#Lisa Selin Davis

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Lisa Selin Davis

Published: Apr 11, 2024

A long-awaited report out this week found that medical professionals in the UK who advocate for gender transition in children are misguided ideologues.

Written by British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, The Cass Review, which is nearly 400 pages and took more than four years to compile, comes to the following conclusions:

Thousands of vulnerable young people were given life-altering treatments with “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” 

“It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population, but the evidence found did not support this conclusion.”

“Social justice” ideology is driving medical decision-making, and “the toxicity of the debate” has created an environment “where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views.”

Activists insist the science on this matter is settled, but Cass’s tone recalls a stern British nanny calmly explaining to unruly children how to get their room in order. She shows us that everything about this issue is unsettled, and unsettling. For instance, she notes that “social transition”—when very young children assume other gender identities—is an “active intervention” that may set youths on a path to medical transition. And it may even make gender dysphoria worse.

The review, commissioned by England’s National Health Service, comes after more than a decade of whistleblowing by clinicians at the country’s Gender Identity Development Services, or GIDS, which was established in 1989 (but mostly off the radar for its first 20 years, because few children and families sought its services). 

These whistleblowers detailed how kids were fast-tracked to medication while a culture of fear grew around raising any concerns, even as demand for youth gender medicine exploded. Eventually, the NHS decommissioned GIDS and hired the neutral, no-nonsense Cass to detail what went wrong and what to do right moving forward.

Her report made the further damning conclusions:

Clinicians “are unable to reliably predict which children/young people will transition successfully and which might regret or detransition at a later date.”

A disproportionate number of patients were “birth registered females presenting in adolescence. . . . a different cohort from that looked at by earlier studies.”

Many parents feared their children had been medicalized by professionals who didn’t take other difficulties into account, “such as loss of a parent, traumatic illness, diagnosis of neurodiversity, and isolation or bullying in school.”

There is a lack of strong evidence to show that puberty blockers “may improve gender dysphoria or overall mental health.”

The majority of gender-dysphoric patients in early studies found that their symptoms desisted during puberty, with most coming out as gay or bisexual later.

Cass notes that “for most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress.” She supports expanding the treatment to regional, holistic centers, essentially ending the specialist gender clinic model. That treatment should be based on unbiased psychological care, and robust and consistent evaluation tools must be developed so reliable evidence can finally be gathered. 

This final report—and an interim one Cass issued in 2022—echoes what a number of Western nations, such as Finland and Sweden, have found when they reviewed their own youth gender services. It also underscores what we see in the United States: poor quality research, an unstudied population, and detransitioners traumatized by the treatment they received.

Today, red states are banning the medicalization of gender dysphoric youth, while some blue states have declared themselves medical sanctuaries for minors seeking transition. Medical associations—from the American Academy of Pediatrics to the American Psychological Association—continue to support the “affirmative” model criticized by Cass in her report. 

In her review, Cass directly addresses the 9,000 young people who have moved through gender treatments via the NHS, stating bluntly: research “has let us all down, most importantly you.” 

The U.S. needs to form a truly bipartisan commission that looks at the evidence regarding youth gender medicine. As things stand now, we will continue to be stuck in a perpetual culture war, with parents and distressed kids paying the price.

[medusasbush]

read april 2024

Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and the flip-flop, flippy flip flop and ass bitches.

Unlikable Women Like Me: On Being a “Bitch”

How therapy-speak ‘processed’ its way into pop-music

This is not a COWBOY CARTER review

Elon Musk Didn’t Want His Latest Deposition Released. Here It Is.

Which Kirsten Dunst movie are you?

Who needs state surveillance when we're willingly surveilling each other?

When Everyone's the Main Character, We're All Alone.

Optimization Will Not Save You

Terror & Mundanity In A Makeup Bag: On beauty products, local politics, and Palestine.

I Have My Father’s Eyes and His Temper Too: A Personal Commentary on Mainstream Media’s Portrayal of Father-Daughter Relationships

Why Women Pay the Price for Caring for and Understanding Men

Wife Sentences: Lisa Selin Davis’s confused history of homemakers

Sex Positivity Was Fake, But We'll Miss It When It's Gone

The Myth of Writer's Block: and the importance of shutting the fuck up

The Tyranny of Stans

Exposed Bra Straps Exposed: Post-feminism, Mean Girls the Musical and the lore of visible bra straps.

what can we expect from friendship?

On Finding the Freedom to Rage Against Our Fathers

Don’t Call it Girlhood

Romance & Rivalry By Proxy: When vicarious experiences deliver the dollars.

