I'm engaged in low-stakes, low-profile gender critical activism that illustrates how deeply and widely gender identity ideology has penetrated our institutions.
Two of my doctors' health care organizations have embraced gender identity ideology in a way that affects me without my consent. One identifies as Providence Health and Services. The other is The Portland Clinic.
Recently I looked at the page of the online patient interface where the organizations store my personal information. The interface is called "MyChart." The patient information page consists of two columns of boxes. A heading over each box describes the information the patient is required to supply. Each box has a menu of possible responses. The patient must choose one of them.
I was shocked to find that the heading over the box that displays my sex reads "Sex Assigned at Birth."
I was even more shocked to find that, when I was ignorant about the significance and implications of gender identity theory, I had gone along with the form's request to give my gender identity. Consequently, it informs the world that I "identify as" male.
Since then I have sent both organizations messages through the MyChart system informing them that their records are incorrect and that I wish to have them corrected.
I explained that I do not accept gender identity ideology, which is a product of philosophy and activism, not science, and that gender ideology has no place in medicine.
My sex, I said, was determined biologically at conception and was observed not assigned, by the doctor who delivered me almost 70 years ago in South America. I added that doctors assign a newborn's sex in just 0.02 percent of births when the anatomy is ambiguous.
I asked that the heading be changed to "Sex Observed at Birth" or, simply "Sex."
As for gender, I said that do not "identify as" a male; I AM a male. I asked that they add the option of "none" to the menu of gender identities. (Since the personal information page accommodates atheists by allowing them to identify themselves as such in the "religion" box, the same kind of accommodation can be made for gender critical individuals like me.)
To understand the reason for my ire it is necessary to understand the significance of the objectionable language. Several fictions reside at the core of queer "theory," gender identity ideology and trans ideology. First, every person possesses a gender identity that may or may not be consistent with their sex. Secondly, a person's gender identity can change over time. Thirdly, a person's sex can also change. The last tenet accounts for the hedging quality of the term "sex assigned at birth." At some point later on in life an individual assigned the male sex at birth may decide they're actually female. They would then opt for a female gender identity that allows them to identify as a woman.
There is absolutely no scientific basis for this belief system that has saturated so many of our institutions and captured the minds of tens of millions of individuals. It has its roots in post-war European philosophy and has been developed and amplified by deluded academics in the humanities and unethical physicians such as John Money. *
So far I have heard back from only one of my health care organizations. The team who received my complaint said it was unable to make the changes I requested. I reiterated that I insisted on having the records corrected and requested the contact information of the area that can change the template and menu choices for the personal information page.
I will not countenance having my medical records corrupted by this pernicious ideology.
*John Money was a Johns Hopkins sex researcher who believed that gender identity wasn't innate but was instead malleable for the first few years of a child's life. The child psychiatrist Miriam Grossman credits Money in her book "Lost in Trans Nation" with originating the idea that one's notions about one's sex - what is today called gender identity - are untethered to one's biological sex. Money became infamous for the botched sex reassignment of an individual who later committed suicide because of the distress he suffered when he learned what had happened to him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
Jeff, thank you for calling attention to the gender identity crusade and how it's playing out in Oregon. There is so much that's harmful about gender identity ideology that it is difficult to identify the worst aspect, but your guest Paul Terdal zeroed in on what must surely be the greatest scandal.
The name of that scandal is gender medicine. At the heart of the scandal is the absence of acceptable scientific proof that the drugs, hormones and surgery used to work gender magic are safe, effective and necessary. Capitulating to trans activists and their false ideology, the entire health care industry has abandoned its duty to do no harm, to obtain informed consent and to properly evaluate the safety and efficacy of therapies. Mr. Terdal demonstrated persuasively that Oregon is no different from any other trans ally state in that regard.
If there were such a thing as a well-funded and highly capable national gender critical organization, and if it were setting priorities for its activism, gender medicine would be the best possible target. It allows one to steer clear of the colossal tar baby that is gender identity ideology. The trickster philosophers who birthed it and the zealous activists who implement it have set countless sticky linguistic and conceptual traps for the unwary opponent. Furthermore, the scene is short on intellectual honesty and charity toward opposing viewpoints. Shifting the focus from gender to science as Mr. Terdal does moves the debate from the world of postmodern make-believe to the empirical world of science. Never mind that the keepers of medical science have failed us in the case of gender medicine. There are plenty of other areas where they're doing their jobs. At some point the gap between the way the standards are applied to gender medicine and how they're being applied everywhere else will be too conspicuous for all but the most compromised professionals and politicians to ignore.
