This cartoon is drawn by Becky Hawkins – back on the set of The JAQ Off, which she created, and which may be the only purposely repeating setting in Leftycartoons. (Not counting repeating settings like “Barry is drawing characters walking through the park for the thirtieth time because that’s fun to draw”).
Becky writes:
“The JAQ-Off” is my favorite contribution to the Barry political cartoon extended universe. It’s also handy to draw because I have the setting and one character designed already. Unfortunately, my plan of “scroll social media til I find a ‘model’ for the JAQ-off guest” turned into “scroll til my brain hurts and British TERF/Islamophobe rage is dripping out my ears.” Occupational hazard. I didn’t base this guest on a real person, just an average face, haircut and sweater from a group photo.
When I was sketching panel 3, I had to draw the guest’s face in more detail. I had some trouble drawing her cartoonishly-round but not circular head from this angle. I set my phone to selfie mode and mouthed “homophobic” and “woke” (the photo on the left).
I go back and forth on whether my characters have upper lips, and that makes this pose difficult to draw. I remembered feedback that this expression was hard to read in an earlier cartoon, so I mouthed “for REAL” and went with the photo on the right:
(Now Playing on those headphones: the Bechdel Cast episode on Sorry to Bother You).
(Back to Barry!)
Sometimes, when I parody something ridiculous that the transphobes did or say, I worry that people will think I made it up.
For instance, there really is a prominent right-wing “medical” organization (The American College of Pediatricians) which clearly chose its name in the hope of being confused with a long-existing, prestigious medical organization (The American Academy of Pediatricians). They really are that shameless.
It’s also true that transphobes have been spreading the idea that gay kids are being pressured to “turn trans” because of homophobia. This is an obviously ridiculous theory that many internet randos have put forward, but it’s also been supported by non-randos like J. K. Rowling.
I’m happier than usual with this script, mainly because I think it’s funnier than my usual – every panel has something I find funny. I’m also in love with how well Becky drew the host’s indifference in panel two.
Thanks to our friend Rachel Swirsky, who suggested the name “American Medical Approximation.” (I had “American Medical Appropriation.”)
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels. Each panel depicts a TV talk show, called “The JAQ Off.” There are a couple of plants (with “The JAQ Off” written on their pots), and between them a desk with “Just Asking Questions” painted in large letters on the front. We can see big TV lights pointing at the desk.
Two women are seated behind the desk. On the left is the host of the show, who has short, nicely styled brown hair, and is wearing a suit jacket over a green blouse. On the right is the guest, an older woman with long white hair wearing a blue turtleneck. We’ll call them HOST and DEEMS.
PANEL 1
The Host is smiling and speaking to the camera as she gestures at her guest. Deems is speaking and holding her palms up as if denying an accusation.
HOST: Our guest is Doctor Debbie Deems of the prestigious American Medical Association! She’s here to talk about protecting gay teens.
DEEMS: Technically, we’re the American Medical Approximation. It’s a common mix-up we’re certainly not trying to encourage.
PANEL 2
The host takes a sip of her water while she makes a shrug with her other arm. The guest lifts herself up from her seat a little, her expression conveying urgency.
HOST: Tomayto tomahto. What’s the main danger gay teens face?
DEEMS: The big danger is they’re being force to turn trans.
PANEL 3
A close-up on Deems as she makes a point to the camera, a forefinger upheld. She looks pretty frantic.
DEEMS: There’s an epidemic of homophobic woke parent who can’t stand their kids being gay so they turn their kids trans! This is definitely something that happens verifiably and for real!
PANEL 4
The host has put a hand over her mouth, looking concerned. Deems is calm and very composed all of a sudden.
HOST: That’s terrible! Do you have any examples you can tell us about?
DEEMS: No.
HOST: Well, I’m convinced!
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is a cartoonist expression for little gags and details that the cartoonist put in that don’t actually matter, but are fun anyway.
