Via Muldoon in the comments – and the pages of Psychology Today – the evaporating standards of “affirmative psychotherapy”:

Sharp-eyed readers may have registered the seeming absence of curiosity, of enquiry – say, regarding very common causes of the phenomenon in question. Readers may also wish to ponder the inevitable tensions between affirmation and investigation – and to place bets on which will be dispensed with in favour of the other. In this Yes, You Are Napoleon school of psychotherapy, where the unwell must always be told whatever they want to hear. Possibly before being steered towards irreversible mutilation and lifelong pain.

That gender-affirming care.

Readers may also wish to ponder how a similarly affirming approach might fare with other mental health issues – such as anorexia, with alarmingly cadaverous young women being told, “Yes, dear, you are every bit as fat as you imagine and should definitely continue starving yourself.”

A consequence of all this affirmation and declared solidarity is a hasty jumping to conclusions. A begging of questions. For instance:

The author of the above, Tess Kilwein – PhD, pronouns “she/they” – would have us believe, and would have her patients believe, that the most pressing and fundamental causes of woe are “bias,” “microaggressions,” and “anti-trans bills” – among which, laws that restrict women’s changing rooms and other intimate spaces to use by actual women, rather than delusional and/or predatory men.

And yet, a person with sexual dysmorphia – someone vehemently alienated from the physical reality of their sex – would presumably still feel that way even if stranded on a desert island. Just as they do now, when alone – say, in the shower or when making tiresome TikTok videos. Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s causing the problem.

This willingness to pretend – and to then applaud oneself as righteous and heroic – is, I’d suggest, a less than ideal tendency for a mental health professional. Someone to whom a person’s wellbeing, or hope of wellbeing, has been entrusted. Likewise, the rush to externalise all causes of misery. While social interaction – knowing that other people are likely to perceive you as you actually are, not as whatever it is you wish you were – may amplify the existing dissonance, such interaction doesn’t cause it. It isn’t the root of the problem.

That’s an, as they say, you thing.

In this supposedly therapeutic context, the words affirmation and validation translate as a willingness to lie. A willingness to indulge obvious bollocks and play along. And so, one might wonder how Dr Kilwein might affirm and validate some of the chaps seen here. Or this merry bedlamite, who violates women’s toilets and pushes his phone camera under the doors of occupied stalls in order to livestream to his admirers, all those affirming fans, the protests of his latest victim.

But, says Dr Kilwein, we must “validate without hesitation.” Because this practised, habitual dishonesty is, she says, “justice” and “courage.” And therefore, a basis for in-group status. At which point, the nakedly partisan activism of such people – and the abandonment of anything approaching detachment and objectivity – even basic curiosity – appears jarringly at odds with any claims of professionalism.

We are, however, assured that Dr Kilwein is a proponent of “bold storytelling.” Which is just what a patient needs when their perceptions of reality are wildly unreliable.

And in somewhat surreal crime news:

Despite his efforts to feign girlishness and his use of the name Madison, Mr Alec Ray Craig, aged 27, found himself in the care of the Albany Police Department and Linn County Court, where fabulist pronouns are scrupulously observed by all parties:

Because in matters of this kind, what you need is more confusion. Further departure from reality.

At which point, readers may wonder whether jail might serve the not insignificant purpose of keeping a deranged paedophile away from his prey.

And local parents will doubtless sleep soundly. What with Mr Craig’s track record of observing boundaries. As when, in 2023, following his abuse of a minor, Mr Craig was given similar instructions, months before his attempt to once again mingle with schoolchildren.

And then of course there’s the assumption that one can rely on the promise of a 27-year-old man who is convinced he’ll be perceived as an adolescent girl.

Mr Craig, a participant in online fetish communities, refers to himself as a “femboi,” a “furry,” and a “therian,” the latter term denoting his supposedly non-human status:

Ah, that would explain it. It all makes sense now.

Lest anyone get the, er, wrong idea.