In the meantime, trans rights activists. their allies in the health care establishment and deft researchers such as Mr. Terdal are producing mountains of discoverable evidence for use by plaintiffs' counsel in the malpractice litigation that one hopes will do more than any gender critical activist ever could to break the grip that gender ideology has on our society.
I've been following the evolving backlash against gender ideology as a supporter closely for several years now. It has been an education on the interplay between gender ideology and gender activism, on the one hand, and our institutions on the other hand. I should add that for all the reading I've done and podcasts I've listened to, I had not heard about the suppressed study of gender medicine in Oregon. In any case, I will wind up now and be back in the near future with a few more comments.
Thanks for the informative comment, Ollie. I have zero faith in any state agency who makes or relies upon scientific claims. That stinks, because they do it a lot. But there have been way too many examples of Oregon using science selectively, or ignoring it all together, as necessary to achieve its policy goals.
Answering your question: Rachel Levine is an Admiral in the US Public Health Service, which is one of 8 uniformed services of the United States which is confusing because she holds the position of Surgeon General. It's a uniformed service because it puts things like hospital ships and battlefield ambulances under the Geneva conventions. The NIH and CDC are actually military organizations and follow command structures - this is a big reason why much of their work is of low-quality because command structures are not an avenue to good science. They actually have a "medical CIA" called the Epidemic Intelligence service, which is basically a network of spies embedded in state health departments, the media, foundations, etc..
Oregon actually is getting rid of its evidence based medicine review process, and part of the reason was they kept finding the evidence poor for things like gender reassignment that there was political pressure to cover. They also kept finding themselves facing lawsuits to cover drugs that don't work and where federal lobbyists got them added to the federal medicaid formulary but were not covered in Oregon due to bad evidence.
Incidentally, I'm a former fiscal analyst for the Oregon Health Authority and I'm currently running on the Libertarian ticket for HD 33, and I'd be happy to discuss the campaign and Oregon issues on your podcast.
I'm engaged in low-stakes, low-profile gender critical activism that illustrates how deeply and widely gender identity ideology has penetrated our institutions.
Two of my doctors' health care organizations have embraced gender identity ideology in a way that affects me without my consent. One identifies as Providence Health and Services. The other is The Portland Clinic.
Recently I looked at the page of the online patient interface where the organizations store my personal information. The interface is called "MyChart." The patient information page consists of two columns of boxes. A heading over each box describes the information the patient is required to supply. Each box has a menu of possible responses. The patient must choose one of them.
I was shocked to find that the heading over the box that displays my sex reads "Sex Assigned at Birth."
I was even more shocked to find that, when I was ignorant about the significance and implications of gender identity theory, I had gone along with the form's request to give my gender identity. Consequently, it informs the world that I "identify as" male.
Since then I have sent both organizations messages through the MyChart system informing them that their records are incorrect and that I wish to have them corrected.
I explained that I do not accept gender identity ideology, which is a product of philosophy and activism, not science, and that gender ideology has no place in medicine.
My sex, I said, was determined biologically at conception and was observed not assigned, by the doctor who delivered me almost 70 years ago in South America. I added that doctors assign a newborn's sex in just 0.02 percent of births when the anatomy is ambiguous.
I asked that the heading be changed to "Sex Observed at Birth" or, simply "Sex."
As for gender, I said that do not "identify as" a male; I AM a male. I asked that they add the option of "none" to the menu of gender identities. (Since the personal information page accommodates atheists by allowing them to identify themselves as such in the "religion" box, the same kind of accommodation can be made for gender critical individuals like me.)
To understand the reason for my ire it is necessary to understand the significance of the objectionable language. Several fictions reside at the core of queer "theory," gender identity ideology and trans ideology. First, every person possesses a gender identity that may or may not be consistent with their sex. Secondly, a person's gender identity can change over time. Thirdly, a person's sex can also change. The last tenet accounts for the hedging quality of the term "sex assigned at birth." At some point later on in life an individual assigned the male sex at birth may decide they're actually female. They would then opt for a female gender identity that allows them to identify as a woman.