In this strip, the “chicken fat” in in panel three, where there are a few chyron lines crawling across the bottom of the panel. (Chyrons are the text scrolling across the bottom of news networks). Chyron line one just says “Coming Up.” Line two says “Expert: trans people peed on her cat, sofa” and line three says “Did Soros invent the trans activist movement? We imply yes!”
Homophobic Woke Parents Are Turning Gay Kids Trans! | Patreon
In math we have the Association of Mathematics Researchers, which is our version of the American Medical Approximation: the AMR exists solely to assert that the real major mathematics organizations (AMS and MAA) are too woke.
I kinda wonder how many other areas of study have similar organizations.
On the contrary, my transmascness made me gay (I was completely ace before T, now I’m cupiosexual)
I should clarify that I’m a transmasc lesbian
I think the usual high profile example is Susie Green, especially in her Ted talk where she reveals that her husband was horrified by the idea that their child seemed to be a gay boy but was in fact ok with the idea that they might be a girl.
Sebastian, just to be clear, you are accusing Susie Green and her husband of forcing their child to transition?
Do you have a supporting link? Or is that something Green literally says in her Ted talk?
It is something she literally says in her Ted talk: The exact quote is “I had come to the conclusion with over sort of the years up until she was about two was that I had a very sensitive quite effeminate little boy who was probably gay. But Jack’s dad did not approve of our child’s effeminate behavior and it created such tension that we ended up in couples’ counseling”
Earlier she says “when I went back to work Jack’s favorite outfits were the tutu and the Snow White costume, and again that was fine. But not for Dad.”
I’m saying that even in her probably rose colored version of the story: she thought her child was an effeminate gay boy (at 2), her husband hated that, told Jackie that they couldn’t have feminine clothes or toys as a boy, together did not allow Jackie to express that as a boy, later (around 6) allowed Jackie to express those clear desires as a girl, and how that plays out through child development is certainly not well understood.
Sebastian: She didn’t literally say that she forced their child to transition – to avoid having a gay child, or for any other reason. Not in the sentences you just quoted, and nowhere else in her Ted Talk. (Have you watched all of it, or read the whole transcript?)
What she actually said was that Jackie was always drawn to girl things, and that didn’t phase her (Susie) at all, because she believes in letting children play with whichever toys they want. At age four, Jackie told her that “God’s made a mistake and I should have been a girl.” At that point Susie, by her own description, panicked and told her child “it was fine to be a boy and like girly things but that didn’t make him a girl.”
In another interview, she said “For the next two years I just kept telling her that, and she kept telling me ‘I’m a girl’.”
So far from pushing her child to transition, she spent years pushing her child not to transition and to be an effeminate boy instead, and her child was insisting that she was a girl.
Jackie’s dad did seem to hate the idea of having a gay son – but nowhere in her Ted Talk did she say that Jack’s dad instead pushed for transition as an alternative to having a gay child. What happened, according to her, is that couples counseling told them that as parents they had to agree, and her husband took that as a license to take over entirely. He threw away all the “girls” toys, and Jackie became very depressed and (they later learned) was trying to sneakily get and hide “girls” toys.
At age eight, Susie and the dad separated, and Jackie finally had freedom to dress as she wanted – but only at home. At ten years old – two years later – they went on holiday for three weeks somewhere no one knew Jackie, and Jackie could spend that time dressing in girls clothes 24/7, rather than having to pretend to be a boy.
It was only then, by the mother’s account, that she “decided that actually forcing my child to live as a boy in school was the wrong thing.”
By Jackie’s last year of primary school – so around age 11 – her dad had finally came around and accepted that “this wasn’t something that was a choice – this was just a part of who our daughter was.” But by that time Jackie had been open with her family for years about being a girl.
Describing this as “her husband was horrified by the idea that their child seemed to be a gay boy but was in fact ok with the idea that they might be a girl” is ridiculous, Sebastian. There’s a technical sense in which that’s not a lie, but come on! It’s phrased in a way to leave essential information out and completely fool people about what the real story is.
