric youth ended up happy with their biological sex after simply passing through puberty.
In addition, contrary to the claim of activists, there is no evidence that harassment and discrimination, let alone lack of affirmation, are the primary cause of suicide among any minority group. In fact, at least one study from 2008 found perceived discrimination by LGBT-identified individuals not to be causative.
Over 90 percent of people who commit suicide have a diagnosed mental disorder, and there is no evidence that gender-dysphoric children who commit suicide are any different. Many gender dysphoric children simply need therapy to get to the root of their depression, which very well may be the same problem triggering the gender dysphoria.
8. Transition-affirming protocol has not solved the problem of transgender suicide.
Adults who undergo sex reassignment—even in Sweden, which is among the most LGBT-affirming countries—have a suicide rate nearly 20 times greater than that of the general population. Clearly, sex reassignment is not the solution to gender dysphoria.
Bottom Line: Transition-Affirming Protocol Is Child Abuse
The crux of the matter is that while the transition-affirming movement purports to help children, it is inflicting a grave injustice on them and their nondysphoric peers.
These professionals are using the myth that people are born transgender to justify engaging in massive, uncontrolled, and unconsented experimentation on children who have a psychological condition that would otherwise resolve after puberty in the vast majority of cases.
Today’s institutions that promote transition affirmation are pushing children to impersonate the opposite sex, sending many of them down the path of puberty blockers, sterilization, the removal of healthy body parts, and untold psychological damage.
These harms constitute nothing less than institutionalized child abuse. Sound ethics demand an immediate end to the use of pubertal suppression, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries in children and adolescents, as well as an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies.
It is time for our nation’s leaders and the silent majority of health professionals to learn exactly what is happening to our children, and unite to take action.
(07-26-2017, 11:50 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Couldnt get very far. I got to Tucker Carlsons face and couldnt stop thinking about how i would love to take a baseball bat to that shit.
He has zero to do with the story. Just added the video for those who do not want to read.
Quote:Transgender airman: ‘I would like to see them try to kick me out of my military’
Air Force Staff Sgt. Logan Ireland, a security forces airman, is among the transgender service members now serving in the military. He says he will fight any attempt to discharge him from the military. (Photo Courtesy of Logan Ireland)
After President Trump’s surprise announcement Wednesday barring transgender people from serving “in any capacity“ in the military, one prominent transgender airman said he’s more determined than ever to continue serving in the Air Force.
“I would like to see them try to kick me out of my military,” Staff Sgt. Logan Ireland said in an interview with Air Force Times. “You are not going to deny me my right to serve my country when I am fully qualified and able and willing to give my life.”
Other transgender service members expressed the same determination to stay in uniform in interviews with Military Times.
“I will continue to report for duty in the uniform of the day until I am forced to receive my DD214” discharge papers, said Sgt. Jack Schuler a transgender man and Army reservist who is a chemical operations specialist. He previously served in the Marine Corps.
“I love serving this country and its people,” he said. ”I love being a part of this military family. My dream is to retire after a long career. I’m not going anywhere, anytime soon.”
A Marine military police officer who is a transgender man (he asked that his name not be used), pointed out that he’s served honorably through two deployments. He’s never endangered his comrades, he said, or made anyone else “conform to my world view.” All he asked for, he said, was the same respect he gave others.
“I have never described myself as trans; I’m a mother----ing Marine,” the corporal said. “That‘s all that matters. Don’t tarnish my title with your bigotry and fear of the unknown.”
It is unclear exactly how President Trump’s new policy will affect transgender people already serving. In a short statement, the Pentagon said it will work with the White House and “will provide revised guidance to the department in the near future.”
Ireland, a security forces airman who deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, has been one of the most prominent transgender people in the military since he first shared his story publicly in 2015, three years after he began his transition to a man. Ireland also consulted with the Air Force last year as it drafted its guidance for how it will incorporate transgender airmen into its ranks.
Ireland is married to a transgender woman who serves in the Army, Cpl. Laila Villanueva, and the two appeared in a 2015 New York Times documentary, “Transgender, at War and in Love.”
Ireland, who is currently taking part in security forces training, said he had no idea at all that the change was coming. The policy change was especially a surprise, he said, considering the support Defense Department leadership has showed for allowing transgender people to serve.
“For the president to deny an able-bodied, fully qualified person the inherent right to raise their right hand and serve their country, potentially giving their own life for our freedoms, is doing this country an injustice,” Ireland said. “I would personally love for my president to meet me so I can tell him about myself, and the 15,500 honorably-serving transgender military members that are fighting right now for their liberties and their country.”
Schuler said that re-imposing a ban on transgender service members is likely to be counterproductive.
“For every qualified, fit to serve transgender person lost, there will have to be another person recruited and trained to replace them,” Schuler said. “Given the small number of transgender service members and the fact that not every transgender person opts for full or any medical reassignment, more will be spent imposing the ban than would be saved in treatment costs.”
Capt. Jacob Eleazer of the Kentucky Army National Guard said he hasn’t heard anything yet on whether his status will change.
“I imagine military leadership, like me, is still reacting to the news and trying to figure out exactly what bearing this is going to have,” Eleazer said, speaking for himself and not for the military. “I remain hopeful that it’s possible that with some wisdom and guidance that things could change, but I’m kind of an optimist, so we’ll see how it rolls out.”