Is It Ok To Dislike Children?

What Does Your Bookshelf Say About You?

‘Monkey Man’: Welcome to the Action-Movie Pantheon, Dev Patel

The problem with fan studies: Are we entrenching stan culture instead of dissecting it?

maybe we should all call our friends more

Ambiguity & Delusion: Lessons Learned From Pop Culture Worship

An Academic F*ck You to Chip Wilson's Fatphobia

Just call it jihad

[amatsuki]

There is nothing suspicious—or particularly gendered—about a desire to rest. But if we can sympathize in this respect with women who are drawn to the housewife fantasy, then we must also address the housewife’s immature side: her refusal of responsibility in the public sphere. The housewife lifestyle abandons the struggles of feminist advancement, community building, justice, and political engagement. It trades them for insularity, callowness, and superficial self-regard.

And here we return to Davis’s initial characterization of housewifery’s appeal: “I might have liked to hitch my wagon to someone, confident that he loved me enough that I could be comfortable in a state of financial dependency,” she writes. This desire to be taken care of, to be loved in a way that obviates responsibility, is not a fantasy of a marriage. It is a fantasy of a return to childhood. She’s not looking for a husband; she’s looking for a parent.

[hearthmistress]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book review by Moira Donegan of Lisa Selin Davis’s dubious book on housewives and the modern tradwife.

Specifically:

But if Davis is loyal to anything, it is the aggressively equivocal notion that women should pursue their own desires and shouldn’t have to ask whether those desires challenge or reaffirm the subordination of women. This approach is sometimes called “choice feminism.” By its logic, all choices—no matter their motivations or outcomes—must be judged the same.

The ways tradwives co-opt progressive language (especially regarding capitalism/anti-capitalism) to promote essentially capitalist and conservative ideas:

But Housewife quickly progresses to twentieth-century America. This great jump through time conveniently allows Housewife to largely skip over the advent of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. This might have proved more fertile ground: the definition of “housewife,” after all, relies on a stark divide between the home and the workplace that is historically quite recent: for most of human history, these were one and the same. It was only the advent of industrial capitalism that divided work from home—and, despite Davis’s forays into speculation about cavemen, it was only the Industrial Revolution that led to the Victorian idea of “separate spheres,” and the subsequent invention of the housewife. Davis misses an opportunity to seriously examine the work of women she calls “militant housewives,” like the African American activist Fannie B. Peck, who organized the National Housewives League in 1933 to encourage Black women to patronize Black-owned businesses—a pointed politicization of women’s consumer power. A serious historian might dwell on these connections between the ideology of gender and the needs of capital, and many have. Davis doesn’t.

For years, this was the bargain that feminism struck with heterosexuality: give us our rights in the public sphere and we will not infringe upon men’s entitlements in the private one. It was never a tenable arrangement; the terms undermined each other. Being serviced and tended to by women at home made men less inclined to treat women with respect at work; achievement and independence at work made women less interested in performing subservient labor at home. 

There is nothing suspicious—or particularly gendered—about a desire to rest. But if we can sympathize in this respect with women who are drawn to the housewife fantasy, then we must also address the housewife’s immature side: her refusal of responsibility in the public sphere. The housewife lifestyle abandons the struggles of feminist advancement, community building, justice, and political engagement. It trades them for insularity, callowness, and superficial self-regard.

[analeekasudia]

Big fan of Moira's words.

[jurassicworldtieindrpepper]

"Wife Sentences" by Moira Donegan

Really great review on Bookforum by one of my favorite writers, Moira Donegan. This one covers a new, deceptively choice feminist history of housewifery. For your friend who likes to jokingly request a lobotomy <3

[ninja-muse]

Just finished! I found Tomboy to be a very thoughtful and thought-provoking look at gender nonconformity and gender policing. It talks about the historical contexts for tomboyism, the sorts of people tomboys grow up to be, how “tomboy” gets defined and redefined as cultural ideas of “girl” and “boy” shift, whether “tomboy” is always different from or the same as “nonbinary” or “trans”, and a lot more. Davis is more interested in asking questions, discussing research, and talking to current and former tomboys, than in providing answers, and her overall message is to open up gendered activities, interests, and clothes to all kids and accept kids’ interests and needs, whatever they are.