If this is, as you claimed, “the usual example” used by transphobes, that shows how right my cartoon is – they don’t have any real examples to bring up.
(References: Transcript of Susie Green’s Ted Talk – the formatting is horrible, but this is literally the only transcript I found anywhere – and interview/profile thingy of Susie Green.)
I think the most common example of a people who are much more comfortable with trans women than gay men is probably Iranians. There’s no official state policy explicitly forcing the conversions, but homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, and a man convicted of homosexuality can forgo the noose (rhetorically) by selecting gender reassignment surgery, and after having their organs removed, can go on to have sex with as many men as they’re able… Which might not be many, women’s rights in Iran aren’t exactly stellar.
I’m obviously not saying that this attitude is mirrored in the West, only that the attitude exists, and I would suggest that there’s some number of people in the West who are more comfortable with a trans child than they are a gay child, for one reason or another. Some amount of parents are probably pushing their kids to transition… America is big and there are some fucked up people out there… But I don’t think that’s really the issue.
I don’t think the numbers are in to say this with any certainty, so I have low conviction on this, but my expectation is that 20 years ago, when it was much harder to transition, the people who transitioned had to fight for transition, and the system probably weeded out not only the false positives, but actual positives. I think that with increased access to transition we will see the pendulum swing the other way, and the number of false positives will increase, perhaps to a level that progressives can no longer hand wave away as too small to worry about.
And I admit I could be wrong. We’ll see. Transgender medicine is expanding, if in 20 years, we continued apace and we’ve settled into a pattern where we’ve reconciled the issues and the risk to children is deemed low, then my griping online becomes an embarrassment I’ll just have to live with.
I wonder if proponents have struggled with what it means if they’re wrong. Has anyone considered what it would take for your position to shift? What if the regret rate suddenly spiked? What if the detransition rate spiked? I understand that you don’t think it will, and if it never does then this never becomes an issue… But what if it does? Theoretically: At what point would the damage being done to cis children cause enough doubt to adjust your position?
“. Has anyone considered what it would take for your position to shift?”
What would it take for -your- position to shift, Ron?
I think you meant Corso, not Ron. :-)
“Proponents” of what, exactly? Allowing social transition of underage trans kidsand teens? Allowing use of hormone blokers? Allowing use of testosterone/ estrogen treatments? Allowing gender conformation surgery for trans teens?
Because when it comes to transition, those are different issues with different possible risks and adverse side effects. Which means there are different issues to take into consideration.
Answering this question is impossible without knowing what you actually mean.
I am a cis, gender-non-conforming woman, and I *explicitly* reject the idea that allowing cis children, youth, and adults the social and medical room to explore their gender throughout their lives is harmful to them.
It sure is harmful to the heteropatriarchy though, to be 1000x less precious about our rigid, oppositional, and misogynist construction of gender. but that’s not my problem!
I just want to applaud the comments from avvaaa and Lauren as well as acknowledge the very valid point made by dragon_snap.
I said it… If 20 years from now, science generally agrees that the current practices are not actually transitioning cis children and doing them irreversible harm, I’d have to adjust.
The reason I’m not there yet is because we simply don’t know. Using an example from subsequent comments: Puberty blockers were supposed to treat precocious puberty, they aren’t approved by the FDA for use in pre-transition medicine. Which means that they’re being used off label in this context, the current crop of young people on them are, at best, a testing environment, and while everyone *says* that they’re merely buying children time and they’re completely irreversible, there’s no way for them to actually know that.
Does your position change if we eventually find that puberty blockers permanently stunt puberty?
