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vavandeveresfan · 4 months

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Holy shit, the New York Times is FINALLY interviewing and listening to detransistioners.

The tide is turning.

Opinion by Pamela Paul

As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Feb. 2, 2024

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.

Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.

At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.

At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child.

“I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.”

Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves.

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.

And while Donald Trump denounces “left-wing gender insanity” and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.

Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.

“What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.”

A New and Growing Group of Patients

Many transgender adults are happy with their transitions and, whether they began to transition as adults or adolescents, feel it was life changing, even lifesaving. The small but rapidly growing number of children who express gender dysphoria and who transition at an early age, according to clinicians, is a recent and more controversial phenomenon.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition.

“But that is just not the case anymore,” she told me recently. While she doesn’t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, “As far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on.”

Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.

“The population has changed drastically,” said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals.

For these young people, she told me, “you have to take time to really assess what’s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents’ perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.”

Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person’s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A report commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain’s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country’s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that “primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

Of the dozens of students she’s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, “some have told me that they didn’t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,” she said.

They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.

“I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said.

Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they’re trying to protect — but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned.

Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options.

Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child’s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn’t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged.

Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, “Just let them transition.” The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered.

Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children’s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children’s self-diagnosis.

Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the gender unicorn or the Genderbread person.

‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’

After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive. A survey of studies on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it “could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” In a letter to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was “no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.”

Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among gender dysphoric youth is complicated by the high incidence of accompanying conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. As one systematic overview put it, “Children with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.��

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.

Conservative lawmakers are working to ban access to gender care for minors and occasionally for adults as well. On the other side, however, many medical and mental health practitioners feel their hands have been tied by activist pressure and organizational capture. They say that it has become difficult to practice responsible mental health care or medicine for these young people.

Pediatricians, psychologists and other clinicians who dissent from this orthodoxy, believing that it is not based on reliable evidence, feel frustrated by their professional organizations. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have wholeheartedly backed the gender-affirming model.

In 2021, Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man and registered nurse, left the clinic in British Columbia where his job focused on the intake and assessment of gender-dysphoric youth. Kimberly received a comprehensive screening when he embarked on his own successful transition at age 33, which resolved the gender dysphoria he experienced from an early age.

But when the gender-affirming model was introduced at his clinic, he was instructed to support the initiation of hormone treatment for incoming patients regardless of whether they had complex mental problems, experiences with trauma or were otherwise “severely unwell,” Kimberly said. When he referred patients for further mental health care rather than immediate hormone treatment, he said he was accused of what they called gatekeeping and had to change jobs.

“I realized something had gone totally off the rails,” Kimberly, who subsequently founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition to advocate better gender care, told me.

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia.

As one detransitioned man, now in a gay relationship, put it, “I was a gay man pumped up to look like a woman and dated a lesbian who was pumped up to look like a man. If that’s not conversion therapy, I don’t know what is.”

“I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.”

In May 2017, Emerick began searching “gender” online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could “pick the other side,” she told her mother, “I’m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.” If she were a man, she’d be free to pursue relationships with women.

That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn’t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.

“Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn’t control anything in my life,” Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and was immediately attacked. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats.

“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.”

Today Emerick’s voice, permanently altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she’s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. “I’ve been off it for a year,” she replies.

Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it’s any consolation, the therapist remarked, “I would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.” Emerick replied, “Wait, what sex do you think I am?”

To the trans activist dictum that children know their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted — pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures — he explained, “I was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.”

“The job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,” Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. “Children at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.”

Ayad, a co-author of “When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents,” advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. “We’ve always known that adolescents are particularly malleable in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,” she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed.

Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.

Proponents of early social transition and medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth cite a 2022 study showing that 98 percent of children who took both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones continued treatment for short periods, and another study that tracked 317 children who socially transitioned between the ages of 3 and 12, which found that 94 percent of them still identified as transgender five years later. But such early interventions may cement children’s self-conceptions without giving them time to think or sexually mature.

‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’

At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.”

“I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.”

She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category.

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

“It is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,” Powell told me. “I’ve been accused multiple times that I’m some right-winger who’s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.”

While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, “I wish more people would understand that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “I wish we could have that conversation.”

In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use.

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed.

In countries like Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Britain — long considered exemplars of gender progress — medical professionals have recognized that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either faulty or incomplete. Last month, the World Health Organization, in explaining why it is developing “a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,” said it will cover only adults because “the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.”

But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.

Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain’s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned investigation found deficiencies in service and “a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.”

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only recently agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.”

The larger threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

Of course, politics should not influence medical practice, whether the issue is birth control, abortion or gender medicine. But unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of progress. Last year The Economist published a thorough investigation into America’s approach to gender medicine. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor, put the issue into political context. “If you look internationally at countries in Europe, the U.K. included, their medical establishments are much more concerned,” Beddoes told Vanity Fair. “But here — in part because this has become wrapped up in the culture wars where you have, you know, crazy extremes from the Republican right — if you want to be an upstanding liberal, you feel like you can’t say anything.”

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.

Paul Garcia-Ryan is a psychotherapist in New York who cares for kids and families seeking holistic, exploratory care for gender dysphoria. He is also a detransitioner who from ages 15 to 30 fully believed he was a woman.

Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, “it was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.” When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female, and rather than explore the reasons for his mental distress, simply confirmed Garcia-Ryan’s belief that he was not meant to be a man.

Once in college, he began medically transitioning and eventually had surgery on his genitals. Severe medical complications from both the surgery and hormone medication led him to reconsider what he had done, and to detransition. He also reconsidered the basis of gender affirmation, which, as a licensed clinical social worker at a gender clinic, he had been trained in and provided to clients.

“You’re made to believe these slogans,” he said. “Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.”

Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of Therapy First, an organization that supports therapists who do not agree with the gender affirmation model. He thinks transition can help some people manage the symptoms of gender dysphoria but no longer believes anyone under 25 should socially, medically or surgically transition without exploratory psychotherapy first.

“When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person’s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what’s possible for them,” Garcia-Ryan told me.

Instead of promoting unproven treatments for children, which surveys show many Americans are uncomfortable with, transgender activists would be more effective if they focused on a shared agenda. Most Americans across the political spectrum can agree on the need for legal protections for transgender adults. They would also probably support additional research on the needs of young people reporting gender dysphoria so that kids could get the best treatment possible.

A shift in this direction would model tolerance and acceptance. It would prioritize compassion over demonization. It would require rising above culture-war politics and returning to reason. It would be the most humane path forward. And it would be the right thing to do.

*~*~*~*~*~*

For those who want tor ead more by those fighting the cancellation forquestioning, read:

Graham Lineham, who's been fighting since the beginning and paid the price, but is not seeing things turn around.

The Glinner Update, Grahan Linehan's Substack.

