Mediaboss Marketing

CANADA

Conducted by the Montreal, Quebec-based company Lger, a marketing and analytics company, the study surveyed 12,948 students in Albertas 26 public colleges and universities, and found that only 6% of students who have suffered sexual and gender-based violence (SG-BV) bring it to the attention of school authorities.

The main reasons victims gave for not accessing on-campus support are shame (9%), fear of retaliation by the perpetrator (7%), and not being believed, taken seriously or being gaslighted (14%).

At 74% the rate of SG-BV is highest among queer students who account for 638 of the students surveyed, which means that 472 of them have been victims of SG-BV since arriving on Albertas campuses. Around 93% of these students had been victimised before entering higher education.

Queer students also have the highest rates of sexual harassment: 71%. Two-thirds of students who identify as bisexual (1,380) or pansexual (265) are also survivors of SG-BV; between 59% and 65% of gay, lesbian, pansexual, two-spirited or questioning students, or 2,256 (14.4% of the 1,2948 students surveyed) also report being victims of SG-BV.

10% of all students, or 1,295, are victims of intimate partner violence; the percentage rises to 14% of lesbians and 15% of queer, pansexual and two-spirited people.

Awful, but not surprising

Generations of student leaders have been fighting for the provincial government to confront the pervasive impact of sexual violence within the post-secondary education system, says Chris Beasley, vice-president external of the University of Albertas Student Union.

So, when the results came out, they sickened me. They are awful, horrible. But they werent surprising. The data is reflective of the surveys weve run internally [at the University of Alberta in Edmonton], surveys that have been run in Ontario and other parts of Canada, he said.

According to Mary Jane James, CEO of the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton, the statistics in the report align not only with those from the University of Alberta (U of A) but also with international studies.

At first glance, it might appear that the studys finding that 86% of respondents agreed that consent was necessary before beginning sexual activity and 80% believed that you have to check in with sexual partners during sex to determine if they remain enthusiastic suggests that the existing consent training programmes run in Albertas colleges and universities are largely successful.

However, Beasley noted, it is important to look at what he called the negative.

The figures seem good. The report presents it as though 86% of people believe that consent during sexual activity is a good thing. But theres also the negative side. 14% do not agree with this and 20% do not agree with stopping to check in with their sexual partners if theyre physically or mentally unenthusiastic. These numbers are too high, said Beasley.

In Canadian law consent has a number of parameters, which are taught in the universities consent education programmes.

Consent cannot be given when intoxicated; it must be voluntary; it cannot be coerced. Consent is specific, that is, for specific acts and people; it cannot be given ahead of time. Consent is not the absence of no.

Rather, in the words of Consent 101: The (Sexual) Basics prepared by the Saskatoon (Saskatchewan) Sexual Assault and Information Centre and provided to University World News by Alexandra Ages, executive director of the Council of Alberta University Students: Consent must be enthusiastic. Consent is someone communicating yes with their words, tone and actions.

No easy answers

Beasley, James and Deborah Eerkes, the sexual violence response coordinator in the Office of the Provost at U of A and chair of the universitys working group responsible for the survey, told University Wolrd News just how difficult it is to explain how consent works to the last 14%-20% of 18- to 24-year-olds.

We have people at the university doing consent education. We have people at the sexual assault centre in Edmonton doing consent education. And the real struggle we have is that we have people coming to the training who already know consent is important, right? Were singing to the choir. We need to figure out how you bring in that other 14%. How do you get them interested, first of all, and second, convinced?

I dont have a good answer for you. I dont think we have one, before drawing attention to one of the key parts of what goes under the name of emotional intelligence, said Eerkes.

Consent is about making sure the other person is good with whats happening. If you have no empathy, if you cant muster that sort of care for another person, if you are more self-focused than other focused, then we are going to continue to have this problem, said Eerkes.

Campaigns against sexual harassment and sexual violence differ, Eerkes further explained, from the campaigns against smoking or drunk driving, which have pushed the percentage of Canadians who smoke down to 10% and drive impaired to 8%. These behaviours are easily detectable by people, which made making them socially unacceptable much easier.

But the social pressure that we get for the public type of bad behaviour doesnt exist with intimate partner violence and other forms of sexual violence that are very, very private. One of the things out of the playbook [of sexual assault] is to isolate the person and get them away from everyone else, said Eerkes.

