#yale review

[putall]

Kurt Cobain in front of a Jenny Holzer installation. Photo by Stephen Sweet for Yale Review.

[soracities]

Fady Joudah, on his new poetry collection "[ ... ]", in an interview with Aria Aber for The Yale Review [ID'd]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine for Erin In The Morning:

On Monday, a team of nine international experts on transgender care drafted a 39-page response paper to the Cass Review. The paper argues that the Cass Review, including the additional York Reviews, has numerous methodological problems in both how it was conducted and how it interprets its data, and that it has been grossly misused by governmental bodies across the world in justifying bans on gender affirming care, especially for minors. The Cass Review is a review of the literature on puberty blockers’ effects on transgender youth conducted by Dr. Hillary Cass, a researcher who has no prior experience working with transgender youth, and who has consulted with Ron DeSantis appointed Florida medical board members in establishing the Review. In addition to the main document outlining clinical recommendations, it also has several systematic reviews conducted by researchers from the University of York. The Review has been used to justify bans on puberty blockers in England, and has been cited in court cases restricting gender affirming care across the United States.

“The Review repeatedly misuses data and violates its own evidentiary standards by resting many conclusions on speculation. Many of its statements and the conduct of the York [systematic reviews] reveal profound misunderstandings of the evidence base and the clinical issues at hand,” says the paper. “The Review also subverts widely accepted processes for development of clinical recommendations and repeats spurious, debunked claims about transgender identity and gender dysphoria. These errors conflict with well-established norms of clinical research and evidence-based healthcare. Further, these errors raise serious concern about the scientific integrity of critical elements of the report’s process and recommendations.” The article is entitled “An Evidence-Based Critique of ‘The Cass Review’ on Gender-affirming Care for Adolescent Gender Dysphoria,” and is authored by Dr. Meredithe McNamara, Dr. Kellan Baker, Dr. Kara Connelly, Dr. Aron Janssen, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Dr. Ken C. Pang, Dr. Ayden Scheim, Dr. Jack Turban, and Dr. Anne Alstott. It was announced both by Turban in a post on Twitter, as well as on the Yale Law School’s website. Both McNamara and Alstott are professors at Yale who co-founded the Integrity Project, a project that aims to provide legal justice to marginalized peoples.

The core of the paper is divided into seven sections that each tackle a different element of the Review. The first section focuses on how the Review actually is compliant with established standards of care recommendations for providing legal protections for gender affirming care. The authors compare it to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) eighth rendition for standards of care and the Endocrine Society clinical practice guidelines, finding that recommendations for individualized and evidence based care are consistent across these different documents. The authors state, “the Review does not conclude that gender-affirming medical care for adolescent gender dysphoria should be banned. Thus, it should not be cited in support of bans on medical treatments for gender dysphoria.”

[...] This paper shines a new light on interpretations for the Cass Review, suggesting that it’s based on low quality work and has been falsely interpreted in legal proceedings across the world. The lack of expertise from Cass herself contrasts with the expertise of the authors of the paper, all of whom represent institutions across the world that have decades of research and clinical practice on transgender individuals. Legal decisions made using the Cass Review need to be reevaluated in light of the sweeping critiques found within this paper.

Yale Law School researchers wrote an article debunking the anti-trans Cass Review that has been used to justify bans on gender-affirming care in the UK and USA.

[katereads]

[thesobsister]

A lovely article on the career and art of Richard Scarry by ace artist Chris Ware.

[dqrathalos]

Big news for The Cass Review.

The peer reviews are starting to come in and its not looking good for Dr Cass. The article above, written by Mira Lazine, provides whats essentially a sparknotes version of the documentation releases by Yale.

I'm not going to pretend I understand the majority of the terminology used in the document and if anyone out there does then please your insight if you'd like.

Here is a link to the full paper.

[capinejghafa]

it took awhile but i finally finished ninth house. while the beginning was rough because the balance of the story felt like it was trying to be too much. like it's a good fucking story, but weighed down by it's own ambition.

however, once the story started to settle on solely alex, i enjoyed so much more. i'm guessing darlington's parts were necessary to understand his importance, but his story could've been a novella.

still a rather enjoyable ride.