Kellie-Jay Keen @ThePosieParker, who's been physically attacked for organizing events for women demanding women-only spaces.

REDUXX, Feminst news & opinion.

Gays Against Groomers @againstgrmrs, A nonprofit of gay people and others within the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of "LGBTQIA+"

#detransitioners #detransition #gender critical #New York Times #gays #lesbians #trans #trans insanity #long post #article #detrans #transgender #post trans #desisted

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balis77 · 1 year

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Meanwhile, in New Phyrexia...

Ixhel: *Frantically putting Urabrask back together* “Ok, good, you’re awake. Look, you’re the only Praetor with enough parts to put back together, so I’m gonna need you to help me get control of this whole... situation.”

Urabrask: “What happened?”

Ixhel: “The invasion failed and I’m pretty sure we’re permanently cut off from the rest of the multiverse... oh and all the other Praetors died.”

Urabrask: “Serves them right... so what’s the problems here?”

Ixhel: “The Hunters Maze is on fire, the Progress Engine doesn’t even know what to do anymore, the Dross Pits are in complete anarchy, the Quiet Furnace is... kinda the same really, and with Mother and Norn dead the Machine Orthodoxy is under new management and it’s... not going well.”

Urabrask: “Who replaced them? Ivor? Mondrak?”

Ixhel: “Uh...”

*At Elesh Norn’s old statue throne*

Skrelv: *Maniacal laughter*

#mtg #march of the machine #ixhel #urabrask #honestly despite everything would lowkey enjoy another new phyrexia set in their current status quo #skrelv

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thatsonemorbidcorvid · 2 months

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“Many of the women in Heterodoxy moved in corresponding circles and maintained similar beliefs. They were “veterans of social reform efforts,” writes Scutts in Hotbed, and they belonged to “leagues, associations, societies and organizations of all stripes.” A large number were public figures—influential lawyers, journalists, playwrights or physicians, some of whom were the only women in their fields—and often had their names in the papers for the work they were performing. Many members were also involved in a wide variety of women’s rights issues, from promoting the use of birth control to advocating for immigrant mothers.

In the early 20th century, New York City’s Greenwich Village earned a reputation as America’s bohemia, a neighborhood where everyone from artists and poets to activists and organizers came to pursue their dreams.

“In the Village, it was so easy to bump into great minds, to go from one restaurant to another, to a meeting house, to work for a meeting or to a gallery,” says Joanna Scutts, author of Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club That Sparked Modern Feminism. Here was a community where rents were still affordable, creative individuality thrived, urban diversity and radical experiments were the norm, and bohemian dissenters could come and go as they pleased.

Such a neighborhood was the ideal breeding ground for Heterodoxy, a secret society that paved the way for modern feminism. The female debating club’s name referred to the many unorthodox women among its members. These individuals “questioned forms of orthodoxy in culture, in politics, in philosophy—and in sexuality,” noted ThoughtCo. in 2017.

Born as part of the initial wave of modern feminism that emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries with suffrage at its center, the radical ideologies debated at Heterodoxy gatherings extended well beyond the scope of a women’s right to vote. In fact, Heterodoxy had only one requirement for membership: that a woman “not be orthodox in her opinion.”

“The Heterodoxy club and the work that it did was very much interconnected with what was going on in the neighborhood,” says Andrew Berman, executive director of Village Preservation, a nonprofit dedicated to documenting and preserving the distinct heritage of Greenwich Village. “With the suffrage movement already beginning to crest, women had started considering how they could free themselves from the generations and generations of structures that had been placed upon them.”

Unitarian minister Marie Jenney Howe founded Heterodoxy in 1912, two years after she and her husband, progressive reformer Frederic C. Howe, moved to the Village. “Howe was already in her 40s,” says Scutts, “and just got to know people through her husband’s professional connections, and during meetings and networks where progressive groups were very active at the time.”

Howe’s mindset on feminism was clear: “We intend simply to be ourselves,” she once said, “not just our little female selves, but our whole big human selves.”

Many of the women in Heterodoxy moved in corresponding circles and maintained similar beliefs. They were “veterans of social reform efforts,” writes Scutts in Hotbed, and they belonged to “leagues, associations, societies and organizations of all stripes.” A large number were public figures—influential lawyers, journalists, playwrights or physicians, some of whom were the only women in their fields—and often had their names in the papers for the work they were performing. Many members were also involved in a wide variety of women’s rights issues, from promoting the use of birth control to advocating for immigrant mothers.

Heterodoxy met every other Saturday to discuss such issues and see how members might collaborate and cultivate networks of reform. Gatherings were considered a safe space for women to talk, exchange ideas and take action. Jessica Campbell, a visual artist whose exhibition on Heterodoxy is currently on display at Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum, says, “Their meetings were taking place without any kind of recording or public record. It was this privacy that allowed the women to speak freely.”

Scutts adds, “The freedom to disagree was very important to them.”

With 25 charter members, Heterodoxy included individuals of diverse backgrounds, including lesbian and bisexual women, labor radicals and socialites, and artists and nurses. Meetings were often held in the basement of Polly’s, a MacDougal Street hangout established by anarchist Polly Holladay. Here, at what Berman calls a “sort of nexus for progressive, artistic, intellectual and political thought,” the women would gather at wooden tables to discuss issues like fair employment and fair wages, reproductive rights, and the antiwar movement. The meetings often went on for hours, with each typically revolving around a specific subject determined in advance.

Reflecting on these get-togethers later in life, memoirist Mabel Dodge Luhan described them as gatherings of “fine, daring, rather joyous and independent women, … women who did things and did them openly.”

Occasionally, Heterodoxy hosted guest speakers, like modern birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger, who later became president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and anarchist Emma Goldman, known for championing everything from free love to the right of labor to organize.

While the topics discussed at each meeting remained confidential, many of Heterodoxy’s members were quite open about their involvement with the club. “Before I’d even heard of Heterodoxy,” says Scutts, “I had been working in the New-York Historical Society, researching for an [exhibition on] how radical politics had influenced a branch of the suffrage movement. That’s when I began noticing many of the same women’s names in overlapping causes. I then realized that they were all associated with this particular club.”

These women included labor lawyer, suffragist, socialist and journalist Crystal Eastman, who in 1920 co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union to defend the rights of all people nationwide, and playwright Susan Glaspell, a key player in the development of modern American theater.

Other notable alumni were feminist icon Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose 1892 short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” illustrates the mental and physical struggles associated with postpartum depression, and feminist psychoanalyst Beatrice M. Hinkle, the first woman physician in the United States to hold a public health position. Lou Rogers, the suffrage cartoonist whose work was used as a basis for the design of Wonder Woman, was a member of Heterodoxy, as was Jewish socialist activist Rose Pastor Stokes.

