Notes on the Genspect conference and an important journal article published yesterday
With a subtle nod to the Chicago Cubs on this auspicious day!
So the conference was great! As I knew it would be. Coming home afterward, I had a familiar feeling that best compares with how it felt to come home from my honeymoon, weird as that may sound.
Our wedding took place in Chicago on October 3, 1992, so tomorrow is our 33rd anniversary. Here’s a fact that’s irrelevant to the point I’ll eventually get around to making but which I never tire of sharing: Barack and Michelle Obama were married on the very same day in the very same city as us! And we’re all still married: what were the odds of that?!
Anyway, ours was a beautiful wedding, preceded by a few days of warm-up events, all of them festive and fun because we were surrounded by all the people we loved best. The day after the wedding, we embarked on a two week honeymoon — also great, naturally — and then it was back to Chicago, which of course was always the plan. But when we got back, suddenly everyone was gone! We now had closets bulging with matching towels, pristine cookware and wine glasses in grape-specific sizes. Between us we had one great tan (his; my dad was Scottish: enough said) and loads of carefree snapshots from the beach — so it wasn’t like none of it ever happened. Just: why’d everybody have to go?
That’s how it felt after I went to the Genspect conference two years ago, in Denver. That time, I went as a ticket-holder, knowing almost no one. This time I went as a speaker and knew tons of people; yet coming home felt exactly the same. “At Genspect” everyone knows all the things we struggle to get across to others in hopes of being even slightly understood; but which we often don’t even utter because we’ve failed so many times, and we still can’t fathom how that’s possible.
My speech ended with this:
I’m not saying the world is against us — it’s not — rather that the world has almost no clue what we’ve been going through. The reasons for that include the reporting embargo that deserves another whole speech but has to at least be noted.
I’ll go home Monday to a life that’s meaningful and happy, if a bit lonelier than it used to be. The friends who can’t tolerate our challenging the ‘belief bundle’ may not be the people we need in our lives at this moment, though it strains comprehension that belief in the literal facts of life is, for some, a bridge too far.
There are people for whom the word ‘judgment’ is useful mainly as a form of social currency that can be wielded to punish critical thinking and marginalize anyone suspected of it.
But the friends who are able to hear you, and the ones you make going forward, will be people for whom the word judgment connotes a cognitive gift that enables critical thinking. Trust me on this: you won’t want to go back.
Whether or not you ever succeed in opening a single mind is secondary to preserving your own sanity and integrity, and for that the only prescription is to heed the words that animate this gathering: live not by lies — and know you’re not alone.
Sigh. I know I’m not alone. I’m lucky to have a husband (33 years, you guys! Remarkable considering I’m only 42) who is on my wavelength in this and all things. I also have friends and family members who get it, who get me, and I’m very, very grateful for that. So I’ll quit my belly-achin’ after making this one last, slightly delicate point:
People who give speeches to large audiences should have something more intelligent to offer than, “yes, people come in two sexes; it’s true.”
Staying with that idea: friends and romantic partners may at some point be called to demonstrate their loyalty, respect and love for us; to ‘put their money where their mouths are,’ so to speak. I used to imagine these tests more or less like this: someone sitting by our side during chemotherapy; seeing us through a bankruptcy, divorce, or loss of a child, whatever that might require.
I believe ‘my’ people would in fact show up for those events, though **technically** I have no way of knowing yet. No shade on them — I’ve just been lucky so far, meaning all I know for sure is that they are willing to say, “people come in two sexes. I endorse that statement.”
This bar is set conspicuously low. Meanwhile, at the population level the rate of failure to clear this very low bar is staggeringly high. All this feels disheartening, all day every day; but for at least 48 hours last week in Albuquerque, those feelings didn’t intrude, and I liked that.
I thought about publishing the text of my speech here, but decided I’d rather you watch the video whenever Genspect releases it. I know the presentation was made stronger by the generous, voluble reactions from the audience. There were also family photos I spent some time curating, and an animated video that was made for me by a talented reader to illustrate my opening passage.
While I was speaking, there was an unfortunate internet lapse that froze the video and undercut some of my slides, but I’m told all will be put right for the final YouTube cut. I think the layered package will be greater than the sum of its parts, so I’m inclined to wait for the big reveal.
Blinding me with science!
Over the last few months, two of my most impressive contributors were collaborating on important submissions to scientific journals, with amazing results!
Following is a clip from their article published yesterday in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy: “Order of Magnitude: On the Critical Distinction Between Self-Reported Identity and Clinical Prevalence in Adolescent Gender Dysphoria: A Methodological Commentary:”
However, this “rare” medicalization rate is significantly higher—13 to 22 times higher—than the established clinical baseline. This suggests that, according to the very WPATH-aligned experts the study cites, over 93% of the adolescents receiving hormones would fall outside the established clinical population for whom the treatments were originally developed.
This finding forces a difficult but necessary question for the field: are clinicians providing compassionate, evidence-based care to all youth who present at their clinics, while correctly identifying the vast majority who should not be medicalized—a ratio of at least ten for every one treated? Or is there a systematic over-prescription of medical interventions to an overwhelmingly non-clinical population?
The authors are ‘ML’ and Dr. Lauren Schwartz. ML has published two guest essays on TransMuted1 and has been on the podcast twice. Dr. Lauren Schwartz has been a guest on UnMuted as well as Informed Dissent; and her public appearances this year include the July 9 FTC workshop and the Genspect Bigger Picture Conference. She’s also a contributor to the recently published book, The War on Science, Thirty-Nine Renowned Scientists and Scholars Speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of the above.
More links:
Dr. Lauren Schwartz on UnMuted:
ML’s guest posts and UnMuted episode
I am looking forward to watching your speech even more now! Sounds like you knocked it out of the park, for sure. The sense of a welcoming community you describe is lovely—and as you also note, terribly hard to come by. Amongst my longtime friends these days, I too often feel much more alone than I do when alone—and grateful all the more, to have a partner who gets it, and in fact often leads the way. Speaking of partners: CONGRATULATIONS on your upcoming anniversary!!! We celebrate our 46th on 10/13, and I, too, am only 42😎. I can’t recall whether I knew of your Chicago connection. Love that, too. I was born and raised outside Chicago and as a teenager “snuck in” to the big city whenever I could, until, finally, I graduated HS and got myself into the city full time at the University of Chicago. Hold on to the glow of that conference, and thank you for your wonderful voice and big heart.
Truthfully, anticipating your speech, and that of a few others who I have some personal connection, was one of the main reasons I went to the conference - and I have to say I am glad I went.
Your speech resonated on a profound level. I am certain that it spoke to (and will speak to) all the parents, in the room or not, going through something we could never have anticipated when we signed onto parenthood, and to anyone who is shocked and horrified at the ignorance, arrogance, dismissive neglect, and outright cruelty with which our most vulnerable youth have been treated by all facets of society, as well as the utter destruction of women's rights, the dilution of gay/lesbian rights, and the assault on reality itself caused by gender ideology. Your words were both deeply personal and wholly relatable.
Disclaimer: My family are Red Sox fans (while we live in NYC, my husband is from New England and I am a Red Sox convert, having been a baseball atheist in my earlier life). I have nothing against the Cubs though! :)