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Radical Distrust Of Radicalized Institutions

Media, medicine, libraries -- all examples of institutions that abandon professional standards to push gender ideology
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The progressive journalist Jesse Singal asks a reasonable question:

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He continues:

Here’s why this stuff matters to lots of us: because even mainstream progressives act like when it comes to LGBT issues, there are no enemies, barriers, or restraints to the left. When Good Morning America does a feature interview on lovable gay child mascot, drag queen Desmond Is Amazing, this stuff is not remotely niche anymore. The media behave like propagandists on all things LGBT. For example, NBC News — not Pink News, but NBC News — ran this week a completely uncritical story about a new trend: microdosing on hormones to achieve an androgynous look. Excerpt:

Marisa Rivas never felt comfortable living as a woman, but doesn’t identify as a man either.

Last year, Rivas, 30, a college admissions coordinator in Los Angeles, had a mastectomy. This year, Rivas started using gender-neutral “they” and “them” pronouns.

Then, at the end of June, Rivas went to the Los Angeles LGBT Center in West Hollywood to talk to a doctor about going on “low-dose” testosterone, known colloquially as “microdosing.” Rivas hopes to achieve a sharper jawline and a more androgynous physique without overtly masculine features like facial hair. The goal is an appearance that is not clearly male or female.

“I still want to be somewhere in the middle,” Rivas said.

Hormone microdosing is of growing interest to some nonbinary people like Rivas who want to masculinize or feminize their bodies in subtle ways. There is little research on the technique’s prevalence, but doctors who treat transgender and nonbinary people say the medical community should consider the needs of those who want to change their bodies without medically transitioning fully to the opposite gender.

It’s a long story, but at no point is the question ever asked: what are the healthy risks of this therapy? The only question is: How can the medical community more quickly give people the drugs they want to change their bodies as they desire?

I learned about this story from Jesse Singal, who is an actual professional science journalist.

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Meanwhile, the nation’s librarians have been meeting to figure out how to queer your children’s reading. No, really:

The world’s largest library association’s annual conference this year featured more than 100 workshops with an “equity, diversity, and inclusion” theme, according to the American Library Association’s conference catalog. That included workshops with these titles (some shortened): “Creating Queer-Inclusive Elementary School Library Programming,” “Developing an Online Face for a Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection,” and “Telling Stories, Expanding Boundaries: Drag Queen Storytimes in Libraries.”

The ALA annual conference’s workshop selections also included “A Child’s Room to Choose: Encouraging Gender Identity and Expression in School and Public Libraries,” and “Are You Going to Tell My Parents?: The Minor’s Right to Privacy in the Library.” Politically charged talks and workshops like these formed at least one-third of the conference offerings, according to the ALA’s own description and a review of the conference catalog.

You know how many people attended that conference this year? 21,460. More:

The June 24 workshop on “Creating Queer-Inclusive Elementary School Library Programming” discussed “ways to dismantle barriers” to such programs, including “crafting arguments,” “reviewing legislation,” and “listing talking points.” The description makes it clear that the workshop is not about only selecting books on this topic but also creating “services and programs.” Please note: The title says elementary school. That’s children younger than 13. 

One of the presenters for this workshop, Lucy Santos Green, is the incoming chairwoman for the Educators of School Librarians section of the American Association of School Librarians. Let that one sink in. Then juxtapose it with the description of the workshop about underage children’s “privacy rights” from their parents, which “explore[d] positive and proactive ways that libraries can protect minors’ privacy and confidentiality” and insisted children “have a right to privacy and confidentiality in what they read and view in the library.”

At still another ALA conference workshop, participants brainstormed a list of book recommendations featuring “non-trad families,” which included the titles “My Brother’s Husband” and “Pregnant Butch.”

So, I wonder how Johnny’s dad the mill worker is going to feel when he learns that his son’s elementary school librarian recommended that the boy read Pregnant Butch — about a hypermasculine lesbian gestating — and strategized with the lad about how to keep his parents in the dark about his reading habits.