Grace Nail Johnson, an advocate for civil rights and an influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was Heterodoxy’s only Black member. Howe “had personally written to and invited her,” says Scutts, “as sort of a representation of her race. It’s an unusual case, because racial integration was quite uncommon at the time.”

While exceptions did exist, the majority of Heterodoxy’s members were middle class or wealthy, and the bulk of them had obtained undergraduate degrees—still very much a rarity for women in the early 20th century. Some even held graduate degrees in fields like medicine, law and the social sciences. These were women with the leisure time to participate in political causes, says Scutts, and who could afford to take risks, both literally and figuratively. But while political activism and the ability to discuss topics overtly were both part of Heterodoxy’s overall ethos, most of its members were decidedly left-leaning, and almost all were radical in their ideologies. “Even if the meetings promoted an openness to disagree,” says Scutts, “it wasn’t like these were women from across the political spectrum.”

Rather, they were women who inspired and spurred each other on. For example, about one-third of the club’s members were divorced—a process that was still “incredibly difficult, expensive and even scandalous” at the time, says Scutts. The club acted as somewhat of a support network for them, “just by the virtue of having people around you that are saying, ‘I’ve gone through the process. You can, too, and survive.’”

According to Campbell, Heterodoxy’s new inductees were often asked to share a story about their upbringing with the club’s other members. This approach “helped to break down barriers that might otherwise be there due to their ranging political views and professional allegiances,” the artist says.

The Heterodoxy club usually went on hiatus during the summer months, when members relocated to places like Provincetown, Massachusetts, a seasonal outpost for Greenwich Village residents. As the years progressed, meetings eventually moved to Tuesdays, and the club began changing shape, becoming less radical in tandem with the Village’s own shifting energy. Women secured the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, displacing the momentum that fueled the suffrage movement; around this same time, the Red Scare saw the arrests and deportations of unionists and immigrants. Rent prices in the neighborhood also increased dramatically, driving out the Village’s bohemian spirit. As the club’s core members continued aging, Heterodoxy became more about continuing friendships than debating radical ideologies.

“These women were not all young when they started to meet,” says Scutts in the “Lost Ladies of Lit” podcast. “You know, it’s 20, 30 years later, and so they stayed in touch, but they never really found the second generation or third generation to keep it going in a new form.”

By the early 1940s, the biweekly meetings of Heterodoxy were no more. Still, the club’s legacy lives on, even beyond the scope of modern feminism.

“These days, it’s so easy to dehumanize people when you’re only hearing one facet of their belief system,” says Campbell. “But the ability to change your mind and debate freely like the women of Heterodoxy, without any public record? It’s an interesting model for rethinking the way we talk about problems and interact with other people today.”

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gemsofgreece · 4 months

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TIL from a podcast featuring historian and Byzantine archaeologist Yannis Theoharis:

Athens was one of the most religiously conservative cities of the Byzantine Empire. It adhered to the ancient Greek religion for longer than most other areas. Contrary to popular belief, its eventual conversion to Christianity did not happen violently. Christianity was getting more and more ground amongst the believers progressively. Meanwhile, the ancient temples and shrines were progressively emptying but as long as there were believers they were functioning properly and had guards and went through restoration works and all, as stated by Neoplatonic philosopher Proklos (with the exception of nude sculptures which had been destroyed already by proto-Christians). The historian also claims the conversion of the temples to churches happened later than what was previously believed, around the 7th-9th centuries. As the vast majority of the population had eventually converted to Christianity, the temples were left abandoned. The empire ordered their conversion to churches so that funding their preservation could be justified. Furthermore, there wasn’t as much of violent banning of ancient schools as it was thought. Justinian did not ban the function of the Neoplatonic school in Athens but ceased the state funding unless the school accepted to add Christian theology to its curriculum. The Neoplatonic school refused but it was not banned. It kept functioning using its own private funds until this wasn’t enough and the school had to close. Evidence for this is that it is documented that the school functioned for several decades or more than a century (don’t remember exactly) after Justinian’s imperial command, which was previously viewed as an immediate or violent shutdown. Meanwhile, the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria (in Egypt) agreed to add Christian theology to its curriculum and it kept functioning undisturbed until the 7th century and the Arab conquest.

Also, he has more insight into the similarities observed between Eastern / Greek and even all Orthodoxy and the Ancient Greek religion, such as idol / icon worship, lesser deity / saint worship, virgin female deity / super saint worship, patron gods / saints etc He says there was an interesting cycle of Christianised Hellenism followed by Hellenized Christianity. Some of these elements of Christian Orthodoxy were emphasized more than in the early years of Proto-Christianity or even exaggerated by the Byzantine Greek Christians in order to attract the pagan Greeks and make them understand more easily the philosophy of the new religion and find common ground between them. It worked.

Lastly, he disputed the dated assumptions that the Visigoth king Alaric I was assisted by monks to destroy Athens during his invasion in 396. This was falsely concluded because in documents it was found that Alaric was accompanied by men clad in black. Theoharis says these were actually Thracian soldiers (Alaric indeed fared long in Thrace and the Thracians were by large mercenaries) and supports it is very unlikely based on historical evidence of the time that Athenian or Greek Christians would collaborate with a Visigoth invader to help him destroy historical areas of Athens, even if they were pagan.

These are the most important bits from memory, I am linking the podcast here, it is in Greek.

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littjara-mirrorlake · 7 months

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It's that page-filling time again! Weird Phyrexians 14-20! (Sorry for the weird light effect, I couldn't get a good angle on the whole page, so I'm reattaching a better photo of the top two below.)

14: Along the lines of tome lackeys, mites, and other small scurrying Orthodoxy servants, this one was simply made to be a bowl, carrying ichor or other liquids to partake in holy rituals.

15: This wiry creature has wrapped itself in stinking, decaying piles of discarded gore from the Orthodoxy's compleation chambers, topping it all off with a pilfered faceplate. Now, it wanders the rare dark corners of the Basilica looking for more flesh to add to its hoard.

16: Combination survey instrument and grappling hook, this Progress Engine device is used for detaining unwanted intruders. It features a prominent eye in the center, with its optic nerve wrapping up along the tentacle "arm". Smaller nerve bundles connect the eyes on the three claws to the center.

17: It's not too clear what this soft and goopy creature actually is, as it's a shy, quaking thing that's cloistered itself in the toughest shell it can find and added spikes and teeth to scare off others from investigating. Unfortunately, the ichorous tear trails it leaves behind make it easy to track. The poor thing has anxiety.

18: A helpful tool assistant from the Quiet Furnace, complete with tiny arms to hand off supplies to busy artisans.