I enjoyed seeming Davis discuss not only how girls and other AFAB people are affected by ideas of “girl things”, but also how those ideas limit and affect boys and how class and race affect who’s perceived as a tomboy. I liked that she made a point to say that tomboys grow up to be cis and trans and nonbinary and of talking to people from all those groups for their experiences, and I was also glad to see her discussing how tomboy rep has declined in media in favour of trans rep and the pros and cons of that shift. I was a little disappointed that Davis kept saying “straight or lesbian”, despite her knowing that bi and pan people exist, and that ace people didn’t even get a nod. (Perhaps it’s a lack of studies on both fronts? The fact that asexuality is relatively “new” and adult aces might be harder to find?)

Overall, I loved the nuance, enjoyed the information presented, and will be carrying some of the questions and ideas in the book forward. As someone who fit the tomboy mold even if I don’t think the term was ever used, I felt pretty validated at points too, which is always nice. :) Despite the bi and ace erasure, I still feel pretty comfortable saying “this is how you feminism” and want to rec this to everyone interested in gender and sexuality (and also parents).

(Photo taken with three of my own childhood interests.)

[bigtickhk]

Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to Be Different by Lisa Selin Davis https://amzn.to/2SEkUqe

[wazafam]

By BY LISA SELIN DAVIS from U.S. in the New York Times-https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/us/supermom-work-family-kids.html?partner=IFTTT That archetypal female who is both a career woman and a housewife — whose to-do list spans cooking, cleaning, parenting and earning a substantial paycheck — isn’t doing families any favors. It’s 2021. Why Is ‘Supermom’ Still Around? New York Times

[dyke-bars-never-last]

Any woman who had “fallen in love … with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man,” as Alcott once said, might simply believe that they had the soul of one sex and the body of another.

... mapping trans identities onto masculine females of the past, whether real or fictional, is complicated. It imposes modern interpretations onto history, ignoring historical roles and norms and laws that created confining sex-based scripts while removing models of gender nonconformity among girls.

Was Mulan a liberated trans man or a woman who couldn’t otherwise fight in wars because of regressive ideas about females?

Tomboy, sexist though the word may be, once conferred a freedom upon girls to explore the blue side of the pink/blue divide and push the boundaries of acceptable behavior and appearance. But that freedom usually evaporated at puberty. Its offerings were limited and temporary.

The message to them is that if they veer too far toward masculine — being tough, rejecting dresses and skirts, wearing short hair — they're no longer girls.

While it is impossible to know how people from the past would have . While IT IS WONDERFUL to have trans characters represented in film, re-gendering tomboys as trans can end up reinforcing stereotypes.

What liberates one group, may limit another.

While it is impossible to know how people from the past would have identified or lived if 21st century choices had been available, I imagine that those who suffered because ideas of gender in their time didn’t accommodate them would indeed FIND TODAY'S ZEITGEIST FREEING.

But imposing modern definitions of gender on the past, and assuming that all gender nonconforming people would change their pronouns or bodies, doesn’t make room for masculine girls and feminine boys to be themselves; it tells them that they have to be somebody else.

Davis, Lisa Selin. “Tomboys, Trans Boys and ‘West Side Story.’” Yahoo | 19 Dec. 2021, https://www.yahoo.com/news/tomboys-trans-boys-west-side-110029891.html.

[teachingrounds]

Lisa Selin Davis, "Why Modern Medicine Keeps Overlooking Menopause," New York Times (6 April 2021).

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Lisa Selin Davis

Published: Jul 5, 2023

“Have you seen the latest study?” the psychologist asked me. 

I had called Dr. Ken Zucker, a man who had spent decades working with children and young people with gender dysphoria, to talk to him about the history of that diagnosis. I wanted to know who got to decide when something was a variation versus a deviation; who got to decide when a way of being gendered in the world was abnormal, and required treatment. 

By this time, I’d been writing about gender issues full time for about four years, since I published an op-ed in The New York Times about people assuming my masculine daughter was transgender and required social transition. Why, I asked, would we create so much meaning from a child rejecting the gender role associated with her sex? Isn’t that what GenX kids like me, reared with the soundtrack of Free to Be, You and Me, were raised to do?

The op-ed was supported by many, but vociferously objected to by some who accused me of transphobia. I was shocked and stung by that reaction. In the piece I said that I supported trans kids, but wanted to encourage children to explore both sides of the pink/blue divide without it reflecting on their identities—how could that be hateful? I reached out to some of my detractors to ask them to explain their views to me, and perhaps because I put in the subject line “What I got wrong,” some of them—including very prominent trans activists—agreed to do so.