Beasley, who is 24 and remembers what was taught in his high school, says, in theory, Alberta has a decent amount of sex education in its high schools. But it can be hit or miss between different school boards or even within a school, he said, before adding that this is why Alberta needs a provincially run programme that leads to the prevention campaigns in colleges and universities.

You have students from all over Alberta, who may or may not have had good sex ed, that may or may not have focused on consent culture. Then you layer in students that come from out of the province, who, again, have different sex ed curriculums and different understandings of consent that may or may not have been taught, Beasley told University World News.

Then you layer in international students that will come from all over the world with different understandings of consent. And, so again, ensuring that we create a broad-based culture of consent here on campus starts day one.

One option Beasley was keen on is used at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta) where, before you can even sign up for class, you need to complete a module on consent and healthy relationships.

Having a programme like that can help move the needle on consent culture, he said.

A survivor-centered approach

Beasley, James and Eerkes stressed the importance of both campus police and sexual assault centres taking a victim (or survivor)-centered approach. This approach begins with the police or sexual assault centre crisis worker believing the report.

After a victim comes forward, said Beasley, you can take different routes. You can be more punitive [that is, press charges] or if, say, it was sexual assault by a classmate, you can be separated from that classmate or stay in the same class with them. Or, you can say, I want this noted on their record or I want something else to happen from a spectrum of consequences. Or you can come forward to the sexual assault centre and decide to do nothing or have counselling.

We are not to judge whether that particular act of harm is something that the person should be concerned about, said James.

Cultural change

The responses in the part of the survey on beliefs about sexual or gender-based violence underscore the depth of the problem facing sexual consent educators. Almost 30% are uncertain about whether False reports of sexual assaults are rare. One half disagrees with the statement that If an individual is drunk, they might sexually assault someone, even though Canadian courts do not accept that intoxication is a defence in a sexual assault case.

61% of respondents are unsure of whether People are too easily offended by sexual jokes or comments (in other words, depending on the situation, they might think offence was perfectly alright). Even more striking is the fact that 14% three out of every 20 students believe that there is nothing wrong with a sexual joke that makes someone feel uncomfortable.

The high tolerance of sexual jokes indicated to James that little has changed from when she started working in the late 1970s, when she and her female peers endured a range of inappropriate behaviour including being leered at and being subjected to sexual jokes.

We still have a certain demographic that says, It was just a joke. Were just having fun. Why do you have to be such a prude? Why are you taking it so seriously? But it is serious. Its very serious. We have to recognise that that kind of behaviour is not okay. We dont have to accept it and just move on, said James

When discussing the surveys question about jokes Beasley was quick to shut the door on right-wing ideologues like Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.

To oppose this is not Cultural Marxism or ideological purity. That 14% of postsecondary students across Alberta think that that others have to accept being uncomfortable or taking offence is one more indication of why we need more cultural change and prevention of sexual harassment on our campuses, said Beasley.

Possible understatement

According to Statistics Canada approximately 4% of the population or 1 million people are LGBTQ2+. Canadian law forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or expression. Same sex marriage has been legal in some provinces since 2003 and nationwide two years later. There have been a number of openly gay or lesbian politicians, including Kathleen Wynne, Ontarios premier from 20132018, who is married to a woman.

The high rates of sexual harassment and violence against the LGBTQ2+ community stand out. But, as high as they are, Beasley told University World News, the study may be understating them because the survey was self-reporting.

My guess is that the numbers are quite a bit higher. What were seeing is people who self-identify or self-report as having experienced sexual- or gender-based violence. When we look at questions of stigma, obviously that stigma applies quite heavily for folks that are femme (that is, present as feminine), but for different reasons, it also applies quite heavily for folks that are masc., said Beasley.

Queer men are subject to the generalised machismo culture and internalised sexism or strongman ideals that pervade our culture and, thus, Beasley said, like straight men, socialised in a way that would depress reporting.

Eerkes also warned that while the study is a good indicator of the sexual health of Albertas campuses, the fact that it was voluntary creates an important weakness seen when comparing the percent of students who were victims of gender or sexual violence (50%) and those who admit to committing these acts (4%).

Theres a pretty serious mismatch here. My assumption is that those students who may have committed some forms of sexual violence would be less interested in responding to this survey, said Eerkes.