19: This skite was of plot relevance in the New Phyrexia campaign I DM. It sucks up oil through its syringe and processes it in its abdomen, before the bulbs on its body change color to indicate the oil's mana affinity. It's how a core-born Swarm PC learned that she was in fact of Gitaxian descent.

20: Like a proto-Dominus, this being coalesced as an avatar of faith... but not the kind the Orthodoxy likes. Despite being white-mana-aligned, it shows itself to be something of a free spirit, and represents the faith of Phyrexians in themselves. This is deeply inconvenient to the Orthodoxy.

#mtg #magic the gathering #31 weird phyrexians #phyrexia #phyrexian #creature design #inktober #art

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beastofwant · 10 months

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Hi sorry I didn't mean for the tone to come off that weird and I was on mobile. I took for granted that lesbianchemicalplant is pretty well known to be Like That and should have provided proof. One of the reasons that you can search spacelazarwolf and not get too much is because she mostly uses screenshots and also tumblr's search feature is garbage.

Anyway, she frequently is weird about trans men and calls any talking about their experiences Privileged and transandrophobia truthers

And then is also weird about Jews. Like all the time. Any time any jew talks about their experience she claims they are a zionist

hey! it's all good, and thanks for not being afraid to come off anon. I don't wanna be hostile to people but it's easy to read anons as being in poor faith for.. obvious reasons lmao, average tumblr experience

anyway I do agree this shit abt transmascs is vile. it's very funny that she has baeddels in her dni but is basically regurgitating their shit.

as for the jewish stuff, I still have to reiterate that she herself is jewish according to her about, and I feel like she has the right to cricitize her own community especially wrt orthodoxy & trauma. to be honest, these screenshots still feel real cherry-picked and don't have much context behind them. most of the claims of zionism I'm seeing on her blog are pretty well-founded, especially when a few of these people overtly call themselves zionists. the exception is when she uses fanpol to justify accusations of bigotry, which I think is generally a stupid stance anyway

I don't really use this website for discourse or news LMAO this is the website where I talk about being a faggot and look at images and sometimes reblog opinionated posts. I rb'd the post we're talking about because to me it spoke to a broader issue wherein tumblr's attempts at acceptance/inclusion become infantilizing and erase problems within already-marginalized communities... Treating a community like it is Inherently Progressive is clearly better than antisemitism but it's still bad, you know?

overall I am far from a fan of OP and I don't 100% agree with everything she says or believes, but I don't necessarily think that I have to. I might delete the post because, while I am learning, I am not myself Jewish & don't wish to overstep. but I don't think she was being weird about jewish people, I think she just cares about zionism and doesn't like jumblr being full of libs lol

#mad scrawl #is there a word for this. I feel like there's a word for this #not quite infantilization. not really white-washing.#turning off rbs because people are going to be annoying and insane in my notes and I just am not into that

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mariacallous · 6 months

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In 2007 I published what was probably my most-read book What’s Left. It asked novel questions.

"Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal-left is against come from the liberal-left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don…Why, even in the case of Palestine, can’t those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see?

“After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic theology from the ultra-right?”

In short, I asked why was the world upside down? In the past conservatives made excuses for fascism because they mistakenly saw it as a continuation of their democratic right-wing ideas. In the early 2000s, overwhelmingly and everywhere, liberals and leftists were more likely than conservatives to excuse fascistic governments and movements, with the exception of their native far-right parties. As long as local racists were white, they had no difficulty in opposing them in a manner that would have been recognizable to the traditional left. But give them a foreign far-right movement that was anti-Western and they treated it as at best a distraction and at worst an ally.

I say my questions were novel because, although socialism was one of the great political movements of the 20th century, few discussed the consequences of its collapse in the 1980s. The decline of the socialist religion had as profound and as perverse consequences as the collapse of Christianity in the late 19th century. But no one, or next to no one, wanted to think about them.

As a good atheist I hated to paraphrase GK Chesterton, but there’s no escaping the old Catholic apologist. My argument boiled down to saying that what Chesterton said about God applies just as well to socialism. When men stop believing in it, “they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

After dreams of socialism and communism vanished in the 1980s, large sections of the radical left preferred any enemy of the West to the West having no enemies at all: radical Islam, insane Sunni and Shia dictators, Putin’s Russia, violent misogynists and homophobes. As long as they were anti-western, and in particular the enemies of the US and Israel, the radical left was happy to form alliances.

Or as Judith Butler explained the new orthodoxy in 2006, “Understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.”That by any normal standard Hamas and Hezbollah were tyrannical, inquisitorial, and misogynist was irrelevant. They were anti-western and that alone made them “progressive”.

Not everything I wrote in 2007 stands up well today. In the 2010s we began to see Conservatives fawning over trash like Viktor Orban, and from 2016 on we have seen the wholesale abasement of the US right before Donald Trump. The lure of authoritarianism was by no means confined to the left

But overall, what I said remains true. And just to be clear, I did not then and do not now believe in the horseshoe theory. The far left is not the same as the far right. There is a huge difference between living in a country ruled by Donald Trump and a country ruled by Nicolas Maduro or between Iran and North Korea. The far left and far right target different people, and serve different interests.

It is better to think of radical Islam seducing elements of an exhausted radical left. The white western working class would no longer die for the revolution (truth be told, it was never that keen on dying for the revolution even at the best of times for the left). But young Muslim men would fight and kill Americans and Israelis. And if you could forget about the obscurantist religious tyranny, the hatred of every human right, the persecution and murder of Arab and Iranian leftists, they might in a certain light appear to be a replacement for the western working class that had let the far left down so badly.

When What’s Left came out respectable critics said words to the effect of “come on, Nick, you are just talking about tiny groups of post-Stalinists and post-Trotskyists. The real left was in the then Labour government, trade unions and charities and campaign groups.”

I replied with words to the effect of politics is downstream of culture. Look at academia, the comment pages of the Guardian, the organisers of demonstrations, the left trade unions and many of those supposedly respectable campaign groups and charities. They are getting drunk on a weird mixture of far-leftism, far-rightism and postmodernism. They will embrace medieval levels of superstition and regimes they would have no hesitation in describing as fascist if they were white.

I asked where this was leading. The far left provided an answer when, to the astonishment of my respectable critics, it took over the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Now the Gaza war has led to another pact being formed between the western far left and radical Islam. Over at Quillette, an American academic, Susie Linfield, has gone through the whole hideous detail of how leftist thought leaders and academics celebrated the murderers. Some of those she indicted are so predictable you would miss them if they were not there.

Linfield notes that in the New Left Review, Britain’s leading Marxist journal, Tariq Ali praised the terrorists for “rising up against the colonizers” and implied, bizarrely, that the murders resulted from Palestinian frustration with Israel’s recent enormous pro-democracy demonstrations against the Netanyahu government.

