“”In 2011, the year I moved to Los Angeles, white men were 48 percent of lower-level TV writers; by 2024, they accounted for just 11.9 percent. The Atlantic’s editorial staff went from 53 percent male and 89 percent white in 2013 to 36 percent male and 66 percent white in 2024. White men fell from 39 percent of tenure-track positions in the humanities at Harvard in 2014 to 18 percent in 2023.””
Elon Musk says his daughter was killed by the woke mind virus because she is a male to female trans person. She wrote on social media, disputing her metaphorical death.
We need to channel masculinity in such a way that is moral and productive for society. This isn’t an excuse for toxic masculinity, but it requires an acceptance that not all masculinity is toxic and we need masculinity to be a force for good. We should also recognize that there are different ways to be masculine and that not all men are masculine.
“”Overwhelmingly, it turns out that the men with the most relationship options (wealthier, higher-social-status men) marry women similar in age to them and with high educational attainment,” writes demographer Lyman Stone in an article published this week for the Institute for Family Studies. “Relationships with large age gaps are more common for low-income men than for high-income men.”
Stone found that, contrary to stereotypes that proliferate online, the wealthier a man is, the more likely it is that his wife has a graduate degree and the less likely it is that there is a considerable age gap between them. Further, high-earning men were mostly married to high-earning women. The average wife of a top 1 percent–earning man also earned over $100,000.
“The simplest explanation for these trends,” Stone wrote, “is that high-earning men who have more romantic options prefer to marry women who are more like a peer. When men have power to influence their mate options, they tend to use that power to find a peer-age woman for companionship and partnership in life.”
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yet there’s a coterie of tweets—and online personalities—devoted to insisting that high-achieving men find high-achieving women repulsive and instead choose to marry from America’s veritable cornucopia of smokin’ hot Applebee’s waitresses.”
“The agency tasked with advancing America’s energy security, developing its nuclear arsenal, and handling environmental challenges is now shaping the landscape of interscholastic sports in the United States.
The Energy Department recently released two direct final rules to modify existing Title IX protections. One of the rules would strike regulations requiring schools that receive federal funds to allow students to try out for opposite-sex noncontact sports teams if schools do not offer the sport to their sex. This change would impact sports such as tennis and swimming.
The Energy Department says “such athletics rules ignore differences between the sexes which are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality while also imposing a burden on local governments and small businesses who are in the best position to determine the needs of their community and constituents.” The rule was issued in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which directed the Education Department to bring Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions receiving federal funding “that deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
The second rule issued by the Energy Department would strike a provision that allows students to “take affirmative action” to “overcome the effects of conditions that resulted in limited participation” if a federal agency determines that they have not faced discrimination based on sex in an “education program or activity.” The rule also strikes a requirement mandating schools to conduct self-evaluations on how their programs and practices comply with Title IX. Reporting under this provision ended in 2002.
While Title IX enforcement has traditionally been led by the Education Department, the Energy Department has “long used the law to close the gap between men and women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields,” reports Politico. Still, the method by which the agency is proposing to reform Title IX is worrying several civil rights groups.
The agency is using a direct final rule process, which has been reserved for “noncontroversial rules” that are “unlikely to receive significant adverse comments,” notes Politico. Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, told Politico that direct final rules can’t be used for Title IX.
“Technically, it just takes one significant adverse comment for them to have to withdraw the rule or to go through the notice of proposed rulemaking,” said Patel. “However, we’re dealing with an administration that has made very clear that they are not about complying with the law.””
Twenty-six U.S. states have banned certain medical interventions for children with gender dysphoria. In a free country, the barrier for straight up banning a medical intervention needs to be very high. The evidence needs to be overwhelming that such interventions are bad—that they do far more harm than good. That is not the case for puberty suppressing drugs, hormone replacement therapy, or even surgery. Such bans are an insult to liberty and should be removed.
If a doctor, parent, and child, all agree that a particular medical intervention is the best solution for their problem, then who the Hell is the government to stop them? Who the Hell are you to stop them? It doesn’t matter how you feel about transgenders, unless such interventions are clearly net bad for patients to the point where no reasonable person would perform them, they should not be banned.
There are lots of studies on transgender interventions, and there is some evidence that puberty suppression, hormones, and/or surgery help children and adolescents with their gender dysphoria, their quality of life, depression, and even lessens their chance of suicide. Unfortunately, that evidence is mixed and the studies are far from conclusive. Researchers on both sides seem biased and exaggerate the quality of evidence for their positions while undervaluing the evidence in favor of other positions.