Its not about sex

The high rates of SG-BV, including 40% of straight students who reported having been sexually harassed, the 60% of questioning students who reported the same, or the 54% of asexual students who were victims of SG-BV, the 25% of bisexual and queer students who reported being stalked or the 15% of straight students who reported having been stalked, are not dealing with sexual situations, James emphasised. Rather, the harassers are asserting power.

At the end of the day sexual violence, sexual assault, rape is not about sex. Its about power and control; its about someone having power over another person, said James.

Sexual violence, perpetrated against straight students or members of marginalised sexual communities, as well as intimate partner violence in any community, has nothing to do with sexual gratification.

Its about someone who feels they have the right and the power to take advantage of someone else. This is a very hard thing to get people to understand because they want to think, Its just, you know, I got a little carried away with that person. I really didnt mean any harm. I just . . . I was just really needing to have sex. Well, what you really needed was to have power over a person you felt you could control. The sooner we can get our heads around that the better, said James.

A template to use elsewhere

Although the study focuses only on Alberta post-secondary students, Ages believes it can be a useful template internationally.

Sexual and gender-based violence is a global issue. Someone living elsewhere might very well have a different context of violence. But, they can look at this and say: Oh, yes. There is this community in Canada, and they conducted a survey which is going to help create a statistical picture of what the issue is, so that they can then work on solutions. Perhaps we can enact something similar and create a survey of our home to find out what are the areas that we need to work on to create policy solutions, said Ages.

There are a lot of different solutions to gender-based violence. We should all take the time to learn from one another and learn best practices so that we can find ways to end the crisis of sexual and gender-based violence.

Go here to see the original:
Report offers hope for moving the needle of consent culture - University World News

The job (if not the pay) was heavenly: each morning there'd be a pile of manuscripts waiting in the office for me to read: in the afternoon, I'd then try and distill the latest literary manuscript into just 300 words for a hardback, and 150 for a paperback (the two combined, for reference, is the precise length of this column).

It's one of those jobs that sounds easy in practice but hard to pull off in reality. As D. J. Taylor once said, 'Of all the minor literary arts, none is quite so delicate as the production of jacket copy.'

The blurb writer needs to reveal just enough about the story to entice the reader in, but not so much that you end up giving the plot away. When the book was brilliant, it was easy to gush praise: when it was less so, you had to choose your words more carefully.

My regular go-to term was 'absorbing', which might make the book sound unputdownable, but given you could use the same puff to praise a sponge, was my hint this novel was a bit of a damp squib.

Blurb writers rarely get their moment in the sun, but they've been blinking into the daylight this week following complaints from a number of book reviewers about how their words have been cut up and ended up on the book jacket.

The book in question was Beyond Order by controversial US thinker Jordan Peterson.

The back cover boasted praise from James Marriott in The Times, describing the book 'the most lucid and touching prose Peterson has written.'

Except that Marriott's original review had described one of the chapters as 'one of the most sensitive and lucid passages of prose' Peterson had written, which the the blurb writer had edited down to make the whole book sound brilliant.

In fact, Marriott had slated the book overall, describing it as 'repetitious, unvariegated, rhythmless, opaqueness and possessed of a suffocating sense of its own importance.'

I don't think I ever did anything quite as twisted as that, though I can empathise with the blurb writer reading a stash of bad reviews and struggling to find anything to put on the cover.

I remember writing a blurb for one book similarly slated the headline of one review simply read 'Trees died for this' but couldn't bring myself to repurpose that copy. I suspect I said the book was absorbing.

As George Eliot first wrote in The Mill on the Floss, don't judge a book by its cover!

Originally posted here:
Blurb writers in the spotlight due to latest Jordan Peterson book - Salisbury Journal

I recently had a fascinating conversation with a Current Affairs reader, Benjamin Howard, who was once a major fan of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, the famous Canadian psychologist and author of the bestselling book 12 Rules For Life. Howard has taken what I suspect is an uncommon intellectual journey. From admiring Peterson and swallowing the professors critique of the woke mind virus, Howard has become so skeptical of Peterson that he is now building a comprehensive website called JordanPetersonIsWrong.com.