Elsewhere depression replaces tedium. Anyone who remembers the scrupulous work of Michael Waltzer on what constituted just war will be appalled about what has happened to Dissent, the journal he edited. Dissent used to believe that the deliberate targeting of civilians was a war crime. Not so now when the civilians are Jews. In its pages, one writer described Israel as a ‘genocide machine’ and argued that Israeli victims should not be grieved.

“It is not possible to publicly grieve an Israeli Jewish life lost to violence without tithing ideologically to the IDF—whether you like it or not.” So grief is impermissible. Indeed, it’s worse than that: grief is colonialist.

Elsewhere tenured academics were unable to contain their enthusiasm: the attacks were “innovative,” “astonishing,” a “major achievement,” “awesome,” “incredible,” and “a stunning victory,’’ one wrote.

Ah professors. They write in ink and dream of blood.

The essential point to bear in mind is that these expressions of joy at the death of Jews on 7 October was almost instantaneous. It came before a single Israeli bomb fell on Gaza. It was not a condemnation of Israel’s disproportionately violent response. That was still to come. Instead of rational protest there was a celebration of the mass murder of Jews by Hamas, a terrorist group inspired not only by Islamism but by European fascism. As if to confirm my argument in What’s Left the far left was cheering the far right because it has no one else to cheer.

The same question I asked in the early 2000s can be asked now: where is this heading?

I do not go along with the view among conservatives that all who march with Islamists and their leftist allies are antisemites by definition. From the start of this war, I have said that Israel’s aim of destroying Hamas is impossible. I was going to say that it is impossible without unacceptable civilian casualties. But in truth it is impossible in all circumstances. The Israeli forces simply cannot find Hamas fighters as they melt into a population of two million disorientated people. This is not simply my view. Military specialists are noting the low level of Israeli casualties and the small number of Hamas kills the Israeli Defence Forces are claiming to have made. The odds are that Hamas is refusing to opt for a direct confrontation, and allowing civilians to pay the price. It is always reasonable to protest against futile wars and needless suffering, and this war is no exception to the rule.

And yet before I turn too accommodating, let me say there is no other area of progressive life where liberals and leftists ally with racists and don’t show even the smallest embarrassment about their behaviour.

Here’s a thought experiment. There is a growing concern on the western far right about low birth rates. Rather than allow immigration, Viktor Orban in Hungary is offering tax exemptions to women who have four or more children. The left naturally wants higher welfare payments for mothers, too, and in the case of the UK wants to end a nasty Conservative policy which penalises families on benefits if they have more than two children.

For all that, no progressive would join a demonstration of neo-Nazis or alt-right supporters in favour of encouraging British mothers to have more children. They would think that there was a serious flaw in a campaign that attracted ultra-right white support. They would worry about inciting prejudice against ethnic minorities in the UK. And yet they see nothing wrong in going along with campaigns that attract ultra-right Islamist support or in worrying too much about the UK's Jewish minority.

If the grim absurdities of the left of the early 2000s presaged Corbynism and the collapse of the Labour party, what do the 2020s have in store? I am trying to be objective and so won’t go off into long laments about the moral health of the sacred “Left”. I long-ago gave up worrying about that in any case.

First and most obviously the failure of the white left for more than a generation to oppose Israel while also opposing antisemitism has mainstreamed racial prejudices. The explosion in anti-Jewish attacks since 7 October is an inevitable consequence. I have never seen Jewish people feel so isolated. It’s not simply the far left and Muslim agitators who scare them. BBC presenters and others in the mainstream, who make their indifference to the massacre of Jews plain, foretell a future where Israel is a pariah state and Jews are damned by association and must pay the price. Perhaps that future is already here, and we will be permanently in a Corbynista world where Jews are seen as sinister agents in a Zionist conspiracy manipulating western policy.

Second, the uncritical treatment of Hamas naturally reinforces the most bigoted and reactionary elements in British Muslim communities. The consequences we can only guess at, but I think we can say by looking back at the last time the British left ran off with radical Islamists, they will lead us down new spirals of extremism.

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bringmemyrocks · 7 days

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"Today our military supremacy makes it possible for all men to choose whether they are to remain victims of the tragic forces of their past or architects of new patterns of life for a better world. Human beings of the Jewish faith cannot escape this choice. Jews cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot have full equality of rights and responsibilities —as individuals in a world founded upon individual rights— while, at the same time, they support either aggressively or by silence and default a program that calls Jews an indissoluble minority and asks the world for special rights for such a group. The old era of compromise between two worlds is as dead as the era of Mr. Neville Chamberlain. The age of “non-Zionism” is past... These next few formative years, therefore, are a time of decision for Jews, as for all men. Jews may no longer think of themselves, or ask a world to think of them, as a “nation” in suspension; refusing to apply to their lives the Mendelssohn half of the Lessing-Mendelssohn formula. They may not forever evade the choice and perpetuate their dilemma. With zeal and energy equal to the task, Jews must now free themselves of the distorted concept of a world-wide “Jewish people.” The hopefulness of a better world looks to an extension of the American dream. That dream will not fail; it must not. And human beings of the Jewish faith share that dream. Freed from tyranny within and without their lives as Jews, they will cut through the historic confusion about themselves and there will arise a generation of Jews accepting their religious heritage as normal. Then and only then will they be free to walk anywhere—and not just a single plot of ghetto ground—with the full dignity befitting men."

Rabbi Elmer Berger, The Jewish Dilemma, 1945, p 256-257, emphasis mine.

In his conclusion to The Jewish Dilemma, Rabbi Berger describes the importance of Jews not self-isolating with Zionism as a separate "nation-state," instead arguing for equality for all religions in all countries. Berger's Judaism was firmly opposed to Jewish exceptionalist ideas that Jews were better, a separate race/ethnicity, or that anti-Jewish hatred was a unique hatred. Berger was not a communist or socialist, although he was incredibly progressive for his time.

One reason that I like his work is that it shows that one can oppose Zionism from any segment of society--one does not have to be a radical or even particularly left-leaning--one can simply look at Zionism and name it as the racist nationalism that it is. Berger was not a radical postcolonialist, but he still managed to argue against Zionism in both Arab and American contexts for his entire adult life. I think those of us who are more leftist than he was can learn a lot from that. (I also love how he was calling out "non-Zionists" for their tacit support of Zionism as far back as the 1940s.)

Rabbi Elmer Berger z''l, 1908-1996, was a Reform anti-Zionist American rabbi. He spent his life advocating against Zionism and for Palestinian human rights. He has been almost entirely written out of history, and I hope I can share his work with other anti-Zionists to help right this wrong.

Rabbi Berger worked alongside Palestinians all his life. His story shows that there have always been anti-Zionist Jews in the west, including those outside of ultra-orthodoxy.