I won’t name him, but one person who’d written a response to my piece, which had also gone viral, was a lawyer for an influential non-profit law group. He spent an hour-and-a-half at a coffee shop in the Financial District explaining to me that nuanced arguments like mine were dangerous. Deviating from the script, he said, always provided fodder for the right wing that wanted to oppress trans people and take away their rights and healthcare. Indeed, to my shock, Breitbart had written about my piece as an example of “slamming transgender ideology.” And Laura Ingraham’s people had reached out to me to appear on her show, even though I was clearly a full-throttle liberal. This confused and frightened me. I didn’t want to play for the other team. 

Others reached out to me, too, including a healthcare lawyer, and lesbian, who lived in my neighborhood. We met for coffee, and she explained the issue from her point of view: pharmaceutical companies were conducting experiments on gay kids. Though it sounded too wild to be true, ringing of conspiracy theory, her idea dislodged some doubt inside me. Two years before, a friend of mine had made a documentary about trans kids. I’d said to her at the time, “Why do they all seem gay?”

I powered through my doubts, writing a book about gender nonconforming girls, trying to represent diverse points of view in the project. Well, some diverse points of view. My friend who’d written a book about trans teens five years before told me that I should never mention detransitioners; I’m sad to say I took this advice to heart. It was too dangerous for trans people, she said, and I didn’t want to make life any worse for people struggling to be understood and accepted. 

Still, I questioned why so many of the people identifying as trans seemed to be rooting their identities in stereotypes. I was nuanced, but not in a way that could excite Tucker Carlson. I knew, like so many people, that something was wrong with the increasingly pervasive narrative about trans kids. I just didn’t have the knowledge and the language to articulate it. (This is something many people identifying as trans also say: they had a feeling. They didn’t have information, or a name.)

Then, almost a year after my book was published, I called Dr. Zucker. He showed me the study, and it was then I knew I’d allowed myself to be captured. The study followed young boys with gender dysphoria over a 15-year period. Almost 90 percent of boys desisted during or after puberty—that is, their gender dysphoria subsided. And almost 70 percent of them were bisexual or gay. Left alone, and not socially transitioned, almost all young kids now labeled as trans would not grow up to identify that way, and most would be same-sex attracted. The only time the media mentions this and the other studies with similar results is to discount them. Kids are routinely taught that gender and sexuality are not connected, but in fact, they are deeply intertwined.

From that moment of awakening, I allowed myself to look at the mountains of disruptive evidence that I had blinded myself to in years before. Once I saw it, I couldn’t look away. The mainstream media narrative about conversion therapy, detransitioners, puberty blockers, trans kids—it’s all deeply distorted and leaves out information that every person—especially every gender dysphoric kid and parent of one—deserves to know. 

One reason so many gay and lesbian adults are concerned about the medical treatment of gender dysphoric youth is that they experienced that condition as children. Like so many, they grew out of it, and later identified as gay. There is overlap between childhood GD, and childhood gender nonconformity, and later homosexuality; thus they see these medical interventions as a kind of conversion therapy. The media and medical community’s refusal to acknowledge that has left a generation misinformed. The left wing, and especially the left and center press, have gotten this story very, very wrong.

Perhaps the most shocking thing I learned is that the medical protocol used to “liberate” trans kids is the same protocol once used to treat or cure homosexuality, and still used to chemically castrate sex offenders. What if every brochure, every children’s hospital gender clinic website, every activist organization, led with that fact? Would more of us wake up, and faster? Would more of us covert to be on the side of evidence, truth, and nuance, rather than thought-terminating clichés? 

Let’s find out, shall we? Let’s inform people on the left properly, and see if we can push past the culture war to do what’s best for kids.

==

More successful at "fixing" gay kids than the Xian Right ever was.

[dan-levy-is-my-life-coach]

“My daughter will be able to dream what Dan Levy couldn’t. Through his creation, and through our discussions at home, she’s seen a world in which LGBTQ people are loving and loved, and can create happy, full lives no matter their circumstances, no matter how far they travel against the grain.

For that, I’m grateful to Dan Levy, too.”

Lisa Selin Davis in Romper, Feb 13, 2021

https://www.romper.com/entertainment/schitts-creek-sex-ed-dan-pansexual

Photo: Cara Robbins

+++++++

I love the way she puts this.  Dan Levy and Schitt’s Creek really are saving lives and giving hope, comfort and love to so many.  Especially those that love outside the mainstream.

