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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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They are reversible in that puberty resumes after you stop taking them.

Yeah, and hormone levels go back to normal if you stop HRT, but no one is trying to sell that as "reversible".

The NHS in the UK took 'reversible' off their communications following the Cass Report though, and broadcasters became more circumspect. (That'd be an example of people modulating their claims in order to stay elite.)

Meanwhile, in the US, it is a matter of public record that the organization writing standards for transgender care didn't want to do an evidence based review, specifically because it would show there's no evidence, and that they are sitting on 2 unpublished systemic reviews that they have commissioned themselves. To my knowledge everybody still has their cushy prestigious jobs as doctors, high level officials, etc.

How do "broadcasters" enter the picture? If "broadcasters" can modulate the original lie, than just look at what they're saying about Trump all the time.

namely that the killer confessed

To the murder or to the hatecrime?

Specifically to the hate crime. (Or to be more precise, he pled guilty to killing Shepard having been driven to temporary insanity by a fit of gay panic after Shepard came onto him.)