I spoke to Howard because I wanted to better understand two things:

Personally, I have little respect for Petersons intellectual contributions. But I dont extend that contempt to his readers and listeners, because I think he offers persuasive narratives to those who feel lost and confused. I have long considered him a charlatan, but I also think you can be a very perceptive and decent person and still be taken in by charlatans. By talking to Benjamin, I wanted to see how Peterson looked not from my perspective (as a left-wing cynic) but from the perspective of someone who had once deeply admired the professors intellect. Ive written out my criticisms of Peterson at voluminous length (they are also available in a book, The Current Affairs Rules For Life). I am long past the point of wanting to rehash them, and Peterson has ducked my attempts to organize a one-on-one debate despite initially agreeing. The question that interests me most now is: Given that I think Petersons apocalyptic black-and-white worldview is incredibly dangerous and delusional, what can be done to de-radicalize his followers and keep them from joining the right-wing mission to eradicate leftism and transgenderism from the world?

Benjamin and I began our conversation by talking about what sets Peterson apart from other anti-woke pundits. Peterson has not just built a following for his critique of political correctness, but for his program of personal self-improvement. His 12 Rules For Life is not really a political book at all (although a couple of its rules have political implications, such as his view that you shouldnt criticize the world until you set your house in perfect order). Instead, Peterson offers his answer to the question What are the most valuable things that everyone should know? He gives a set of maxims ranging from Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient (#7) to Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street (#12). Peterson explains that people need ordering principles because chaos otherwise beckons. The rules are his attempt to counter chaos so we can stay on the straight and narrow path.

For Benjamin, the fact that Petersons self-help principles are so prescriptive, and he doesnt offer affirming and uplifting messages, is part of the appeal. Benjamin explained:

Theres certain kinds of self help where it feels like theyre just telling you what you want to hearYou shouldnt feel bad about yourself, this kind of positive thinking. And Peterson was straightforwardly against that. [His take was more like] just, if youre not doing well, you should feel bad about yourself and you should want to improve yourself and if you dont, then somethings wrong with you.

Now, to me, this seems pretty horrible (Im much more of the Mr. Rogers you are special school so hated by the right). But Benjamin says the approach was actually inspiring because Peterson has a way of speaking [where] it feels very deep in his heart that he wants you to do better for yourself. For Benjamin, what may look to other people like obvious and paternalistic advice can feel very useful to certain people at certain points in their life:

Ive heard some critics of Peterson say, well, his self-help is all just obvious. They dont even get why anyone would listen to his self-help or enjoy itHe says clean your room, doesnt everyone know that? But theres a certain point in your life where you dont know that or you do know it, but you dont care about it, or you dont see why you should do itHe gives an explanation of why its important. And you might want to look up his clean your room speech. Its very interestingHe kind of has a habit of making everything feel really profound and super meaningful. Thats part of what makes it motivating. And so if yourelacking in motivation, then someone comes along and sort of slaps you in the face and says, Hey, this is really important, clean your room, then youll actually do it.

Benjamin himself, when he first heard Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2018, was at a point in his life where this kind of message spoke to him. As he explains:

At the time that I encountered Peterson, I wasnt where I wanted to be in my life. I had graduated high school, and then I didnt go to post secondary immediately after. I was trying to do writing, and I was just working part time at a furniture warehouse. Theres kind of that vacuum after going to high school. In high school, you have all these friends and everythings decided for you. You know exactly what youre doing. Youre being graded, so you know if youre doing it well. And then one year out of high school, its like, what do I do now? At first youre like oh, I have all this freedom. For the first two months or whatever. And then a year goes by and its like Oh, Im still not moved out of my parents house, which I thought I would haveThat waswhere I was at when Jordan Peterson entered. And when youre in that kind of place having someone whos coming along with this very confident, inspiring message of Heres what you need to do to fix your life, thats really valuable. I still dont credit him for helping me to change my life or something. But maybe a little bit.

There are plenty of people who do credit Peterson with changing their lives (just read the YouTube comments sections or the Amazon reviews of his books). Benjamin did get to where he wanted to be in his life, enrolling in college to study computer science, and when his life changed, his interest in listening to Jordan Peterson started to wane, because he no longer felt he needed to hear these tough love messages about getting his act together.

Peterson is not just a self-help guru, though. Hes also a demagogue who pushes reactionary talking points about how transgender people and socialists pose a threat to the social order. Benjamin and I discussed how Peterson combines the how to fix your life message with regular attacks on woke culture. Benjamin concedes that at the time he first encountered Peterson, he enjoyed hearing him going off against political correctness, and thought he had done it in a way that was very unique and intelligent. When Peterson explained the sources of what was wrong in the world, Benjamin describes the listening experience as:

Oh, now I understand. Everything clicks into place. It makes it almost addicting to listen to him. You feel like youre really learning something deep about the whole world, like how everything is really working.

