Dear Weekend Jolter,
The public accounts of so-called “detransitioners” are heavy with details that disturb. But in reading, and now listening to, Caroline Downey’s NR series on those who gender-transitioned at a young age, and then transitioned back, I was struck most by the ordinary, small details as relayed by one of her subjects, a woman who goes by “Peregrine.”
After first taking testosterone a decade ago, then undergoing a double mastectomy, then finding her way back to her female identity, Peregrine had a baby boy. She told Caroline she wasn’t bothered by her now-lower voice — until she had him: “He doesn’t respond as much to my voice,” she said, “unless I’m speaking in a really high register.”
It’s an obvious point, maybe. But it’s not necessarily one you often hear in the “transition” debate. Peregrine’s descriptions of the frustrations, amid the joys, of motherhood help to illustrate why people like her are speaking with reporters and sharing their stories publicly at all. There’s a human story that’s being lost in politics. They want it told. What those who transitioned back — and if you read and hear their accounts, you’ll understand why they did — want is for kids, and their parents, to have better information. “I know what I’m talking about,” Peregrine told Caroline.
This past week, we lifted the paywall on Caroline’s new podcast series telling several of the stories she’s been reporting on for the website all year. The Detransitioners, we hope, can add to the public record as lawmakers weigh how much and whether to regulate this sector of the medical industry as it pertains to minors. Too often, these debates turn reductive: Trans-movement critics sometimes resort to mockery in pursuit of the social-media dunk. On the other side, advocates and their political/media allies tend to brand any attempt to regulate gender medicine for kids as “anti-trans,” even when legislation is intended to protect, not target, those kids — as Maddy Kearns recalls, President Biden once described such measures as “close to sinful.”
But Caroline’s podcast series deals not in the abstract, not in the partisan, but in the human. Over the course of a little over an hour, and three episodes, you’ll hear from Peregrine, Laura, and Evie. Here’s Caroline, putting the stories in national context, statistically, and explaining some of the patterns she noticed in the course of her reporting:
About 15,000 kids and teens were diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the U.S. in 2017, according to a Reuters analysis. In 2021, that number nearly tripled.
During those five years, almost 5,000 children received puberty blockers to suppress their natural sex characteristics. And 14,000 children received hormone injections to mimic their preferred sex. Between 2019 and 2021, 700 kids had double mastectomies, the removal of healthy breasts to masculinize the chest. . . .
I spoke to detransitioners and medical professionals who dissented from their field’s consensus on the matter to see what lurked beneath the surface.
As the detransitioners relayed their experiences, which in every case included some form of childhood abuse and neglect, I started noticing persistent themes. . . . While much is still unknown about the subject, one thing is crystal clear: The medical industry, left-wing media, and trans activists are ignoring the sources of struggle that often lead to youth gender transition.
Again, we’ve lifted the paywall on this podcast series after an early-access period for subscribers, so it’s free. This might sound like my “webathon voice,” but I’m not asking for money (this time!). The political question surrounding these surgeries isn’t going away, as we saw during the most recent GOP primary debate. Neither is the legal action. Neither is the question of why it is supposedly off-limits to restrict these interventions for minors when so many other activities are restricted by age, in some cases even with parental consent, as Dan McLaughlin details here.
“There’s going to be a wave of detransitioners coming,” Peregrine told Caroline. “I am the canary in the coal mine.”
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
It’s time: Chris Christie Needs to Stand Down
The House’s timing on this vote was peculiar, but the investigation is what matters: On Impeaching Biden
A high-profile resignation at UPenn is only a first step: The Rot at Universities Goes Deeper Than Elizabeth Magill
ARTICLES
Andrew McCarthy: The Hunter Biden Circus Comes to Capitol Hill
Isaac Willour: Anti-Racism Is a Religion — and Nearing Cult Status
Joseph Loconte: When the United Nations Actually Stood for Something Good
Wilfred Reilly: The Race War That Isn’t
Mike Pence: The Biden Administration’s Latest Assault on the Pro-Life Movement
Noah Rothman: The Retribution Election
Noah Rothman: Harvard Chooses DEI over Academics
Philip Klein: What Doug Emhoff’s Rewrite of Hanukkah Says about the Left’s Attitude toward Judaism
Ryan Mills: In Plan to Revive Ailing City, Portland Task Force Calls for Ban on Public Drug Use, Moratorium on New Taxes
Charles C. W. Cooke: Joe Biden Ought to Be Thrilled by the Prosecution of Hunter Biden, the ‘Wealthy Tax Cheat’
John Fund: Comparing — and Contrasting — Javier Milei’s Inaugural Speech with FDR’s
Brittany Bernstein: Planned Parenthood Received Nearly $2 Billion in Federal Funding over Three-Year Span, Congressional Probe Finds
Christian Schneider: A Digital-Surveillance State Won’t Make Us Any Safer
Robert C. O’Brien: America Needs a Bipartisan Shipbuilding Deal
Andrew Stuttaford: Where Is Alexei Navalny?