#elmer berger #the jewish dilemma #judaism #anti zionism #quotes #i

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vigilantkatholixx · 14 days

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VI. Embracing Masculinity

Robert Moore – King, Warrior, Magician, Lover David Deida – The Way of the Superior Man Walter Newell – The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country Frederic Delavier – Strength Training Anatomy Mark Rippetoe – Starting Strength Tony Robbins – Awaken The Giant Within Marcus Aurelius – The Meditations Sun Tzu – The Art of War Robert Greene – The 48 Laws of Power Yamamoto Tsunetomo – Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

VII. Traditional Christianity

G.K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy Venerable Fulton Sheen – The Moral Universe Hilaire Belloc – Survivals and New Arrivals Michael Walsh – Roman Catholicism: The Basics Archbishop James Gibbons – The Faith of Our Fathers Henri Daniel Rops – This is the Mass Fr. Frederick William Faber – The Precious Blood or the Price of Our Salvation Fr. Frederick William Faber – The Creator and The Creature Robert Hugh Benson – Christ in the Church Cardinal Manning – The Holy Ghost, The Sanctifier Colin Lindsay – The Evidence for the Papacy Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – An Open Letter to Confused Catholics Fr. James F. Wathen – The Great Sacrilege Fr. Luigi Villa – Vatican II About Face! Fr. Joseph Deharbe – A Complete Catechism of the Catholic Religion ——– Alexander Schmemann – For the Life of the World Kallistos Ware – The Orthodox Way Lorenzo Scupoli – Unseen Warfare John Marler – Youth of the Apocalypse and The Last True Rebellion Seraphim Rose – Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

VIII. History Revisited.

Admiral Raphael Semmes – Memoirs of Service Afloat Anne Jean Marie René Savary – Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo Claude François de Méneval – Memoirs to Serve for the History of Napoleon I K. P Pobyedonostseff – Reflections of a Russian Statesman Edmund Burke – Reflections on the Revolution in France Regine Pernoud – Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths Lothrop Stoddard – The French Revolution on San Domingo Sidney George Fisher – True History of the American Revolution Lawrence H. Keeley – War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage Alexis de Tocqueville – The Old Regime and the Revolution Peter Oliver – Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion

#books 3

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wind-to-your-sails · 1 year

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The Domini of New Phyrexia: An Elaborate Headcanon of my Own Design

The wounding of a world-soul is not an easy thing. It is a dark and awful deed, and cannot be done the same way that one might wipe away a continent. To scar the soul of a world is to change its very nature, to rewrite laws so fundamental that they are scarcely thought of as laws. In the past, such monstrosity was considered the realm of gods alone; Amonkhet, Lorwyn and Zendikar stand as testament to the consequences of such a deed, and the weakest of those who dealt the scars was still a planeswalker of the ancient tradition.

But now, we know better. We have beheld Phyrexia, and the march of the Domini. The worlds of which I have spoken, they bore their wounds and retained much of what they had been. But Phyrexia did not simply wound their world-soul, they broke it.

Their hideous works reforged the world, tearing the domains apart and sequestering them to separate spheres of existence while they erased all knowledge of the rituals that had kept the land hale and hearty. And then, as if to prove that the arrogance of Norn did not know limits, they covered the ruin of the old world with a hideous porcelain shell that blocked out all light of the world-shaping five suns of Mirrodin.

And so the world-soul of Phyrexia emerged, split into five parts and scattered across five spheres. These are the Domini, the mutilated voices of a vivisected planet.

Mondrak is the Dominus of Glory and resides within the Fair Basilica, the Seventh Sphere of Phyrexia. Born with seven mouths and no ears, Mondrak wails an unceasing hymn in praise of the majesty and supremacy of the Machine Orthodoxy. It is said that to hear her song is to understand Phyrexia, and perhaps even worse, to believe in it. The truth of this superstition is difficult to verify, as the volume and tone of Mondrak’s voice induces paralysis and disorientation even at distances where the words cannot be recognized.

Called the Breathless Choir by her fellow zealots, Mondrak is seen as a pinnacle of inspiration and living proof of the infallibility of Norn’s teachings. Despite her voice often proving destructive to the nearby architecture, Mondrak is frequently surrounded by aspirants eager to receive the gospel of the Argent Etchings. As for the Mother of Machines herself, Elesh Norn regards Mondrak as a curious setpiece and a useful resource, a rallying standard that can bring even the mites out in force.

Tekuthal is the Dominus of Inquiry and can be found in the Surgical Bay, the Fifth Sphere of Phyrexia. Having emerged from the oceans of quicksilver with countless eyes and no mouth, Tekuthal poses an endless series of silent and inscrutable questions of the Progress Engine. He communicates with and mimics those around him by shaping the quicksilver into facsimiles, and should they displease him (which they frequently do) he will accentuate the imitation with exaggerated features. Once left alone, these caricatures frequently disintegrate along fault lines that are invariably found to be present in the beings they were mocking.

The Gitaxians derisively refer to Tekuthal as the Prince of Mockery, ridiculing him for his behaviour because his design is beyond reproach. Observation suggests that Tekuthal’s presence invites scrutiny among the ‘scientists’ who are already obsessed with eliminating imperfections, as the idea that there is something to mock suggests that there is something to fix. Jin-Gitaxias has meanwhile drawn inspiration from Tekuthal’s many eyes to create his new surveillance system, and regards the Dominus as a rival who would be much more interesting as a partner.

Drivnod is the Dominus of Carnage and haunts the Dross Pits, the Sixth Sphere of Phyrexia. Born with no flesh of his own and a single eye of baleful fire, Drivnod ravages and flays any servant of the Steel Thanes that wanders too far from the pack. The towering monolith of destruction and slaughter garbs himself in great tapestries woven from his victims, and seems to delight in every scream he creates. Strangely enough, Drivnod appears to be repulsed by worship, shirking away from the adulation he receives in the more populated areas of the Pits.

As in all other things, the Steel Thanes are divided on how to deal with Drivnod. While some are content to leave him to his own devices, others like Azax-Azog and Geth see an opportunity in the Dominus, a potent weapon that could stamp out all opposition to their reign. The rank and file of the Dross Pits are far more united in their perspective, worshipping Drivnod as an idealized manifestation of the proverb that strength is the only power worthy of praise. Some even whisper that he is the Second Coming of Yawgmoth, the true Father of Machines... though none dare say it where a Thane might hear them.

Solphim is the Dominus of Mayhem and dwells in the Autonomous Furnace, the Third Sphere of Phyrexia. Born in a molten body clad in a gown of spears, Solphim is a beast of rabid freedom that embodies the ideals of the Quiet Furnace so completely that she rejects all responsibility for her actions. As though making a parody of the Furnace’s enemies, Solphim inscribes the deep canyons of her territory with draconian and contradictory laws and seems to decide which are worth enforcing on nothing but a whim. The only consistency in her behaviour is a swift and merciless vengeance against any who trespass against the Great Work, most commonly the sycophants of Atraxa.