The evidence is mixed enough that doctors and parents need to approach such decisions with a heavy dose of caution. The burden of evidence for stopping, and especially changing, a child’s natural puberty needs to fall on the intervention. If doctors are negligently transitioning kids who should not be transitioned, then those doctors should be charged and sued under normal medical malpractice or negligence laws. We don’t need to ban procedures to enforce basic medical law.
I strongly encourage parents and medical professionals to be careful about transitioning children, and for parents to get second opinions from different-thinking doctors. The evidence in favor of such interventions is quite modest, and it’s hard to tell which children are more likely to benefit from them. Nevertheless, such decisions should be in the hands of the parents, doctors, and the children, not the government. We are not truly a free country if medical interventions can be banned on such weak justifications.
What the Science on Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Kids Really Shows Heather Boerner. 2022 5 12. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows Mastectomy John Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/breast-cancer/mastectomy#:~:text=A%20mastectomy%20is%20surgery%20to,a%20high%20risk%20for%20it. Correction: Access to gender-affirming hormones during adolescence and mental health outcomes among transgender adults Jack L. Turban et
“In the first of the two new analyses, a team of researchers led by McMaster University’s Anna Miroshnychenko looked at evidence from 10 studies on the effects of puberty blockers. Three of these studies compared patients given puberty blockers to those who were not, while the others assessed patients before and after being treated with puberty blockers. In both sets of studies, there was “very low certainty evidence” on tested outcomes, including their effect on gender dysphoria, depression, and bone mineral density.
“Most studies provided very low certainty evidence about the outcomes of interest, thus, we cannot exclude the possibility of benefit or harm,” write the study authors.”
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“The second analysis—also led by Miroshnychenko—looked at evidence related to hormone therapy, using data from 24 studies. Evidence about the effects of hormone therapy was mostly low certainty or very low certainty, they found. Many of the study designs were “limited in assessing intervention effects” and the studies were at risk of “bias and imprecision” resulting “from an insufficient sample size.”
“The best available evidence reporting on the effects of [hormone therapy] in individuals experiencing [gender dysphoria] ranged from moderate to high certainty for cardiovascular events, and low to very low certainty for the outcomes of [gender dysphoria], global function, depression, sexual dysfunction, [bone mineral density], and death by suicide,” they write.
On one level, these analyses don’t tell us much about the best course of action when it comes to young people with gender dysphoria and hormone treatments. They leave open the possibility that puberty blockers and hormone therapy may be beneficial, but also the possibility that they may be harmful or have little effect at all.”
“If the Trump administration merely ended all formal DEI training and initiatives, I wouldn’t be too concerned. They were, after all, never a significant part of what we did. What troubles me most is the attempt to stop all conversations about race and gender. Personal relationships and teams are strengthened by having difficult conversations, conversations that can sometimes make people uncomfortable. Avoiding, or worse banning, those conversations weakens both relationships and teams. Trust, mutual respect and shared values and goals are the foundations of strong teams. All are enhanced by open and candid conversations.
Eliminating any discussion of race or gender will have three negative consequences. The Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are sending a strong message that white males are in charge again and they don’t want to hear anything about gender or racial inequities. Intended or not, that is what is being heard. Conversations I have had with leaders at all levels of the military indicate this is already having a significant impact on the morale and well-being of a large fraction of the force. Second, this is going to have a very negative effect on recruiting and retention that will deny our military the benefit of some of the most capable people in the nation. By the end of the Biden administration, we had met or exceeded all of the Department of the Air Force’s recruiting goals; I would hate to see that trend reversed. People already serving will choose to leave, and those considering service in the military will find other career options. Finally, the changes being implemented will empower the small minority of people who do have conscious gender or racial bias to act on those views. There aren’t many of these people in our military, but I can say from personal experience that they do exist.
If the Department of Defense and the nation are to move forward on gender and racial issues, we have to do it together. This means that white males like myself must join conversations that we may find uncomfortable and we must develop and display empathy for people unlike ourselves. That is called leadership. Conversations about race and gender are still going to happen no matter what policies are put in place to outlaw DEI training, ban certain words or eliminate affinity groups. Because of what the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are doing those conversations just won’t include white males. That is not going to make our military more united or stronger. It is going to make us weaker.”