Caroline Downey: Boston Mayor Claims ‘Electeds of Color’ Christmas Party Invite Was an ‘Honest Mistake’
CAPITAL MATTERS
Kevin Hassett says inflation hasn’t been whipped yet: Inflation to Powell: I’m Not Dead Yet
Steve Hanke & John Greenwood, with a dour outlook: The Economy Is Running on Fumes. A Recession Is Right around the Corner
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen writes about four retiring museum directors, and their legacies: End of the Year, End of an Era for Four Directors
Dan McLaughlin, on a television legend: R.I.P. Andre Braugher
EXCERPTS/SIDE B
NR’s editorial, on the Biden-impeachment-inquiry vote:
Is it a good idea to go down this route? Republicans make much of the fact that they will be in a stronger position to enforce their subpoenas now that they are conducting an inquiry. But they had their dramatic showdown with Hunter Biden over his subpoena yesterday prior to the impeachment vote. It’d have made more sense, as our own Andy McCarthy points out, to authorize the impeachment inquiry first, and then subpoena Hunter.
Regardless, even if the House holds Hunter Biden in contempt for not showing up for his testimony, there’s no way this Justice Department would ever prosecute him for it. And even if Hunter shows up, he’s clearly going to take the Fifth — impeachment inquiry or no.
At the end of the day, the House investigation into the Biden influence-peddling business is about uncovering as many facts as possible for the sake of public accountability and, in sheer political terms, convincing the public the president was part of an inherently corrupt scheme to profit off his influence and prominence (since this seems pretty clearly to be true). Republicans have already made much progress in this project. Impeachment might help by bringing some more attention to the investigation. But it also adds an element of complexity since the standard no longer is whether what Joe Biden did was dishonest or wrong but whether it constitutes bribery or another high crime or misdemeanor. Also, given the difficulty Republicans had corralling the votes for an inquiry, they may not be able to muster the votes for articles of impeachment, which would delight the White House.
The most important thing is that the investigation keeps going. Republicans have documented the ungodly amount of foreign money that sluiced through Biden accounts. They have demolished Biden’s lies about not knowing about or being involved in the family business.
Christian Schneider explores the liberty-vs.-safety debate and explains why the application of digital-surveillance technology should alarm us:
With technology that currently exists, we could reduce criminal activity significantly if citizens allowed themselves to be monitored. Just last month, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that every car be fitted with a device that would prohibit the car from exceeding the posted speed limit. In Washington, D.C., auto theft was so rampant, the police threw up their hands and gave people free Apple tracking devices to hide in their car so the car could be found when it was inevitably stolen. When Democrats passed a massive infrastructure bill in 2021, it included a provision requiring auto manufacturers to install a “kill switch” on cars that would either disable the car automatically if it detected erratic driving or allow a third party to disable the car remotely.
If safety at any cost is the goal, why shouldn’t every car be equipped with an ignition lock that would require the driver to pass a breathalyzer before they start the engine? Or with a camera so police can monitor the goings-on inside the car as it is driving?
And our money isn’t safe, either. The Treasury Department is currently debating whether to create a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, which is effectively a “digital dollar” — completely trackable and revocable based on bureaucratic fiat. Unlike cash, if the Treasury secretary thinks you’re spending too much money on whiskey or gambling or entertaining amorous partners (or worse yet, actually wasting your money), he or she could set limits to curtail your spending habit. And if you are accused of a crime, the federal government could wipe out your savings completely with the press of a button.