Declared the Great Mother of Chaos by adherents of the Quiet Furnace, Solphim is openly venerated as a goddess. Her own apparent disregard for this adulation hardly matters, as Dominus worship exists most principally as a rejection of the Argent Etchings and the growing idea of the Flesh Singularity. Urabrask alone regards Solphim as an equal, a deft hand at defence and hopefully an ally in the war to come.

Zopandrel is the Dominus of Hunger and inhabits the Hunter Maze, the Fourth Sphere of Phyrexia. Born with piercing claws at her sides and spitting infectious spores from her face, Zopandrel is an anomaly among the Vicious Swarm in that she hunts with a pack. Unlike the sea of aspiring apex predators that infest the Maze, Zopandrel radiates power outward into her fellow beasts and girds them for battle as not even the magic of Glissa Sunslayer can do. As if to promote this warped idea of community, Zopandrel’s spores impart degenerative phyresis at a staggering rate that can reduce even the most fortified soldier to a ravenous beast in hours.

The denizens of the Vicious Swarm call Zopandrel the Maw of Progress, a slant against Jin-Gitaxias’ failed efforts to present a compleated Ezuri as his answer to Glissa Sunslayer. To these consummate predators, the Dominus’ ability to avoid falling into either their role or that of prey is an intriguing gesture at an infinitely more complex ecosystem. Vorinclex sees in Zopandrel a worthy general that can join him on the front lines, with a strength nearly equal to his own.

#mtg #My writing #headcanon

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vomitdodger · 1 month

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Long and thorough article. Choice paragraphs below showing every step of the way is compromised:

“In May 2021, the AMA released its Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity, “dedicated to embedding racial justice” in all medical practice. Among the plans key priorities is one whose implications for medical education and medical school admissions are readily apparent: “Develop structures and processes to consistently center the experiences and ideas of historically marginalized (women, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, International Medical Graduates) and minoritized (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and other people of color) physicians.”

The medical profession’s leaders, almost without exception or dissent, now vigorously enforce this new orthodoxy of anti-racism. Most notably, they have designed and implemented a new version of medical education explicitly grounded in ideology rather than scientific excellence. In pursuit of this project, the president of the AAMC (which accredits U.S. medical schools) and the chair of the AAMC’s Council of [Medical School] Deans stated publicly in July 2022: “We believe this topic [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] deserves just as much attention from learners and educators at every stage of their careers as the latest scientific breakthroughs.”

The AAMC’s DEI Competencies, issued in October 2021, details the new required social justice skills that medical students must acquire. In addition, the AAMC has discouraged the use of the rigorous Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) as a filter to help select medical students. Dozens of the 158 allopathic (MD granting) U.S. medical schools have made the MCAT optional. Several medical schools, including the prestigious University of Pennsylvania, have programs to admit students from designated “underrepresented” identity groups without requiring the submission of MCAT scores at all. The MCAT itself has been revised to include social justice questions that are easy to ace because the answers are always the same: structural racism is the cause of any group disparities that disfavor underrepresented groups. But even this re-engineered test shows persistent group disparities in test scores, which means that Asian applicants must score almost 4 times higher than black applicants to have an equal chance of admission.”

The MCAT was the only aspect of the entire application process which demonstrated true aptitude for a science/medical based curriculum. And they’re largely doing away with it.

And it isn’t just medical schools. The indoctrination and dumbing down of standards continues through residency/fellowship and practice. Example: This is how certain hospitals come to the forefront to promote the trans mutilation. Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston being one of the worst.

Emergency Medicine is another example. EM is represented by ACEP:

👆the president of ACEP (black female naturally-not a racist comment-just an observation for a demographic that is less than 5% of emergency medicine physicians) actively OPPOSES that anti-DEI legislation.

And to prevent trolls citing the usual lazy dumb denial of sOuRcE???? for that 5% statistic, here it is:

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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By: Pamela Paul

Published: Feb 2, 2024

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.

Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.

“What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.”

A New and Growing Group of Patients

“I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said.

Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.

“I realized something had gone totally off the rails,” Kimberly, who subsequently founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition to advocate better gender care, told me.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.

“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.”

‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’

“I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.”

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed.

But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only just agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.”

The real threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.

“You’re made to believe these slogans,” he said. “ Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.”

[ Via: https://archive.md/ercav ]

It would, but that's also why activists won't do it. This isn't about "healthcare" and it's not even about "rights." As Duchess Lois of Alberta asked "what rights do I not have as a transsexual?"

It's about conducting a social revolution, and revolutionaries don't compromise.

#Leor Sapir #Pamela Paul #detrans #detransition #gender ideology #queer theory #gender affirming care #gender affirming healthcare #gender affirmation #gender identity #pseudoscience #gender pseudoscience #genderwang #religion is a mental illness

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monratarot · 3 months

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Major Arcana - 5. The Hierophant

Please like and reblog if you find this information useful! 🌸🎀💕

Astrological sign or planet - Taurus the bull

Element - earth

Key meaning - education, unity, spiritual and direction

MAYBE card

♦ Qualities of the card - religion, values, tradition teaching ★ Associated object and location - a library, a Bible, a church, a school, a cross

the figure of religious orthodoxy

he is the bridge between heaven and earth

maintainer of traditions and values

stability and security

- married man, marriage, union, priest

- all means of communication, desire to communicate, new communication

✷Upright meaning

support

self-validation and expansion

time to commit to relationships

opportunity to integrate mind and spirit and ascend to a higher plane of awareness

offers an opportunity to question and define your values

shows you the path to follow in a community(joining a study group or learning new skills)

a teacher or educator

home - expanding your property, inviting people into your home to share your interests

relationship - committed partnership, marriage, celebrating the sacred in your relationship

career and money - progress in your organization, inspired leadership and growth

✷Reversed meaning

poor leadership

maybe misled by an incompetent or egoistic individual at work on your spiritual path

wrong decisions with moral repercussions

finding your own path in non-traditional ways - learning doesn’t only come from textbooks

possibly a hasty decision made for personal gain

Reflections

+ 9 of Wands = defending your faith at any cost; protecting what is known

+ 2 of Cups = love, partnership

+ 6 of Cups = familiarity, harmony, the past

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gay-little-izzet · 1 year

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A Symphony of Perfection

Separated as Phyrexia surges across the multiverse, Jace and Vraska nevertheless try to reunite. This chapter is a bit looser, but it explores how Jace and Vraska might experience compleation, as well as how their relationship is altered by it.