(Incidentally, that feeling of being told the secrets of how everything is really working is part of the source of QAnons appeal, too.)

In trying to explain why Peterson is so compelling, Benjamin points to his confidence, charisma, and his seemingly genius ability to combined eclectic insights into a giant unified theory:

Hes also able to weave in a lot of different topics together, where hes got the self-help, hes got religion, hes got psychology, and then the politicsIf you listen to one of his lectures where hes in this lecture hall talking for an hour, two hours, hell go across all these different topics and weave them, like hes trying to give the impression that theyre all unified together. But its this hodgepodge of different things that maybe arent related. It gives this feeling of Wow, this guy knows about everything, and hes just so knowledgeable, and hes giving this profound insight that other people just dont have. I think there is definitely an impression that youre getting genius insights from this person. I think thats what leads to over-trusting of his information, because if hes a genius, then why look into anything he says? He must just be correct.

I think Benjamin is right about the impression Peterson gives. In my own writing, I dissected some of the tricks Peterson uses to convey the impression that he knows more than he actually does. But what I was really interested in was the question of why Benjamin left Peterson behind. What broke this mans spell?

It wasnt reading Current Affairs. Or at least, that was only part of it. In fact, Benjamin told me that the first time he encountered my article about Peterson, he hated it. He rejected its analysis and thought I was just a hater launching unfair attacks. Other things had to happen before Benjamin would be open to hearing such a sharp critique.

Ive mentioned one of the things that happened, which is that Benjamins life circumstances changed when he went to college. When he was there, he took a couple of courses that opened his mind. First, he took a course on ancient Greek and Roman religion, which he says pushed him toward being an atheist, because he saw how these societies decided things based on religious ideas that seem loopy today. Things were decided just based on What do the gods want to do? I just realized Whoa, they did a lot of crazy stuff back then. Critically analyzing these ancient societies allowed Benjamin to see parallels with our own.

Second, Benjamin took a critical thinking course. (For some reason, we dont mandate critical thinking in schools, but we should!) This taught him to spot outright errors in the thought of the genius psychologist:

I was still very much into Peterson at that time. But I noticed the naturalistic fallacy. Thats something that Peterson actually does very frequently. Or appeal to tradition. And so you notice, Oh, okay, there are some problems here.

But Benjamin says that a crucial eye-opening moment came when he heard Peterson make a remark he just considered totally off the wall and transparently wrong:

I really enjoy art and fiction and music. And Peterson said, without religion, there would be no art, there would be no poetry, and there would be no music, no anything. And I went, Whoa, that is so not true. What about all these atheists? People that made great things. So for me, that was the part that was like, Thats crazy.

Seeing that someone seemingly profound was not right about everything led Benjamin to take a more critical approach to Petersons thinking, at which point a lot of his faith in Petersons genius began to crumble. (The central role of college courses in changing Benjamins thinking helps us explain why the right hates college.) He noticed that Peterson exaggerated and misrepresented the Canadian law that was supposedly going to throw him in jail for misgendering people. He noticed that Peterson was not interested in accurately or fairly representing the postmodern neo-Marxists he criticized. Benjamins disillusionment started slowly, and then happened all at once. It was only then that he re-read my article in Current Affairs and found himself agreeing with a lot of the criticisms I made. I hadnt persuaded Benjamin, but I did confirm a lot of what he had started to figure out on his own. Now, as I say, Benjamin is so critical of Peterson that hes building a whole website laying out the flaws in Petersons thought. I think this is a valuable project, because there are a lot of people who remain fans of Peterson and have yet to undergo the process of disillusionment that Benjamin has been through. I hope he can help them.

There are a few interesting insights to be found in Benjamins story, if were thinking about how to keep people from turning toward hateful reactionary thinking. First, and Ive said this before, we need to have faith in peoples ability to change their minds. I find Peterson repellent, but I dont find it helpful to call his listeners fascists or even transphobes. Many are young men like Benjamin who are simply in a tough place in their lives and susceptible to the messages of charismatic figures who promise to explain the world, identify your enemies, and help you fix your life. (Thats not to say that Peterson himself is not transphobic; he is, and its extreme, toxic, and frightening.)