Eleazer, who is a doctoral candidate in psychology, hopes to secure a military clinical internship as part of his plan to become a military psychologist. However, transferring to a medical position is technically considered a new commission, so Eleazer has been waiting for the Defense Department to release its policy on inducting transgender service members.
Eleazer said his unit has been supportive of him serving as an openly transgender soldier, and recently returned from annual training with his unit.
“My commander set a very clear tone of dignity and respect,” Eleazer said. “My gender marker is not updated in the military medical system even though it’s been updated on my birth certificate for years now. Because of that, I still have to follow female standards and female billeting and my unit has been very accommodating to help figure out solutions to that when we’ve been in the field. It’s been great working with them, to be honest.”
Over the past year, as the Air Force adjusted to the new policy allowing transgender people to serve, it even began publicizing the stories of some transgender airmen. In a commentary posted on Nellis Air Force Base’s website June 30, Senior Airman Irene Nelson, an air traffic controller, described how she came to realize she was a transgender woman and made her transition.
And last November, Offut Air Force Base posted a profile of Staff Sgt. Ashleigh Buch, an instructor with the 338th Combat Training Squadron there, about her transition and the strain of living in the closet.
“When you have to serve and you aren’t able to be yourself, it’s going to dampen your spirit,” Buch said in that profile.
“If you’re going to have to constantly worry about being outed, or constantly worry about your safety or your health — and do that all in silence — you’re never going to be as good as you could be.”
Ireland emphasized the wide variety of roles transgender people serve today in the Air Force.
“We have pilots, we have doctors, we have combat medics, we have security forces members like myself,” Ireland said.
“We are everywhere in the military, and for our president to not have a military member’s back that is willing to die for him, blows my mind. And it just makes me very motivated today to continue my training.”
One of you guys should go tell them they aren't fit to serve and have a mental illness. That would be funny.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
Quote:Almost exactly one year earlier, he was the first president to address the NAACP. He said then:
[quote]
We must not tolerate such limitations on the freedom of any of our people and on their enjoyment of basic rights which every citizen in a truly democratic society must possess. Every man should have the right to a decent home, the right to an education, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a worthwhile job, the right to an equal share in making the public decisions through the ballot, and the right to a fair trial in a fair court. We must insure that these rights -- on equal terms -- are enjoyed by every citizen. To these principles, I pledge my full and continued support.
Many of our people still suffer the indignity of insult, the harrowing fear of intimidation, and, I regret to say, the threat of physical injury and mob violence. Prejudice and intolerance in which these evils are rooted still exist. The conscience of our nation, and the legal machinery which enforces it, have not yet secured to each citizen full freedom from fear.
We cannot wait another decade or another generation to remedy these evils. We must work, as never before, to cure them now.
That was sixty years ago this week. Today Donald Trump tweeted (yeah) a ban on transgender soldiers, not acknowledging the 7000 soldiers this will affect, nor informing his generals of the decision beforehand. How far we have fallen.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(07-26-2017, 02:45 PM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Good. The military isn't a place you go to express yourself.
People join the military to serve, not express themselves, regardless gender, sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, socioeconomic background, etc.
Hey, I got an idea; "let's give freedom a chance." Sound familiar? Why do you believe insurance companies should be free to cap your coverage, but qualified individuals can't volunteer for the military?
(07-26-2017, 07:58 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: I hate this discussion because i cant get past my belief this is a mental issue.
Plenty of mental issues disqualify you from military service.
Body mutilation like some guy who wants to look like a cat or some girl who wants to look like barbie is a mental issue.
Behave however you want to behave. But your sex is your sex. Once you start lopping off genitals and insisting your chromosomes are wrong i cant help but think there are some mental issues going on.
Gender Dysphoria is no longer considered a mental illness per the most recent version of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5, published 2013) published by the American Psychiatric Association. It states specifically:
Quote:"gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition."
This is a change from previous versions where it was considered a disorder. But it is no longer. The same thing happened to various other conditions such as homosexuality (1974) and pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder (1987).
When I was young, we used to be taught that things like homosexuality and gender dysphoria were mental illnesses. Now that I am older, I can look back and see that a lot of harm was done to people with these conditions by this labeling.
The American College of Pediatricians is a group of less than 1000 crackpots that try very hard to confuse people into believing they are a legitimate professional organization such as the American Academy of Pediatrics with a membership of over 64,000.
The AAP is a legitimate source of information. The ACP is not. The ACP is kinda like that one embarrassing relative everyone in the family tries to ignore during Thanksgiving dinner.
I was thinking about creating a thread on a similar topic brought up by noted psychologist and writer for Psychology Today magazine, Barry X. Kuhle Ph.D.:
(07-26-2017, 11:50 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Couldnt get very far. I got to Tucker Carlsons face and couldnt stop thinking about how i would love to take a baseball bat to that shit.
Tucker Carison? I stopped reading when I seen his source as the National Enquirer. Tucker is a *** boy.
Daily Signal - a heavily biased conservative news source
Daily Wire - a heavily biased conservative "news" source
Fox News - a heavily biased conservative network that parades opinion as news
American College of Pediatricians - a professional group of conservative pediatricians created solely to fight against the idea that homosexuality and gender non-conformity are not mental illnesses to be treated.
If you throw in a free space you have bullshit bingo.
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