A Detransitioner and Two Scientists Refuting the Trans Craze

But not, I hasten to add, attacking genuinely trans people. The first of these videos is a panel presentation and discussion put on by the Center for Bioethics and Culture, entitled ‘Questioning the “Science” of the Gender Industry’. The speakers include an evolutionary biologist, an endocrinologist and, especially, a female detransitioner. The blurb for the video on YouTube runs

Moderated by Jennifer Lahl, President of the Center for Bioethics and Culture. Lahl is a filmmaker whose films document the stories of exploitation of women and children caused by #BigFertility and #BigPharma @JenniferLahl on Twitter.

Helena Kerschner, is a 23 year old detransitioned woman who identified as transgender during her teenage years and eventually was presrcibed testosterone shortly after her 18th birthday. After being on testosterone for a year and a half, she realized that transitioning was a misguided way of dealing with her social and emotional struggles. Now, years later, she is interested in exploring the cultural and psychological factors that contribute to the sharp rise in adolescents identifying as transgender and choosing to medically transition with hormones and surgeries. @lacroisz on Twitter

Colin Wright, is an evolutionary biologist, Senior Editor at the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR), and Contributing Editor at Quillette. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Quillette, The Times, and more. He also writes articles and a weekly newsletter for his website, Reality’s Last Stand, dedicated to keeping the public informed on the sex and gender debate. @swipewright on Twitter

Michael Laidlaw, is an Endocrinologist in Rocklin, CA. He has been specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of gland and hormone disorders for over 16 years. His writings on the topic of medical harms relating to gender dysphoria treatment have been published in medical journals and lay publications. He has spoken on the topic of medical harms and surgical procedures in a number of venues including state legislatures, Washington D.C., and the UK Parliament. He maintains his YouTube channel at “M Laidlaw” and is back on Twitter @@gendersanity’.

The two scientists detail and refute the flawed science used to support the transgender ideology, with Wright also describing how the medical establishment has been captured by younger scientists who are primarily activists. These doctors believe absolutely and unquestioningly in the affirmative care model, even though it is inappropriate for many young people, particularly girls and women, who are experiencing difficulty and confusion with their biological gender. At the same time a very aggressive trans lobby is actively silencing dissenting scientists and medical practitioners by attacking them as prejudice transphobes, using tactics that range from shouting them down to getting them to lose their jobs if they persist.

Helena Kerschner is the first and probably the most important speaker, as she describes the experience of falsely believing that one is trans from her own perspective as someone who has suffered this. And her experience fits exactly the social contagion model of the expansion of girls and young women, who sucker themselves into believing that they’re really boys. She was a lonely child, who didn’t make friends well at school and there was tension with her parents at home, particularly her mother. She was especially unusual in that she had different musical tastes that the other kids around her. Instead of contemporary pop and rock, she was into Elvis. Well, he was the King of rock’n’roll! She found a community of other young Elvis fans on Tumblr, but had a problem fitting in there as it’s very ‘woke’. If you’re White and not trans, you’re one of the racial and gender oppressors. In order to fit in and keep her new friends, she declared herself nonbinary and adopted he/him pronouns. This then led to her wondering whether she really was trans, and set her on the road to medical treatment. She started taking testosterone, but stopped and abandoned the treatment after she realised that she wasn’t actually trans, but simply a mixed up kid with mental problems, partly caused by her home situation.

It’s a long video at 1hr 37mins, but worth watching. If you can’t watch all of it, but are interested in hearing the other side of this issue, please view Helena Kerschner’s talk. It’s from a personal point of view that you won’t hear from the lamestream media or the official gay organisations like Stonewall.

SF Art: Planet of the Knob Heads

There are some stories whose titles alone bring joy and pleasure. One of these is the Jack Vance fantasy novel, Servants of the Wankh, which for some strange reason had another title when it was published over here in Blighty. Another is ‘Planet of the Knob Heads’, which a friend told me about years ago as an example of a story with an unintentionally hilarious title. I found it a little while ago in one of the pulp magazines in the SF section of one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham. Unfortunately, when I came back to look for it later, that section had moved around and the stock had grown, so I’d lost it. But it’s there somewhere, so who knows, I might be able to find it again sometime in the future.

This is the art for it, which I found at the Sciencefictiongallery site over on Tumblr.

SF Art: Robot Evolution

I found this piece of SF art over at the sciencefictiongallery tumblr site. It looks like it’s the cover art to one of John Sladek’s two ‘Roderick’ books, Roderick, or The Education of a Young Machine, 1980, and its sequel, Roderick at Random, or Further Education of a Young Machine, both published by Granada in the UK.

It’s clearly based on all the illustrations showing the evolution of humanity from apes, through Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, the Neanderthals and finally to Cro Magnon people and ourselves. But instead of humans, they’re ape-like robots. At the moment scientists are busy trying to copy the behaviour and abilities of insects as a way of solving some of the complexities involved in robotic engineering, quite apart from the bipedal robots that have already been created. But this looks like it should be the way robots are evolving, rather than starting with machines modelled on ants and other insects.

Roger Dean and Nemesis the Warlock’s Gooney Birds

Long time readers of 2000 AD may remember the Gooney Birds. These were vast, predatory metal birds evolved from Concorde, that appeared in the second Nemesis the Warlock story, ‘Killerwatt’, back in Prog 178, when one of them attacked a train carrying the strip’s villain, Torquemada, as it passed overland.