There is absolutely no scientific basis for this belief system that has saturated so many of our institutions and captured the minds of tens of millions of individuals. It has its roots in post-war European philosophy and has been developed and amplified by deluded academics in the humanities and unethical physicians such as John Money. *
So far I have heard back from only one of my health care organizations. The team who received my complaint said it was unable to make the changes I requested. I reiterated that I insisted on having the records corrected and requested the contact information of the area that can change the template and menu choices for the personal information page.
I will not countenance having my medical records corrupted by this pernicious ideology.
*John Money was a Johns Hopkins sex researcher who believed that gender identity wasn't innate but was instead malleable for the first few years of a child's life. The child psychiatrist Miriam Grossman credits Money in her book "Lost in Trans Nation" with originating the idea that one's notions about one's sex - what is today called gender identity - are untethered to one's biological sex. Money became infamous for the botched sex reassignment of an individual who later committed suicide because of the distress he suffered when he learned what had happened to him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
Jeff, thank you for calling attention to the gender identity crusade and how it's playing out in Oregon. There is so much that's harmful about gender identity ideology that it is difficult to identify the worst aspect, but your guest Paul Terdal zeroed in on what must surely be the greatest scandal.
The name of that scandal is gender medicine. At the heart of the scandal is the absence of acceptable scientific proof that the drugs, hormones and surgery used to work gender magic are safe, effective and necessary. Capitulating to trans activists and their false ideology, the entire health care industry has abandoned its duty to do no harm, to obtain informed consent and to properly evaluate the safety and efficacy of therapies. Mr. Terdal demonstrated persuasively that Oregon is no different from any other trans ally state in that regard.
If there were such a thing as a well-funded and highly capable national gender critical organization, and if it were setting priorities for its activism, gender medicine would be the best possible target. It allows one to steer clear of the colossal tar baby that is gender identity ideology. The trickster philosophers who birthed it and the zealous activists who implement it have set countless sticky linguistic and conceptual traps for the unwary opponent. Furthermore, the scene is short on intellectual honesty and charity toward opposing viewpoints. Shifting the focus from gender to science as Mr. Terdal does moves the debate from the world of postmodern make-believe to the empirical world of science. Never mind that the keepers of medical science have failed us in the case of gender medicine. There are plenty of other areas where they're doing their jobs. At some point the gap between the way the standards are applied to gender medicine and how they're being applied everywhere else will be too conspicuous for all but the most compromised professionals and politicians to ignore.
In the meantime, trans rights activists. their allies in the health care establishment and deft researchers such as Mr. Terdal are producing mountains of discoverable evidence for use by plaintiffs' counsel in the malpractice litigation that one hopes will do more than any gender critical activist ever could to break the grip that gender ideology has on our society.
I've been following the evolving backlash against gender ideology as a supporter closely for several years now. It has been an education on the interplay between gender ideology and gender activism, on the one hand, and our institutions on the other hand. I should add that for all the reading I've done and podcasts I've listened to, I had not heard about the suppressed study of gender medicine in Oregon. In any case, I will wind up now and be back in the near future with a few more comments.
Thanks for the informative comment, Ollie. I have zero faith in any state agency who makes or relies upon scientific claims. That stinks, because they do it a lot. But there have been way too many examples of Oregon using science selectively, or ignoring it all together, as necessary to achieve its policy goals.
Answering your question: Rachel Levine is an Admiral in the US Public Health Service, which is one of 8 uniformed services of the United States which is confusing because she holds the position of Surgeon General. It's a uniformed service because it puts things like hospital ships and battlefield ambulances under the Geneva conventions. The NIH and CDC are actually military organizations and follow command structures - this is a big reason why much of their work is of low-quality because command structures are not an avenue to good science. They actually have a "medical CIA" called the Epidemic Intelligence service, which is basically a network of spies embedded in state health departments, the media, foundations, etc..
Oregon actually is getting rid of its evidence based medicine review process, and part of the reason was they kept finding the evidence poor for things like gender reassignment that there was political pressure to cover. They also kept finding themselves facing lawsuits to cover drugs that don't work and where federal lobbyists got them added to the federal medicaid formulary but were not covered in Oregon due to bad evidence.
Incidentally, I'm a former fiscal analyst for the Oregon Health Authority and I'm currently running on the Libertarian ticket for HD 33, and I'd be happy to discuss the campaign and Oregon issues on your podcast.