[psalm22-6]

Did you know that the Yale Literary Magazine is the oldest student literary magazine in the US? It was started in 1836! So then it is no surprise that the December 1863 issue of the magazine makes reference to Les Miserables. The article begins with this appreciation of Victor Hugo:

Victor Hugo is a wonderful man. His ardent love of France, his efforts to maintain her constitutional liberties against her present usurpers, and his eleven years of exile, show the nobility and consistency of his character. Moreover, his ability as a writer, both in verse and prose, has won him an enviable fame as an author. Aside from all this, he possesses a heart overflowing with the milk of human kindness. [. . .] “Les Misérables,” coming from such an author, the essence of ten years thought, could not be a common book. Critics might call it “sensational,” or “French,” “less miserable than his other works,” but the “ people” were fascinated. There was something in the great and touching miseries revealed, and as much, perhaps, in the very title, which won its way to every heart weighed down with its own peculiar sorrow.

The author of the article declines to comment on the topic of the book, and proposes to muse on the thoughts evoked by its title. He says that everyone feels included in the class of miserable, but that most people simply are making themselves miserable (the tone is joking but that's the point).

The merchant makes himself miserable on the possibility of the loss of his richly freighted vessel at sea; and the manufacturer finds a similar employment in speculating on the decline of market prices.

But the best example of this is, apparently, men. Men who aren't married wish that they were and men who are married wish that they weren't and thus make themselves miserable.

Victor Hugo has given us Marius, for the one [who wants to get married], while our own observation finds multitudes of representatives of the other.

There are also the miseries experienced by the college freshmen:

He mistakes the sweep for the professor, the Sophomore for the Senior—horrible mistake—and treats them accordingly. He never opens his mouth, but to put his foot in it. His well-digested ideas and words fail him on rising to his feet in debate.

And let's not forget the miseries of the college "crusty man":

Talk under his window when he wishes to study and, ten chances to one, he throws water on you. Suspicious, resentful, and disagreeable, he makes a miserable fool of himself generally.

I haven't found nearly so much joking about Les Miserables in American papers as in French papers so even though this is kind of dumb, it's also interesting to me.

[expendablemudge]

This #MLKDay get yourself a first ever bio of JOHN LEWIS: In Search of the Beloved Community, a "Citty Upon a Hill" longed from since the time of Winthrop, via Yale University press

My 5* #BookReview:

[queenvreads]

REVIEW: NINTH HOUSE by LEIGH BARDUGO

3.75/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was SO excited to read this one—Gothic, dark academia, murder mystery, magic, fantasy—everything I could possibly want in a book; this was meant to be!

This is how it really went..

The beginning was really rough for me, especially the first 100 pages. I am not a stranger to 800-page fantasy books with complicated made-up worlds. So why was I unable to retain anything I was reading in this book? It was modern but with magical elements, shouldn't have been difficult. I kept having to go back and reread. And as I made progress, I kept going back to the start to reread some more. It was not registering in my brain. I think the issue was not only a lot of historical information being dumped but the writing style, I now realize, was just so pretentious. This was not what I was used to by Leah Bardugo. I know this is her first adult book, but damn, it was really hard for me to understand!!

Some issues I had throughout the book were, while each chapter was a different time (past and present), there were also past and present moments woven into the chapters. So I was really struggling at times, thinking where the heck in time are we now? Once I started to understand the general plot and what was going on, it became easier to read, but the story was still coated by complicated histories and things I did not understand. The story was like a very thick onion, and the layers were being peeled off very, very slowly.

So now for Alex. This poor girl, I have never read a character who was more beat up than this one. How the hell is she even alive? 😅 Magic, I guess! This book was actually quite dark, especially regarding Alex's backstory, up to her present situation.

I didn't connect with Alex at first, but by the end, I did like her. I was hoping for some romance, but there was none in this book. I think there was maybe one scene I thought would be it, but it wasn't. Things got really interesting for me by the 60% mark. That's when I finally got into the story, and I couldn't stop reading.

The story really ended with a punch, so I am eager to start Hell Bent and see where the heck this story will go. I hope now that I have a proper understanding of the world, that it will make more sense off the bat.

[famousblueraincoatmp3]

forcing random books into made up internet aesthetics and then being upset when that book isnt exactly like that aesthetic is something that is so wrong with our cultural mindset

[soracities]

Fady Joudah, on his new poetry collection "[ ... ]", in an interview with Aria Aber for The Yale Review [ID'd]

[maren-reads-books]

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Alex has been offered a second chance. When she wakes up in a hospital bed, the sole survivor of a gruesome multiple homicide, her life takes a turn, just not one she expected. She has been offered a full ride to Yale, an unusual offer for a high school dropout. But she has a skill that no one has seen before which will make her a valuable asset to the secret societies and brotherhoods that operate in the shadows of this elite institution. Magic Mystery and murder intertwine in this gorgeous dark rollercoaster of a story that will give you whiplash when you least expect it.

