Should kids medically transition between genders?

The number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria has surged in recent years. In America, diagnoses have almost tripled from about 15,000 to more than 42,000 from 2017 to 2021. In the United Kingdom, the number of minors referred to the national Gender Identity Development Service grew from 51 in 2009 to 1,766 by 2016, leading to yearslong waitlists for care within the government-run health system.

This surge caused England's National Health Service to commission an extensive study of youth gender treatment. That study is known as the Cass Review, and its results dropped on April 10. The review's author, former head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Hilary Cass, concluded that modern youth gender dysphoria interventions are informed by "remarkably weak evidence" drawing on studies "exaggerated by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint" and that "we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress." The science, it turns out, is not settled—or anywhere close to it.

NHS England opted to stop routine prescriptions of puberty blockers following the review's publication, as have NHS Scotland and the Welsh government. Major American medical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which endorse prescribing puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric kids, have yet to officially respond.

American media coverage of the Cass Review, which could throw the entire youth gender treatment paradigm in this country into question, has been remarkably muted. But today's guest is never muted. Jesse Singal has been covering this topic—and taken a lot of heat for it—for years in the pages of publications such as The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and on his Substack, Singal-Minded.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. The Cass Review
2. "Putting numbers on the rise in children seeking gender care"
3. "What Went Wrong at the Tavistock Clinic for Trans Teenagers?" | SEGM
4. "Hilary Cass: I can't travel on public transport after gender report"
5. "Mermaids' response to The Cass Review—In Depth"
6. States with legislation to curb "gender-affirming care"
7. M.P. Dawn Butler admits to misrepresenting the Cass Review

Sources referenced in Just Ask Us Questions:

1. Reason TV: "A private libertarian city in Honduras"
2. Reason TV: "Don't 'Abolish the Police.' Privatize Them."

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction to the Show and Topic: Kids and Gender Transition
• 02:14 Media Coverage and Jesse Singal's Insights
• 04:50 The Impact of Social Media and Activism on Youth Gender Medicine
• 09:36 Exploring the Tavistock Controversy and Its Implications
• 12:38 The Debate on Informed Consent and Medical Ethics
• 28:37 Social Contagion Theory and Its Effects on Gender Identity
• 34:03 Scrutinizing the Science Behind Gender-Affirming Treatments
• 42:32 Navigating the Complexities of Youth Gender Medicine
• 43:03 The Role of Data and Evidence in Gender Transition Debates
• 44:34 The Impact of Politics and Misinformation on Transgender Health Care
• 47:34 Exploring the Cass Review's Recommendations on Gender Medicine
• 49:24 Comparing Gender Medicine Practices: U.K. vs. USA
• 51:25 The Influence of Activism and Politics on Medical Standards
• 55:16 Addressing the Concerns Around Puberty Blockers and Hormone Treatments
• 01:20:32 Just Ask Us Questions: A Discussion of Anarcho-Capitalist Security

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Jesse Singal: Should Kids Medically Transition? appeared first on Reason.com.

Taking crazy pills: Former President Donald Trump said last evening that the civil fraud verdict that will force him to pony up $355 million for inflating his net worth to banks is actually "a form of Navalny" and "a form of communism or fascism."

When asked about the Russian state's imprisonment and killing of dissident Alexei Navalny, Trump responded: "It's happening here." The indictments are "all because of the fact that I'm in politics," in his telling.

He made these comments last night during a Fox News town hall. On Truth Social, his own alternative social media platform, Trump said, "the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country."

Alexei Navalny, who was reported dead on Friday, served as an opposition leader in a state that disallows opposition and legitimate voting. Navalny garnered a massive following—more than 6 million YouTube followers, for starters, with at least one video viewed 130 million times—by doing legitimately good journalism digging into the kleptocratic, repressive Putin regime. Navalny offered normal Russians legitimate, well-sourced explanations for why they are so poor: their leaders consistently abdicate responsibility, choosing to enrich themselves. Their leaders are content with everyday people living in squalor and dysfunction, as long as they stay comfortable.