One might note the selectivity of the police, court and media in terms of which pretences are to be indulged with great diligence. Such that claiming to be a child, when you’re actually 27, to thereby gain sexual access to minors, is referred to as “pretending,” while claiming to be female, all physical reality to the contrary, is not.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the curious leniency of the court, Dicentra adds,

That would at least explain why the go-to solution is the thing tried last time and which clearly didn’t work.

In turn, commenter Aitch cites this,

Adding,

While Rafi quotes the linked article,

And offers a summary:

And so, when local parents discover that a determined paedophile has once again been stalking children, and even trying to enrol in schools – supposedly as a girl, despite him being a 27-year-old man with facial hair – then none of those concerned parents must be allowed to know what the man in question looks like, or to know about his previous crimes – even though he’ll be loose again within days – and they must not be allowed to pass comment on his somewhat bizarre appearance.

Because that would be hateful, it seems. The very stuff of wickedness.

What a strange place we’ve arrived at.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

And in transgender-sex-offender-urine-hurling news:

The chap in question – known, by himself, as “Sophie Koko” – originates from Kazakhstan and boasts an extensive history of sexual offences, numbering over fifty. His leisure activities – outside of bottling his own urine and then spraying it on children – include searching out articles about his crimes and then threatening any commenters who dare to “misgender” him.

Despite his prodigious criminal activity, often repeated in the same locations, Mr Koko – complete with bicycle and polka-dot dress – proved difficult to apprehend. Possibly due to the public being told by both the police and the media that the person engaging in such activities, and for whom they should be alert, was somehow a woman.

During Mr Koko’s trial, the prosecution demanded “a prison sentence of one year and eight months without parole.” Which, for a man with a catalogue of fifty offences – largely against children, at whom he flashed his genitals and threw his own bodily waste – may strike readers as a tad lenient. Judge Sonja Robe proved even more forgiving, opting for probation, 100 hours of community service, and “a requirement to visit a counselling centre for transgender individuals.”

Perhaps sensing the atmosphere of weird indulgence, Mr Koko took to social media, where he blamed his habitually criminal behaviour on those who dared to register the actual sex of the person threatening violence against women, including murder, and spraying children with his own piss:

Because of you.

And that whole piss-bottling thing, already underway, was in no way a sign of impending derailment or a pre-existing urge. So live in fear, ladies, lest you say the wrong thing. Or notice the wrong facts.

Consider this an open thread.

Or, The Cronenberg Chronicles.

Below, Peter Boghossian and Mia Hughes, author of The WPATH Files, discuss the twisted history of transgender ideology. Topics touched on include the audacious propagation of pseudoscience; social contagion and the capture of institutions; experiments on children; and the psychology of doubling-down.

It’s two hours long and dense with detail, but much of that detail is likely to widen the eyes. It’s possibly worth noting, as Ms Hughes does around 01:16:00, that as the trans phenomenon has flourished – if that’s quite the right word – rates of anorexia and cutting have fallen, suggesting some correlation. Perhaps some shifting fashion, a swapping of self-harm signals. Given the subject matter and its realities, the squeamish may wish to proceed with caution.

A continuation of the discussion above – covering the abandonment of rigour and basic professionalism, surgical horrors, and the “insane experiment” of puberty suppression – can be found here.

Previously: The Bedlamite Contagion. From which, this:

This, then, is where we are. Doesn’t seem a good place to be, frankly.

Another day, another drama involving the changing rooms of schoolgirls – and another illustration of how wokeness – all that progressive piety – can be a mask for other motives:

And hey, what could possibly go wrong?

Ah.

Quite right, one might think.

Oh.

“You wicked girls will undress in front of this weird, cross-dressing boy, and you will do it over and over again.”

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, wildly.

Readers are invited to ponder the psychology in play at this terribly progressive school. The triumphal righteousness of compelling thirteen-year-old schoolgirls to undress in front of a mentally ill male or opportunist pervert. A mentally ill male or opportunist pervert that the schoolgirls do not trust. Resulting in the girls feeling frightened and upset.

Imagine that tingle of power. All wrapped in a drag of modish piety.

