Schools! & Trans

I have a medley of trans and education articles for you this morning. I start off with… more lies from the “Donald.”

Donald Trump says schools are now almost exclusively teaching kids how to be transgender
He claims he saw "programs" that showed that schools aren't teaching math or reading anymore, they're just teaching "transgender."
LGBTQ Nation
By Alex Bollinger
October 2, 2024

Donald Trump is now claiming that kids in schools are only learning about how to be transgender instead of “reading writing, arithmetic,” which is not true at all.

He made the comments during an interview with Fox Nation’s Kellyanne Conway where she asked about his plans to disband the Department of Education, which would be devastating for the funding of high-needs schools in the U.S.

Conway said that the left is only against this plan because “they want these kids to be in failing schools.”

“We’re the party for common sense,” Trump started saying, cutting off Conway as she tried to pose a question. “The left is against almost anything that’s good.”

“We’re going to move education back to the states where they can run their educational programs and they’ll do great,” he said. He then said that the U.S. is “last” in education, “we’re the worst” – which isn’t true – and that the U.S. spends more money “than anybody” per student on education, which is true if Luxembourg is excluded, although almost none of that money comes from the federal government. Schools in the U.S. get just under half of their funding from local governments and just under half from state governments.

His cult followers gobble it right up… our leader said so it must be true! When you read the comments on Yahoo, there are a lot of comments that believe the garbage.

After rambling for a bit, he promised more state control of education and claimed that education would be better in conservative states like India and Idaho and worse in liberal states like California. He said that states would have full control except, “We’ll have like one person and a secretary sitting there to make sure they have English, okay, they teach…”

“We want reading, writing, and arithmetic,” he said. “Right now, you have mostly transgender. Everything’s transgender.”

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The Advocate reported on more of his rantings.

Trump attacked people with mental disabilities and trans Americans then promoted a violent purge
Online reactions ranged from shocked and horrified to expected.
By Christopher Wiggins
September 30 2024

Former President Donald Trump gave two unhinged speeches over the weekend. His words were marked by a combination of attacks on his political opponents, unfounded claims about the state of the country, and inflammatory rhetoric targeting marginalized communities. At a rally in Erie, Penn., on Sunday, the former president launched into a tirade against Vice President Kamala Harris, immigrants, and transgender people as he continues to ramp up his divisive message ahead of the November election.

Trump used his platform to target Harris, making disturbing and false comments about her mental capacity. At a rally in Wisconsin the day before, he suggested, “She was born that way… only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Can you believe that garbage? This low life was president and he has a very good chance he will win this November! LGBTQ Nation writes that,

As part of his ongoing attacks against transgender people, Trump fixated on the idea of transgender athletes participating in sports. In Erie, he accused Harris and the Democrats of promoting what he called “transgender insanity” in schools. “We’re not going to have men playing in women’s sports,” he said.

In Wisconsin, he promised, “We will...keep critical race theory and transgender insanity out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports.”

As the 2024 election draws nearer, Trump’s rhetoric continues to grow more extreme, with a focus on attacking those he sees as threats to his vision of America. His words have left many concerned about real-world consequences, as his language may embolden supporters to act on fear and hate.

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Shifting the focus to Missouri and the so called expert witnesses.

Credibility of state’s expert witnesses questioned in Missouri transgender health care trial
States’ experts lack published articles on gender dysphoria or face retractions
Missouri Independent
By: Annelise Hanshaw
October 2, 2024

Missouri’s defense of a state law barring minors from beginning puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will depend on whether the judge in the case puts stock in expert witnesses touting retracted studies and conspiracy theories about Jerry Sandusky.

Wright County Circuit Court Judge Craig Carter, who is presiding over a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s gender-affirming care restrictions, will have to weigh the credibility of expert witnesses alongside his judgment.

Questions of credibility came up Tuesday, when the Missouri Attorney General’s Office called as a witness John Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern who testified about his now-retracted study entitled “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” which concludes that adolescents identify as transgender as a result of social contagion.

But it was his social media post about the accusers of Jerry Sandusky that appeared to concern Carter.

Oh it is our friend Bailey… NOT! He is the one with of the refuted theory of “Autogynephilia!” He wrote, “The Man who would be Queen: The Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism.” which was wildly discredited.

Bailey’s research on transgender youth has been retracted, which he chalked up to pressure from activists.

The academic journal that retracted his article cited an issue with informed consent protocol, meaning participants didn’t know their responses would be in an article. On cross-examination, the circumstances of his research became clearer.

Of course he wouldn’t admit to bad science. Over the years I wrote about this study it was by Dr. Lisa Littman later on J. Michael Bailey co-authored a study with Suzanna Diaz that examined 1,655 parental reports of possible ROGD cases. That study was also refuted! Scientific America wrote about the study,

A recent study claiming to describe more than 1,600 possible cases of a “socially contagious syndrome” was retracted in June for failing to obtain ethics approval from an institutional review board. The survey examined “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” a proposed condition that attributes adolescent gender distress to exposure to transgender people through friends or social media. The existence of such a syndrome has been the subject of intense debate for the past several years and has fueled arguments against transgender rights reforms, despite being widely criticized by medical experts.

The American Psychological Association and 61 other health care providers’ organizations signed a letter in 2021 denouncing the validity of rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) as a clinical diagnosis. And a steadily growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that it does not reflect transgender adolescents’ experiences and that “social contagion” is not causing more young people to seek gender-affirming care. Still, the concept continues to be used to justify anti-trans legislation across the U.S.

So where did the researchers get their research subject? From trans youth? Nope, they interviewed conservative parents of trans youth!

Like the 2018 study that coined the term rapid-onset gender dysphoria, the recently retracted paper, which was published this March in Archives of Sexual Behavior, surveyed parents of transgender children about their children’s experiences. The study was co-authored by Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, and Suzanna Diaz, a pseudonym used by a mother of a child with gender dysphoria. Diaz is not affiliated with an institution and had already collected the survey data before collaborating with Bailey on the paper. The study was retracted because Diaz and Bailey did not get consent from the survey’s respondents to have their responses published, although Bailey disputes this. (Bailey declined to answer questions about the retraction from Scientific American.)

The participants in both the 2018 and the retracted 2023 studies were recruited from online communities that were explicitly critical about many aspects of gender-affirming care for transgender kids. Littman’s research was inspired in part by parents’ posts on these skeptical websites.

And these are the so called “experts” that are being called by witnesses. No wonder the judge is questioning their credentials.