And, of course, there is the possibility that the government could build a giant DNA database so everyone is instantly identifiable and trackable. For decades, New Jersey has kept DNA samples from every child born in the state (through the blood drawn from those foot pricks they give newborns) without parents’ informed consent. So the state now has DNA samples from millions of its residents who were unaware their genetic blueprint was being held in a state database. (New Jersey isn’t alone: Lawsuits against such databases were filed in Texas, Minnesota, and Michigan, where the samples were actually sold to for-profit companies for research.)
But perhaps the biggest battle in the liberty-vs.-safety cage match is found in the rapid development of facial-recognition technology. In 2023, just about every American is equipped with a 4K camera in their pocket; if algorithms keep developing at this pace, soon a camera will be able to tell you everything about a person at whom it is aimed.
Noah Rothman torches Harvard for its decision to stick with Claudine Gay in the face of a double controversy:
Claudine Gay is off the hook. Harvard’s president brought opprobrium upon herself following a glib performance before a congressional committee last week. There, she and two of her counterparts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania displayed conspicuous tolerance for acts of antisemitic harassment. The same performance cost Penn president Liz Magill and a university board member their jobs, and some assumed that Gay, too, would find herself on the wrong side of Harvard’s stakeholders. That was a misreading of the extent to which Harvard has committed itself to the pursuit of ideological objectives over and above, you know, academics.
The academy has contorted itself into hideous logical pretzels in its effort to shield Gay from consequences for her actions. The hundreds of Harvard faculty who have rallied around her maintain that calls for Gay’s job are nothing less than a full-frontal assault on academic excellence. But no sooner did they attempt this exercise in subject-changing then was it discovered that Gay herself has little fealty to the tenets of proper scholarship.
As the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium and others have now demonstrated beyond any doubt, Gay’s modest contributions to the sum of human knowledge were plagued by plagiarism. This offense, too, was summarily dismissed by Harvard’s stewards. The university has made an exception to its own rules by allowing Gay to update her decades-old work so that it comports with the academic standards to which she should have adhered at the time of their publication.
Once again, Wilfred Reilly performs valuable work in sorting through the data in a sensitive debate — this time, countering the notion that interracial violence is spiraling out of control:
Throughout modern internet culture, we often see snickering references to the idea that black people commit virtually all modern crime, and that a huge amount of this crime targets white people. The common phrases “13/52” and “13/60,” for example, are oblique references to the allegation that African Americans make up (X) percentage of the U.S. population but commit (Y) percentage of either murder or all violent crime. This sort of claim is hardly marginal: No less a giant of the modern Right than President Donald Trump once tweeted out a famous graphic asserting that, in the representative year of 2015, “whites killed by blacks” made up 81 percent of all white murder victims.
The majority of stuff like this is not even in the same ballpark as the truth. The black homicide rate, specifically, is quite high. But, by most accounts, over 80 percent of the murderers of white Americans are themselves suntan-challenged, and the person most likely to kill you — “Cherchez la femme” — is your wife or husband. More broadly, there exists a national crime report (the “BJS-NCVS”) which comes out annually, and we can . . . just look at it to get a near-exact fix on totals, rates, and trends across all crimes nationally. Per this data, in 2018–19 (the last year to include Asian Americans as a distinct category, and a year during which white and Hispanic crime totals were reported separately), blacks made up “just” 21.7 percent of the offenders responsible for index violent crimes. This is, importantly, according to a victim-reported table subject to neither racial bias effects nor intentional under-reporting by the police.
Whites committed the empirical majority of serious violent crime, including 62.1 percent of all offenses against whites, roughly 11 percent of the offenses against blacks, 28.2 percent of offenses targeting Hispanics, almost 25 percent of offenses against Asians — and over 50 percent of all index violent offenses. Hispanics, a mostly Caucasian ethnic group, committed another 14.4 percent. To be sure, the black figures do indicate overrepresentation among criminals — we make up barely 13 percent of the American population — but to nothing like the degree alleged online, and before any adjustment for obvious factor variables like median or modal age, region of residence, and income or social class.
Shout-Outs
James Bennet, at the Economist: When the New York Times lost its way
John Tierney, at City Journal: The Covid Catastrophe
James Piereson & Naomi Schaefer Riley, at the Wall Street Journal: Why Go to College if the World Is About to End?
Benjamin Rothove, at the College Fix: Music education ‘remains inherently racist,’ scholars say
CODA
I’ll be handing the wheel over to Jack Crowe next week, while I take a breather. Have a wonderful and restful Christmas week/weekend/rest of month, everyone. Paul shows how it’s done.