Book Review
Lost in Transnation
5+/5 stars
"A great book, and a keeper; Instruction manual how to not get caught up with Strange White People Insanity/Inanity."

********

Of the book:

-229 pages of prose over 13 chapters plus one conclusion works≈16 pps/chapter.

-Another 55 pages in appendices dealing with the topics: i) Biology 101, ii) Key scientific papers, iii) Dealing with schools, iv) Dealing with CPS, v) Finding a therapist, vi) Guide to internet accountability tools, viii) Responses to international parent survey.

-NOT carefully edited. Occasional spelling mistakes. (Overall organization is still pretty good, in spite of that.)

-1-1.5 days of reading time (≈5 hours)

*******

I learned / recapitulate many things from this book. Selected observations:

1. If you have Strange White People indulging in some silliness, it takes a lot of leg work to NOT get involved in their stupidity.

2. Diagnoses in the DSM only depend on what people believe, and not necessarily any hard clinical/biological evidence.

3. Another purpose of the DSM is to create Insurance billable codes for diagnosis. So, Gender Identity Disorder-- > Gender Dysphoria --> Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. (Remember that only 0.02% of people have clinical gender dysphoria.)

4. Once gay marriage became a thing in 2015, you had a lot of lobbying organizations that no longer had jobs. Transgender lobbying was a logical next step.

5. Early Onset Gender Dysphoria (Jazz Jennings)≠ "Rapid Onset" Gender Dysphoria. Rapid onset can reverse just as fast as it comes on. 80 to 98% of young kids will later experience desistance (p.121).

6. The cases of Bonnie Manchester and Jessica Tapia show that it is not only in deep blue school districts that teachers are obligated to lie to parents about their children's gender identity.

7. The surgical elements of this transitioning are pretty gruesome (it ain't what it looks like on TV!). Especially for the "bottom surgery." If you have a faux vagina made, you can get ready for a lot of time spent dilating and a lot of infections. If you have a faux todger made, you can also get ready for a lot of infections and very slow (≈10 minute) urination. When Jazz Jennings had her bottom surgery, it was made to look all cute for TV--but in reality, there were lots of surgeries that had to be done and redone. Sample stories: ("Seven surgeries, pulmonary embolism, and induce stressed heart attack, sepsis, 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, 3 weeks of daily IV antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, $1 million in medical expenses......." [p. 180] AND "Dilations? Awful! Why do I have to feel that my anus is about to disintegrate? Why does the labia have to burn so much every time I dilate? And every six hours every day?" [p. 176]).

8. A phalloplasty meta-analysis found that over three quarters of patients had complications, and almost a third experienced urethral fistulas, and a quarter experienced urethral stricture (p.182).

*******
It has elements of other books that I have read:

1. "Big Fat Surprise." This is the case where you have somebody who is a very forceful advocate for a position that turns out to be wrong, and that position ultimately becomes mainstream when it is received by some government officials. So, Ansel Keys= John Monsey= Iago.

2. "Irreversible Damage," Abigail Shirier. Transgenderism these days is an epidemic of (bored, white, upper middle class) teenage girls.

3. ("True Believer" by Eric Hoffer/ Countless other books/ day to day experience). This is the case where you have Strange White People turning the entire world into a self-actualization project. So, John Monsey has problems with his sexual orientation and goes about the business of transforming the world.

4. ("Antigfragile"/ "Coddling of the American Mind") Some members of civilization somewhere are too comfortable and they generate conflicts to tear themselves apart.

5. ("When Harry Became Sally") it covers much of the same ground, but it lacked the insider's perspective of a physician and the gory details of transgender surgery.

6. ("Burden of Bad Ideas"). It happens quite frequently that academics' stupidity spills out of academia into the real world and with DISASTROUS effects.

******

Second Order Thoughts:

1. I can see this going in one of two ways. The first is that enough lawsuits get pressed by detransitioners and liability/malpractice insurance brings these butchers to heel. 

Or the second is that it will go down as a fad that just (mostly) wears itself out-- like Multiple Personality Disorder / Bullshit Freudian Psychology. Some medical mistakes have been very purposely forgotten (Tuskegee experiments, thalidomide, lobotomies to cure mental illness--which, apparently, received a Nobel prize [p.225].)

2. What is my strategy:

a. My kids go to a parochial/ religious school, and we don't have to deal with that bullshit there. That situation has already arisen in our school (some girl decided she wanted to be a boy) and it was summarily dismissed from the school, even though its mother was an attorney. (For the record: It only takes a one sentence declaration to convert to Islam, and I don't think you even have to be Catholic to go to Catholic schools. Homeschooling is a nuclear option.)

b. No television in the house, and Xbox is limited to one hour per day 6 days a week.

c. Sometimes if you have kids, then no matter what you do they just turn out wrong--and so more is better so that if one is not recoverable, then you have others to focus on. We have a sufficient number of sons that if one of them played the "Dead Son, Live Daughter" game with me, then I have no problem with putting him out and no regrets if he really followed through with the suicide threat. (If he was that nuts, it would probably be the best thing for him anyway.)

3. This author does not make it part of the book, but it is pretty clear that she is an Orthodox Jew--with all of the verbal and intellectual elegance that one would expect with that designation.

The first clue was (p.108) where she created an imaginary dialogue between a parent, a Trans Crusader Physician and a Trans Crusader Therapist. (This is a very old Talmudic thought technique.)

What really let the cat out of the bag  was the gematria-flavored commentary, complete with the words "אמת" and "שקר".

4. The best expression that was used in this book over and over again was "We Don't Know." And it is true that everybody talks about something as being settled science when there are no papers that talk about it (such as [p.119] the long-term effect of social affirmation on people with "rapid onset gender dysphoria" , or how pausing puberty affects the development of the child's prefrontal cortex / amygdala / any other part of the brain [p.71]).

5. What is something that kids get from deciding to be trans? "I am listened to. I'm special. I'm getting so much attention at home and school. Adults are making big changes for me" (p. 120).

6. Damn (!), Jennifer Pritzker is ONE. UGLY. HUMAN. BEING.

Quotes:

-(p.106): "The hospital will crystallize Oliver in Emma's mind, instead of focusing on the cyberbullying, emotional dysregulation, and other issues that lead to her self-injury."

-(p.63): "One teenager came to us when he was 17 years old and living in a lockdown facility because he had been sexually abusing dogs. Somewhere along the way, he expressed his desire to become female, so he ended up being seen at our center."

-(p.195): "Too many believe this is all about compassion, respect, and rights. That's a cover. The goal had always been the breakdown of norms. To push the limits further and further. How does the endpoint look? That's the point - - there is no endpoint. The thrill is in pushing beyond the acceptable."

Vocabulary:

Psychosaexual neutrality
paraphilia (=neutral term for "perversion")
minority stress model
desistance (=grow out of it)
runaway diffusion
thermal synchrony