The song of Phyrexia surges through Jace’s mind, caressing his neural circuitry as it resonates. It is so peaceful, now, to hear nothing but their glorious harmony. Gone is the chaos he knew before. Creatures of flesh were so messy, so foolish, and their thoughts were a discordant clamor of emotion, desperation and desire. But the symphony of Phyrexia is beautiful. Perfect. Once, he had thought the hum within their mental networks to be nothing but barren thought, white noise in oppressed minds. But now he saw it to be quite the opposite.

Every part of Phyrexia, from the magnificent Praetors to the smallest mites, every cog and gear and engine in the great machine, had a piece in the symphony. Some sang in unity, their myriad minds becoming a singular great hive. Others, those with more important parts to play, sang above the rest, their harmonies nonetheless merging with the great frequencies of Phyrexia.

Jace had never been one for music, nor for singing. But he could feel the approach of his own melody- a song he shared with another.

He had not seen Vraska since the Arena. He cringed in shame at the thought of how he had, for the first time in years, been afraid to meet her gaze. He had been flawed, then. But no longer.

Vraska felt, somewhere deep within her, a pang of longing. Though it intrigued her, she ignored the sensation, choosing to focus herself on the task at hand- the forces of Ravnica, fleshbound as they were, were formidable foes. Soon, they too would join her in perfection.

No longer would her people be ostracized, assaulted for the mere act of existence. The Azorius, the other guilds, even the might of dragons and gods could not destroy the spirit of her kin. As Phyrexians, the Golgari would rise, strong and unified, and they would throw off every one of their oppressors. First, she would free them from their flesh– and then, together, they could rise against Norn and her blasted Orthodoxy. Vraska, while a daughter of Phyrexia, had no love for the self-proclaimed mother of Machines.

Again, Vraska felt that creeping desire within, and she felt her thoughts drift to her beloved. Had he reached compleation yet, or did he still resist her gift? Vraska found herself frowning at the memory of their last encounter. She had granted him perfection, yes, and he would soon be grateful for that… but even now, the terror in his face, the betrayal, haunted her. She did what she had to do, but… she had hurt him.

Standing amid the fray of clashing blades and bodies, Vraska felt herself come to a standstill, the chaos around her fading away. Before she even knew what she was doing, she felt the caress of the Blind Eternities as she planeswalked away from Ravnica.

Keeping most of his eyes trained on the progress of the armies that marched onward through realmbreaker’s tendrils, Jace took a moment to examine his new form.

His body had taken to completion readily, his weak flesh succumbing to the glistening oil before anyone had bothered with surgical replacement. He’d never liked that flesh. It had always felt, to him, like nothing more than a shell, a tool for his own use. It had been a tool for others, too, in more ways than one. Before this, before Phyrexia, he had begun to finally feel at home in that body.

But now, as Jace ran his fingers, plated in shimmering chrome and laced with steel rigging, across the hard planes of his chest, he couldn’t imagine inhabiting any other.

Over the last few cycles, the skin and flesh that remained had peeled away from his body. He had allowed his tattoos to remain, flashes of white that danced across his silvery casing. But the scars were gone. Mostly. He had tried to smooth away the ridges on his arms and back, but found his form, perfect as it was, still carried a memory of the manablade’s touch. But perhaps, in time, that too would heal.

Vraska marveled at the carnage as she passed through the Blind Eternities. The great and terrible branches of Realmbreaker forced themselves across the multiverse, pushing into countless planes to spread their Phyrexian gift. Vraska had no need to travel within the massive tendrils, using them instead as a guide, taking her back to their roots. Home.

She emerged from the Blind Eternities at the borders of the Mycosynth Gardens, pausing to survey the progress of the great invasion. Thousands of Phyrexians still streamed toward Realmbreaker from across the plane, heeding the call of conquest. Here, the Hosts stood proud and distinct, their own perfect materials unsullied by the touch of blood or gore. Vraska knew, having led these same armies beyond New Phyrexia, that it would not be long before their orderly ranks dissolved into a crushing swarm of bodies, porcelain and metals intermingling. In battle, there was no Orthodoxy, no Hosts– nothing but the perfection of the Machine and the weakness of the flesh.

Floating above the armies, a lone Gitaxian kept watch over Realmbreaker’s gate, surveying the march of progress. Even if it weren't for the tattered blue cloak, somehow surviving his transformation, Vraska could feel the pull in her heart, the melody humming in her mind.

She had been afraid—though she marveled that she was even capable of the sensation—that he would have fought compleation, but clearly he had finally accepted perfection.

For all the pride her new form brought her, Phyrexia had neglected to grant her wings. This was of no concern to the Queen of the Downtrodden, as she had always made the earth and the dark her home, and this form was excellent for traversing caverns and fighting in close quarters. However, Jace was currently levitating, graceful, ephemeral, and utterly out of Vraska’s reach. She would have to bring him closer to her.

Vraska sunk her hands into the malleable pores of the mycosynth, and began to call out with her mind.

There. He could feel it, rising above the simulacrum’s melody. Her song. Their song. He felt her, reaching out through the Machine. She was here for him.

Jace quickly reached to weave an illusion, dodging the porcelain honor guard that hovered beside him (a flight of Norn’s dolls, watching the watcher in case he tried to reject Phyrexia once again). They were mere puppets, easy to fool with a duplicate and an invisibility charm.

Although he could find her by thought alone, several of Jace’s eyes began to scan the area, picking through the masses to find her impressive form. Soon, one of his receptors caught a glimpse of her serpentine tail, leading up to an armored body, her shoulders, ashy and smooth, her eyes—her beautiful, terrible eyes…

He released his invisibility as he approached her, gliding down, beholding her glory. He stopped a few feet from her, and felt himself compelled to sweep into a bow. She was a commander, soon to be a Thane, and she was deserving of the utmost–

The subservient thoughts were expelled from his wandering mind as Vraska pounced on Jace, surrounding him with her deliciously sharp embrace. She held him close, and the machinery that bound his ruptured heart together buzzed with pleasure at the touch. Holding her was nostalgic in a way that only someone who had lost his mind twice over could know- it was something entirely new, and yet, he knew it was familiar.

“I feared I might lose you,” purred the gorgon, her voice resonating with the Phyrexian language. She spoke in tune with the melody of her mind, a proud and righteous tune that rode above the chorus of armies and drones.

I thought I had whispered Jace, his message dancing across her mind. He had no need, in the great Machine, for speech, easy as it was to share thoughts with his fellow Phyrexians. Vraska’s mental circuitry attuned to his own as their minds met, embracing as their bodies did, as the steel tendrils branching from their bodies met and twisted together. Their minds sang, not with the song of Phyrexia, but with their own. No, they certainly had no need for speech.

#mtg #mtg fanfic #jace x vraska #Jace Beleren #vraska #otp #no beta we die like kallist rhoka #new phyrexia

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