Running for office, and cutting through the state's propaganda, made him so disfavored by the regime that he went into exile. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 with full awareness that he would be locked up but a devout belief that he ought to continue his work domestically, displaying courage in the face of certain persecution. And sure enough, he was locked up, then sent to an even more remote prison camp called IK-3, in Kharp, which is in the Arctic Circle. His death there was reported last week, but the opposition movement will not die with him. "In killing Aleksei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul," said his widow, Yulia, "but I have another half left—and it is telling me I have no right to give up."

Trump, on the other hand, misrepresented his net worth to banks, defrauding lenders (who…still had a responsibility to do due diligence, a fact ignored in much mainstream media reporting of the case). "Trump claimed his apartment in Manhattan's Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size," writes Reason's Jacob Sullum. "He valued Mar-a-Lago, his golf resort in Palm Beach, based on the assumption that it could be sold for residential purposes, which the deed precluded." But "[New York Attorney General Letitia] James was not able to identify any damages to lenders or insurers," writes Sullum, and "the striking absence of any injury commensurate with the punishment lends credibility to Trump's reflexive complaint that he is the victim of a partisan vendetta."

Both things can be true, that Trump attracts politically motivated ire—which attorneys general and judges are wrong to indulge—and that he also did something wrong by inflating his net worth. But he's a far cry from Navalny—Trump enjoys self-dealing more than fact-finding and truth-telling—and the way this went down, via the court system, where Trump had the right to defend himself, is a far cry from how "justice" gets dispensed in Russia—by Putin, in penal colonies, via murders of anyone whose beliefs threaten the man in charge.

Scenes from New York: Nobody asked for this.

What are we doing as a city?? pic.twitter.com/iaEBWGPMmh

— Cynical (@CynicalNYK) February 18, 2024

QUICK HITS

• "Clinical psychologists with the Department of Veterans Affairs faced retaliation and ostracization at work after they publicly opposed a gender-inclusion policy that allows men to access women's medical spaces within the VA," reports National Review.
• RFK Jr.'s "origin story makes this like Odysseus returning to the manor, stringing the bow, this is that iconic moment," said Bret Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast. If you say so, Bret.
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just announced a lawsuit against El Paso's Annunciation House, an NGO in charge of a shelter network for migrants, for "facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house." But going after charities that help migrants—whatever you think of the behavior they engaged in to get here—seems like a wrongheaded stunt.
• I do not think this is true or that there's much evidence for it:

do you want a black pill?

like… a really really black pill?

George Carlin would be pro-censorship if he were alive today b/c he didn't actually love free speech, he just fucking hated Christians

— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) February 20, 2024

• "The enormous contrast between [Alexei] Navalny's civic courage and the corruption of [Vladimir] Putin's regime will remain," writes The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum. "Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision. He is running a cowardly, micromanaged reelection campaign, one in which all real opponents are eliminated and the only candidate who gets airtime is himself. Instead of facing real questions or challenges, he meets tame propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, to whom he offers nothing more than lengthy, circular, and completely false versions of history."
• Related: People were arrested for laying flowers in memory of Navalny.

People being arrested in Moscow for laying flowers for Navalny. pic.twitter.com/8YnLpHcB0s

— Eleanor Beardsley (@ElBeardsley) February 17, 2024

• Wow:

NEW: California's Legislative Analyst's Office says the state's budget problem has grown by $15 Billion.

LAO says because of weak revenue collections so far, the state's deficit could reach $73 Billion. https://t.co/oz83vntalh

— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) February 20, 2024

• We live in the stupidest simulation:

I dunno if he qualifies as a "hero" lol this ain't exactly Normandy https://t.co/C3fXsLcnkZ

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 21, 2024

The post A Form of Navalny appeared first on Reason.com.