Joy Pullman observes:

All these people, and this large organization that serves almost exclusively public institutions, clearly feel completely comfortable broadcasting their cheerful feelings about queer sex — and other extremely politicized and controversial subjects — in public. Have any of them ever stopped to think about how their decision to do so may contribute to some of the polarization, alienation, and anger Americans are experiencing towards each other currently?

Gang, can we please stop being idiots about this stuff? Can we recognize what’s going on here? Leading institutions in American society are casting aside all sense of professional judgment for the sake of mainstreaming this gender-ideology insanity, and related phenomena. Radical distrust of these institutions is the only sane response.

UPDATE: Libby Emmons reports on how DQSH is being used to groom kids:

The new trend of hosting “drag queen story hour” at children’s libraries has been touted as part of diversification efforts. The practice of librarians bringing drag queens to read to children has come under fire for sexualizing children. Librarians came to the defense of this programming, touting it as innocent and family oriented, but new photographs have emerged to belie that claim, of children obscenely draped over drag queens in a way that would be obviously disgusting if they were female beauty queens.

Such photos taken at a Drag Queen Story Hour event at St. John’s Library in Portland, Oregon circulated on Facebook. Parents complained about the event, showing the photos of children lounging atop of the costumed queens on the floor, grabbing at false breasts, and burying their faces in their bodies.

The library had uploaded the photos to their Flickr feed, but they’re not available there anymore. Lifesite News archived them. Multnomah County Library took the photos down, without a word.

If the photos are innocent, showing inclusion and queer diversity, then why take them down? Even assuming these story hours were concocted with the best intentions, it seems crazy that librarians could be so blind to the reality that drag, as entertaining and culturally campy as it is for adult audiences, is not sex ed but sex entertainment, and not for kids.

More:

Take, for example, the drag story hours and associated events at the Brooklyn Public Library. “Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is just what it sounds like—drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores. DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models,” says a library writeup.

Associated events include makeup tutorials, like this one at the Brighton Beach branch: “Kids and teens are welcome to learn how to apply eye makeup in a fabulous way during this one-hour workshop with Drag Queen Story Hour. Participants will learn techniques for applying eye makeup and then have the opportunity to practice on themselves! All genders welcome. This workshop will: Provide a safe space for kids to express their gender however they like. Provide a positive queer role model and affirmation for teens of all genders and identities. Teach a skill that kids can learn and practice on their own. All makeup and supplies will be provided.”

Makeup tutorials, photos of kids laying atop grown men who are wearing sexualized female costumes, and encouraging gender fluidity gives truth to the lie that drag story hour isn’t about sexuality or sexualizing children. Children are drawn to sparkles and glitter, and using those things to make sexuality seem like mere play is nothing more than grooming kids to be sexual objects, not participants.

At the Multnomah County Library, St. John’s Branch, October 2018

UPDATE.2: A comment from a reader posting as “Anonymous Librarian”:

The American Library Association has been cutting edge progressive for as long I’ve been a librarian (over 20 years) and even before that the ALA was a byword for knee jerk liberalism — back when “knee jerk liberalism” was a byword. It long ago cast “aside all sense of professional judgment” whenever professional judgment conflicted with a progressive agenda. As a librarian I’ve had a ringside seat at this circus. The ALA reliably construes any and all Republican, conservative or right wing views as threats to its core values while ignoring or downplaying any actual challenges to free speech or access from the left.

I don’t know what a Ben Op for librarians looks like (although it’s not hard to imagine now that I think about it), but I’ve recently taken what steps I can to protect myself from my professional association. For instance, our family recently left our self styled affirming mainline church for a more conservative denomination in the same tradition. That’s not much protection, I guess, but if someday I get in trouble or work, or lose my job, because of my religious views, I would like, at least, be among those who share my views.

In spite of numerous declarations of devotion to diversity, inclusion, and free speech, I would never share any of my non progressive views with my colleagues unless I already knew that they were sympathetic. That’s no real burden to me personally, as I prefer to keep my views to myself, but still it’s a sad commentary for a profession that aims to “cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.” (The ALA “Library of Bill of Rights”)

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