After Mrs Georgas’ daughter refused to take part, understandably, a compromise of sorts was suggested:

You see,

Entirely at the expense of others.

Such that, “the discomfort or privacy concerns of other students, teachers, or parents are not valid reasons to deny or limit the full and equal use of facilities based on a student’s gender-related identity.” Instead, any girl who doesn’t appreciate being ordered to undress in front of a boy – a boy she does not trust – will be deemed the aberrant party, the one whose behaviour is problematic.

And so, rather than relocate the “trans-identified” boy to (a) the boys’ changing room, or (b) an existing “gender-neutral” space for His Super-Special Self, any girls who complain about the incongruity, the moral inaptness, are to be relocated and isolated. Leaving more compliant girls to endure the indignity and weirdness. Such is wokeness.

At a subsequent public meeting of the Deerfield School District 109 School Board, held on Thursday, Mrs Georgas explained,

Well, yes, pretty much.

And yet the following speaker, a visibly self-satisfied woman named Charles Friedman, who declares herself “a transgender person” and who also just happens to have a transgender child – hey, what are the odds? – was all too happy to disregard the particulars of Mrs Georgas’ complaint and its wider implications.

Indeed, the lady named Charles, a trans activist – one of many present – dismissed the concerns above as “bullying.” Presumably on grounds that not allowing boys to barge into the changing rooms of thirteen-year-old girls and then watch them undress is an act of oppression. A denial of basic rights.

Those with an appetite for grim surrealism can watch the outpourings of subsequent speakers, for whom pronoun stipulation is a thing, for whom big earrings and nail polish establish womanhood, and for whom the creepy violation of thirteen-year-old schoolgirls is a basis for applause.

Should any tender-hearted readers be tempted to assume that the above must be some one-off aberration, by all means think again. And do note the updates to that particular farce.

Previous changing-room adventures – in which the word pattern comes to mind – can be found here, here, here, and here.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding this,

Liz adds, not unreasonably,

Indeed. And yet, in the video of the school board meeting, subsequent speakers, all trans activists, many of whom travelled from far out of town, casually dismiss or ignore the clearly stated concerns, and denounce Mrs Georgas as a bully, a bigot, and, bizarrely, a “white supremacist.”

Because you’re not allowed to object to your children being psychologically abused.

And the option proposed by the school, and affirmed by Ms Charles Friedman, our self-satisfied trans activist – the one who just happens to have a transgender child – is likely to result in further drama. Or the same drama repeated.

If girls who object to a boy’s presence in their changing room are told to change somewhere else, and not in their own changing room, then it seems entirely possible that one by one, quite rapidly, the other girls will follow suit, resulting in the cross-dressing boy having the girls’ changing room all to himself. At which point, this may be invoked as yet another form of bigotry and oppression.

And perhaps the boy or his activist parents, or likely activist parent, will demand he be given access to whichever new space the girls have been obliged to retreat to. Because his psychodrama must be imposed on others, regardless of their objections. And around we go again.

And – as so often – note just how readily the school administrators, these uniformly progressive women, will sell out their supposed sisters. The daughters of their neighbours. In order to look fashionable, and therefore high-status.

It’s also, I think, worth noting the demeanour of Ms Friedman, our trans activist. During her speech, she shows little interest in the concerns of parents. Instead, she is dismissive, self-satisfied and visibly triumphal. The tone is basically, “We have the power over your children now. Suck it up, bitches.”

I can’t help but think that’s rather telling.

I should add that the degree of woke perversity – such that girls who object to the humiliation are the ones deemed problematic and aberrant – is so pronounced that a sense of unreality may ensue. For instance, readers may wish to imagine themselves at the school board meeting above, hearing Mrs Georgas speak, and then hearing her being booed, called absurd names, and her concerns being gleefully dismissed. By men in bad drag.

In light of which, it’s difficult to see any plausible common ground. When activist attendees would rather jeer and preen, and call concerned parents bigots and racists, rather than address their actual concerns, it’s not obvious what room for compromise, or debate, there could be.