We can also see that even though people can change their minds, the process takes time. It doesnt happen because someone presents you with a set of arguments that own and destroy a certain position. Changes in our thinking come from experience, not just pure reason. My article on Jordan Peterson did not snap Benjamin out of his fandom. He had to figure things out bit by bit, with different bricks slotting into place. Studying ancient societies made him critical of religion. Studying critical thinking gave him the tools to see when Peterson was wrong. And so when Peterson defended religion using arguments Benjamin knew didnt make sense, the genius suddenly seemed a bit, well, stupid.

I was encouraged by my conversation with Benjamin. As we see reactionary politics getting more and more aggressive in this country, with would-be dictators like Ron DeSantis clamoring for power and legislatures around the country embracing anti-LGBT legislation, we need more urgently than ever to figure out how we can talk to people and keep right-wing movements from attracting new followers. It can be done. Its not easy, and its not just a matter of handing people copies of Responding to the Right and buying them subscriptions to Current Affairs (although you should of course do both). Sometimes, peoples lives have to change in order for their minds to open, and you cant really affect that. We can, perhaps, give them the kind of inspiration they are looking for in dark times, so that they will be less in need of the messages someone like Peterson offers. We can perhaps show them that while having a clean room is nice, a lot of our problems must be addressed through collective political action. But first and foremost, we have to have some empathy and patience. I have confidence that there are many people out there like Benjamin who can eventually come to see through the lies and misdirection of demagogues and join the project of building a better world for all.

Help us to help more people see through Jordan Petersons deranged ideology by donating to Current Affairs and subscribing to our beautiful print magazine.

Excerpt from:
The Process of Leaving Jordan Peterson Behind Current Affairs - Current Affairs

Sometimes I wonder what its like to be a blissfully ignorant white man, unaware of the limitations of his own capabilities, but then I look at said type of idiot and I realize that those idiots are the worst. Which brings me to todays topic: Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson (who, as far as I can tell, has made a name for himself as having the thinnest skin possible, and then crying about it, literally) are on Twitter calling for anyone who provides trans kids with gender-affirming care to go to prison. Hey everyone! The mediocre white men are here to tell us all how to live, so gather round and listen to what they have to say. Or dontI recommend you dont because theyre hateful morons, but Im going to tell you about the s*it they were spewing anyway:

OK, so first and foremost, Musk and Peterson are deeply stupid in the worst way. Its clear they think they are thought leaders and very erudite (Elon, Jordan: if youre reading this and we know you are because you most definitely have Google Alerts set for your name, erudite means having or showing knowledge that is gained by studying.) From the way that Musk worded his bestest boy in the world proclamation, the braces I got as a child would be illegal under his fantasy billionaire rule because guess what? Those braces made irreversible changes to me that were deemed medically necessary by my dentist (I had to get bottom teeth pulled to fit my jaw, and those suckers are long gone.) However, we all know thats not what theyre talking about. They just want to be cruel bullies for no reason because it gets them the attention they so desperately crave. And, just as importantly, gender-affirming care for children doesnt impact them at all, so they can have nasty opinions on it and it doesnt affect them.

Like the sad weirdo who said something mildly funny in class, Musk got a laugh and then decided to double down on it by responding to hate accounts and agreeing with their stanceslike this random BS, where he agrees that Pride month needs to be about LGB and take out the TQ+.

Any asshole can create a Twitter account and talk shit online. This is the internet; there is a high likelihood that youll be able find hateful people who agree with your ignorant opinions. Its incredibly depressing. Remember, Musk is a man so desperate for approval and attention that he created a burner account and kept begging for more followers. There is something wrong with him, but unfortunately, his mega-wealth shields him from consequences and gives him an international platform to continuously punch down on other people. In this case, thats anyone who actually cares about the well-being of trans kids.

Naturally, when the manbaby tyrant who bought his way into Twitter and the crybaby who got kicked off the platform for deadnaming Elliot Page (until Musk let him back into the clubhouse) decide to talk about things they know nothing about, other people notice and are there to call them out on their terrible, harmful takes:

This is exhausting. Neither Elon Musk or Jordan Peterson have a medical degree. (Peterson has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, which is a liberal arts degree. Its also fun to note, because Im sure it bruises his ego, that he is not listed as a notable alumnus from McGill University where he got his BA and PhD. You suck, Peterson! Everyone knows it but you!) These two are just assholes with cruel opinions.