[ilikeyourharrystyles]

Lost Stars by Lisa Selin Davis

Lost Stars by Lisa Selin Davis

Thank you to Hot Key Books for sending me a copy of this book to go with my blog tour post. Lost Stars is about a girl called Carrie whose sister died causing her to go on a downward spiral, so her dad enrols her in a summer youth program in an effort to make her grow up. I wasn’t overly fond of Carrie, whilst she was just acting out due to loss she just seemed really ignorant to her dad caring…

[roleshirked]

A good ref for ur protect gnc ppl tag is lisa selin davis substack Broadview, i feel like youll resonate with her essays. She focuses on understanding and defending nonconformity, does interviews and comes from a gentle centrist position partly influenced by her unsavoury experience of social pressure exerted on her tomboy daughter to either become more feminine or transition

Thanks for this tip anon, I'll look up her and her essays once I get a beat at work!

[ninja-muse]

I have no idea where April went! I swear yesterday was Easter, but I’m also positive I read at least two books on this list over a month ago. Time is an illusion. (I’m blaming this mostly on spending two weeks working through Virgin in the Garden, btw.)

One of the highlights of my month was hitting a local bookstore with a colleague. I picked up the three stacked books there, and then the Ben Aaronovitch book shortly after Easter because I got given a gift card to my work. Dedicated followers will remember the Byatt from my book haul in February, so at least I’m working through my physical TBR? Sort of? (We’re not talking about the ARC problem. Gods help me, with the ARC problem.)

I swear I’m not going to get any books in May.

And now, my total books read in order of how glad I am to have read them:

A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine An ambassador must navigate court politics while solving her predecessor’s murder—all with far less information than she should have. - 🏳️‍🌈 protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters, secondary characters of colour, 🏳️‍🌈 author, #ownvoices

Tomboy - Lisa Selin Davis An open-minded, thoughtful examination of gender nonconformity and gender policing. - warning: 🏳️‍🌈 content largely concentrated on the L, G, and T

Amongst Our Weapons - Ben Aaronovitch A death in the London Silver Vaults launches Peter and the Folly on a case that’s anything but expected. - Black protagonist, Black Muslim secondary character, Jewish incidental characters, Jewish author

The Virgin in the Garden - A.S. Byatt Passion, belief, idealism, sex, identity, past, future—and a play about Elizabeth I. - warning: adult/minor relationships, sexual assault, family abuse

Portrait of a Thief - Grace D. Li A group of students is hired to steal Chinese art back from Western museums. - Chinese-American ensemble, Chinese secondary characters, 🏳️‍🌈 POVs, Chinese-American author, #ownvoices

The Escapement - Lavie Tidhar A man searching for a magical flower must navigate Wild West tropes, elder gods, circus imagery, and a brutal dreamscape. - warning: grief, terminal illness, death of a child, brutality against clowns

A Dead Djinn in Cairo - P. Djèlí Clark A dead djinn leads Agent Fatma to a much greater problem. - East African protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 protagonist, Arab cast, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character, Black author

Servant Mage - Kate Elliott An indentured mage gets brought into a team of revolutionaries who want to bring back the monarchy, and learns how much she’s been colonized.

Bluebird - Ciel Pierlot A woman on the run from an evil space empire learns they’re holding her sister hostage in exchange for her final invention for them. She’s not having it. - 🏳️‍🌈 protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character

The Cabinet - Un-su Kim with Sean Lin Halbert (Translator) An office worker moans about his life, and those of the symptomers he’s charged with protecting. Symptomer meaning ‘metahuman’. - Korean cast, Korean author, #ownvoices - warning: fatphobia

John's Turn - Mac Barnett, with Kate Berube(illustrator) Every lunch, a student performs their talent for everyone. John does ballet.

The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie - Jennifer Ashley Beth, a sudden heiress, finds herself drawn to Lord Ian. Everyone says he’s dangerous, but is he? - autistic main character, 🏳️‍🌈 incidental characters - warning: abuse and maltreatment of autistic character

DNF

The Hacienda - Isabel Cañas Beatriz marries wealth for protection, but the home she’s brought to is anything but safe. - Mexican cast, Mexican-American author, #ownvoices

Currently reading:

Conversations with People Who Hate Me - Dylan Marron A man decides the best way to tackle online hate is to have honest discussions with commenters. - Latin author, 🏳️‍🌈 author

Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust - Yaffa Eliach Eyewitness accounts, retold. - Jewish cast, Jewish author, #ownvoices - warning: Nazis and the Holocaust

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle Victorian detective stories - major disabled character



Stats


Monthly total: 12 
Yearly total: 53 + 1
 Queer books: 4
 Authors of colour: 3 
Books by women: 7 Canadian authors: 0 
Off the TBR shelves: 2
 DNFs: 2

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