----SPOILERS----

I know I’m late to the game but it ended up working out for me extremely well! The sequel to Ninth House comes out in one day, so you guys get two reviews, one right after another! So here we go. I fucking loved this book. I knew I would because Leigh is a genius, but I still had some skepticism going into it as it is drastically different from her other series. I originally purchased this book when it came out a few years ago, and started it as soon as it was in my grubby little book nerd hands, however, the first time I attempted to read it, I couldn’t make it through the first (appx.) 150 pages. It was extremely slow and hard for me to connect with, it also took me a second to get with the program on the time skips and the changing POVs all in one. But once you round that corner, around page 150, everything gets good fast. I fell in love with the mystery of Alex’s character, she’s so intriguing, and learning all the little details about her life before Yale really provides a way for you to connect and understand her mannerisms and attitudes towards her new life. (The bathroom scene? Put things in a whole new perspective for me when it came to her interactions with the greys on campus). Alex isn’t the only character that was brilliantly written, everyone in this story, no matter how inconsequential they may seem, has a part to play and I love it, Leigh does such a good job making even minor characters built out in a way that makes you think they might be important, or unimportant, it's brilliant. If I wanted to be as vague as possible, this book is a murder mystery, a very convoluted and magical murder mystery, which I had absolutely no problem with. I love it so much it’s fucking amazing. You get so caught up in trying to solve the mystery with Alex, you almost forget that we’ve been waiting for the new moon, the night they want to try and bring Darlington back. *short rant* I love Darlington so so much, I wish we’d gotten to see more of him in the story. *rant over* So we get an intermission from the murder to perform a ritual that left me so upset, I did not see that coming. A fucking hell beast? What the fuck? I wanted Darlington to sweep back into their lives and help them solve the murder. The last 100 or so pages of this book gave me whiplash. My notes for this review are all over the place. First, we think it’s blake, which I did not see coming, he just seemed like too obvious of a douchebag to be the killer. But then we see he was under compulsion (I was so nervous Dawes was gonna die when Blake attacked them, I was about to have a heart attack). And then her mom shows up which has nothing to do with the murder, which was an interesting but somewhat inconsequential choice, however, I am glad someone took care of her and made her go to the doctor. And then we’re back into the thick of it thanks to North, who I love so much?? I love ghost characters, they’re the best (sometimes). The revelation that the nexuses had been created from the deaths of murdered women is so interesting. Add onto that the fact that it wasn’t actually Blake and it was Sandow (I fucking called it), and I was not surprised, he just seemed off to me the whole time, a good old-fashioned money and power motive, gotta love it. And then he’s not even the worst bad guy. Here was my reaction to the Belbalm revelation “WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK, Belbalm was in on it? the whole time?!?!? DID NOT SEE THAT COMING”, I think that my notes summed up that plot twist pretty well. As someone who prides themselves on seeing the twists and turns in mystery novels and shows, I was so surprised, it was crazy, I don’t think I can even put into words how much I didn’t expect ANY of that. There were so many details in this book I think I missed because I read it so fast (less than a day), in order to pick up on some of the more intense or obscure details of this book I’ll have to go back and read it again, but it was amazing and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us in Hell Bent!

- Maren

[just-in-cays]

"The Review also uses misleading, subjective terminology and misuses technical language regarding evidence quality. In any other field of medicine, this practice would be deemed unacceptable and harmful to patients."

Yet another report found that the Cass Review was dangerously flawed. The Integrity Project at Yale concluded the review "obscures key findings, misrepresents its own data, and is rife with misapplications of the scientific method."

From the new report: "The Review also subverts widely accepted processes for development of clinical recommendations and repeats spurious, debunked claims about transgender identity and gender dysphoria. These errors conflict with well-established norms of clinical research and evidence-based healthcare. Further, these errors raise serious concern about the scientific integrity of critical elements of the report’s process and recommendations."

Read the full report here: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/report-addresses-key-issues-legal-battles-over-gender-affirming-health-care

[jeffalessandrelli]

...

I know we’re each (not) unique, but let me let me

think me so. (Let me lick in pornographic secret

peanut butter from a spoon I stole.)

While everywhere the upshots of daffodils—

and the frogs go (damp and clamor) on.

In the pioneer graveyard I saw my own headstone—

Lucky to be born at all.