Looking through the Sciencefictiongallery tumblr site, which shows pieces of classic and not so classic SF art, I came across this similar piccie by Roger Dean on the page for the 5th February 2014.

It isn’t quite the same thing. Dean’s picture is of a Blackbird spy plane, rather than Concorde, but the idea’s the same. The crowd at 2000 AD took some of their inspiration from the popular culture around them, including pop music. It was why the revived Dan Dare was made to look rather like Ziggy Stardust. The two earliest Nemesis the Warlock stories, ‘Terror Tube’ and ‘Killerwatt’, were published as part of a ‘Comic Rock’ series of strips, which were explicitly inspired by the pop music of the time. In the case of ‘Terror Tube’, this was the Jam’s ‘Going Underground’. In fact, the story had its origin in Mills and O’Neill wishing to stick two fingers up to the comic’s editor, Kevin Gosnell. Gosnell had censored a chase scene in the ‘Robusters’ strip on the grounds that it was too long. So when he was away on holiday, Mills and O’Neill created a story, ‘Terror Tube’, that was just one long chase. As the strip itself acknowledged in its titles, the second Nemesis story, ‘Killerwatt’, was suggested by the album ‘Killerwatts’.

Roger Dean is known for the superb artwork he did for various record sleeves. So you’re left wondering whether Dean’s depiction of the Blackbird spy plane as swooping bird of prey served as the inspiration for the Gooney Birds in the Nemesis the Warlock story, or if it was just an idea that was going around at the time, and which different artists had independently. Either way, ‘Killerwatt’ and its predecessor, ‘Terror Tube’, blew my teenage mind with their depiction of a ravaged, far-future Earth, populated by weird creatures and under the malign heel of Torquemada and Terminators. They provided a solid basis for the Nemesis the Warlock strip proper when this later appeared, and helped to make it one of 2000 AD’s most popular strips.

A Soviet Space Santa

After the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union became an officially atheist state. Christmas as a state holiday was banned, and religion was very strongly repressed and persecuted. The trappings of the holiday was, however, kept but transferred instead to New Year, so you had a ‘New Year’s Tree’ and so forth.

This is another fascinating pic from 70sscifiart. It shows a Soviet ‘New Year’ Santa looking out at one of the Salyut space stations, which the Russians were then using to smash the records for the longest stays in orbit by humans. It shows both the seasonal greetings and the pride the Russians had, and still have, in the achievements of their space programme.

70sscifiart is on Tumblr at http://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/. Go there for more vintage space art.

A Self-Portrait of Greg Hildebrandt

This is another great piccie I found over at the 70sscifiart site on Tumblr. It’s a self-portait of Greg Hildebrandt, one half of the great SF/Fantasy artists the Brothers Hildebrandt. They’re probably best known for their Fantasy paintings of goblins, dwarves, giants and other creatures direct from works like The Lord of the Rings. Though this picture’s title, A Very, Very Close Encounter, suggests a more extraterrestrial source of inspiration.

70sscifiart is at http://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/. It’s worth taking a look for anyone interested in great, vintage SF art.

A Space-Age Santa Claus

I found this piccie of a space-age Santa, bringing season’s greetings and good cheer on his sleigh and with suitably spacesuited reindeer, to a base on an airless, desolate world on the Tumblr site, 70s Scifi Art, which is at: http://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/

Enjoy!

Batman and Wonder Woman Praising the Values of Tolerance and Multiculturalism

On a more positive note, I also found on Tomorrow and Beyond this pair of comic book panels, showing Batman and Wonder Woman reminding their young readers that America is composed of people of all races, religions, cultures and ethnicities. And that ‘Justice For All’ means for All of them.

From the style of the art, it looks like it comes from an earlier era of the strips. My guess is that they come from around the Second World War II, when the American government promoted pluralism and racial, religious and national tolerance to fight the Nazis, the absolute antithesis of those values.

And clearly, they’ve been rescued from comic book history and put up by the blogger because they’re as necessary as ever, now that Trump is in the White House, supported by his cronies in the Klan and Alt-Right.

Don’t believe the Republicans and their hate speech and propaganda. These are the values that have genuinely made America great, spoken by American popular culture’s two greatest heroes, not counting Superman, Spider-Man and Mighty Marvel’s stable.

Satirical Painting of Trump as Villainous Octopus

Here’s another piece of satire I also found over at the SF/ weird art site on Tumblr, Tomorrow and Beyond. It shows Trump as a giant octopus that has torn through the White House, while marching to its gates is a queue of the venal, corrupt, malignant and clownish. Which just about describes Trump’s presidency, his cabinet and relations with big business.

Action Figures of the Real Villains of Our Time

I found this series of spoof action figures over at the Tomorrow and Beyond site on Tumblr. It’s for a fictional range of action figures entitled ’21st Century Bastards’, and comprise this gallery of horrors.

Foreign Bastards include Putin.

There are also two further British Bastards along with Piers Morgan. Both are previous Tory Prime Ministers.

And, of course, the woman whose reign with Reagan started the long decline of the West and the disappearance of everything good and decent from the body politic.

Obviously, this is the kind of satire that will send staunch Republicans and Tories absolutely ballistic with rage. Like bullies, they can’t stand it when people stand up to them and pour all the bile, vilification and scorn back at them.

I think this was published a few months ago, so unfortunately there isn’t one of Theresa May. Neither is there one of Jacob ‘Slenderman’ Rees-Mogg. Which could be a mercy, as those might be too much for some nervous souls to bear. As they say on Crimewatch, ‘Don’t have nightmares!’