First and foremost, what constitutes a necessary medical treatment is between a patient and their doctor. We all know that conservatives are desperate to insert themselves into that equation, and unfortunately, they have been relatively successful so far. This is not about saving the children because if it actually were, they would want to make sure no child ever goes hungry and would be lobbying Congress to reinstate the monthly Child Tax Credit. Which, of course, they are not. Conservatives just want to terrorize children and anyone who cares enough about them to give them the care they need. Calling for the imprisonment of anyone who actually provides care to children is much easier than reading a peer-reviewed medical study. Its also extremely fascist.

If youre looking for actual statistics on gender-affirming care for children, journalist Erin Reed from the Tweet above breaks it down for you, per Erin in the Morning:

Gender affirming care for transgender youth is lifesaving and has proven to lower their suicide rates by 73% according toa landmark study in 2022published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. There are several other studies that have found similar positive impacts of gender affirming care, such asa studyin the Journal of Adolescent Health showing a reduction of 40% over the last year. A recentreport published by the Louisiana Department of Healthstudying Louisiana Medicaid recipients stated that regret rates for gender affirming care were less than 1% and that the care significantly improved the mental health and suicidality of trans youth. The science is so overwhelmingly in favor of gender affirming care that theUniversity of Cornell publisheda listing of over 50 articles that prove the positive impact of this care.

Predictably, neither Musk nor Peterson can justify their stance with a reason other than they simply dont like it, and I guess no one taught them to mind their own business?! These two are bullies with a pulpit, and their opinions are horrible and harmful. But when has that ever stopped them, or anyone like them? To summarize: Musk and Peterson remain awful, and gender-affirming care for trans kids saves lives.

(featured image: Michael Gonzalez, Getty Images)

Have a tip we should know? [emailprotected]

See more here:
Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson Are Being Transphobic Online Again - The Mary Sue

Matt and Sam explore the crisis of masculinity in America through books on the subject by Senator Josh Hawley and Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield.

Know Your Enemy is a podcast about the American right co-hosted by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell. Read more about it here. You can subscribe to, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher, and receive bonus content by supporting the podcast on Patreon.

Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said at the National Conservatism Conference in 2021. And thats not just a crisis for men. Its a crisis for the republic.

Some version of this sentimentthat men are in trouble, adrift, or falling behindis shared by writers and thinkers across the political spectrum. Its nearly impossible to open a magazine without finding an article about the state of manhood in America. Brookings Institution scholar Richard Reevess 2022 book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It is a bestseller. Figures like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate attract huge audiences, serving as reactionary self-help gurus for young people eager to be told what a man is and how he should behave. One doesnt have to accept the rights framing of the problemnor any kind of gender essentialismto acknowledge the statistics: boys and men are falling behind in education, in workforce participation, and succumbing to drugs, alcoholism, and suicide.

Hawleyapparently having stewed on the topic for two yearshas just released a book on manhood, which advises a revival of biblical virtues to guide the aimless young men of twenty-first-century America. To pair with Hawley, we read Harvey Mansfields 2006 book on manliness. Putting Hawleys evangelical Christian preaching in conversation with Mansfields Straussian philosophical playfulness proved very constructive. Along the way, we talk about our own relationship to manhood and try to decide which (if any) of the virtues associated with maleness are worth preserving, defending, or even advising young men to embrace.

Sources and further reading:

Harvey C. Mansfield,Manliness(2006)

Josh Hawley,Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs (2023)

Josh Hawley, Americas Epicurean Liberalism,National Affairs (2010)

Becca Rothfeld, How to be a man? Josh Hawley has the (incoherent) answers,The Washington Post (2023)

Phil Christman, What Is It Like to Be a Man?Hedgehog Review (2018)

Martin Amis, Return of the Male,London Review of Books (1991)

Martha Nussbaum, Man Overboard,New Republic (2006)

Idrees Kahloon, Whats the Matter With Men?New Yorker (2023)

Zo Heller, How Toxic Is Masculinity?New Yorker (2022)

Lisa Miller, Tate-Pilled: What a generation of boys have found in Andrew Tates extreme male gospel, New York Magazine (2023)

Originally posted here:
Know Your Enemy: Whats Wrong With Men? - Dissent