The science around trans issues are a mass of one-offs. There is a massive replication crisis: A lot of data we take for granted is either not able to be replicable or not being replicated. My impression is that a lot of this is because there are data points out there that were either improper because the researchers set out with a finding as a goal, or that everyone in the field generally knows that there’s a data point out there, but the point is career suicide, and they don’t want to go through all that work, just to be labelled transgressive and put their credibility and careers at stake. But eventually: Reality asserts, and what you can’t find in studies, you’ll eventually find in demographics.
I don’t think that I was unclear, what I said was:
I wouldn’t associate terms like the “regret rate” or the “detransition rate” with social transition or hormone blockers, but even if you wanted to pretend that’s what I was talking about: Sure. What would it take for you to change your mind? If you feel that way, take them one by one, what level of information would it take for you to change your mind on surgery for minors? Hormone treatments for minors? Hormone blockers? And social transition?
I’m asking because I’m curious what your tolerance levels are, and I think everyone should ask this question on basically every topic, political or otherwise, but it’s not like I can hold you to anything: Clarify what you think you’re responding to and respond to it. I think that your clarification will be almost as enlightening as your answer.
“If 20 years from now…”
So nothing could make you change your position in the next 19.5 years. Got it. Maybe you shouldn´t be playing holier-than-thou over other people about their supposedly being intransigent, though.
Come on, show a little patriotism! Say they weren’t approved by Health Canada for this indication. (Assuming they weren’t. Which I don’t know.)
The off-label thing is a bit of a red herring. Once a drug is approved, it is assumed to be safe enough to be prescribed under medical supervision. Drugs are used off-label all the time (in kids and adults).
Lupron (a drug that can be used as a puberty blocker) is also used off-label for IVF, endometriosis, breast cancer, PCOS, and probably a whole range of hormonally responsive medical issues. It was originally approved for prostate cancer treatment before later approval for precocious puberty (I assume because they needed to demonstrate use in children was not harmful due to the system-wide hormonal effects – usually they don’t bother getting off-label approvals unless they have to). I looked into it a little when a family member was undergoing IVF. This is not deeply hidden information.
Corso, I’m curious if you want to ban cis kids from getting HRT and genital surgery?
So much this. Prazosin is a blood pressure medication that is now mostly prescribed to help alleviate Nightmare Disorder. It’s been amazing for me but I guess since it’s an off-label use, my clinician should be prosecuted, huh?
Also, with regards to the notion that “overexposure to the existence of trans, genderqueer, agender, and non-binary people*” will inevitability cause some cis children/teens/adults to, for some period of time, misunderstand their own gender:
Let us not forget for a moment all the kids/teens/adults who are trans and/or non-binary who end up, for some period of time, mistaking themselves as cis and/or binary-gendered.
Perhaps it is not possible to have a level of cultural awareness of transness that doesn’t result in anyone being mystified by their own gender, in which case I believe a just and free society should proceed with the option that gives the most choice to individuals.
Avvaaa
I think that’s probably going to be how long it will take the studies to come out. The kids have to grow up, someone has to do the studies, the studies have to be replicated… But if it comes out sooner than that: Sure. Meanwhile: Literally no one here has engaged on what it would look like for them to hypothetically change their mind on anything. Even if you weren’t being characteristically uncharitable, my theoretical 20 years is infinitely more flexible than nothing.
Jane
I could point out that Ivermectin has FDA approval as an anti-parasitic, and we can have opinions on people who took it as a Covid prophylactic.
But I think the better response is to Lupron… Which is also used to chemically castrate violent sex offenders. Not to mention the bone density and chronic pain issues. Dose and method matters. [Sentence deleted by Amp for needlessly insulting language and for a factual claim without a link.]
I’m not saying that drugs can’t be used off label… They obviously can be, and more often than not you’ll be fine. But I think we need to be honest here: You do not know that these drugs don’t have long term side effects in children going through a normal puberty.
bcb
I’m not advocating banning anything. But would I have a problem with it? Probably not. With the kinds of conditions you’re talking about, it’s almost always a physical diagnosis, and I’m much less concerned about misdiagnosis of those.
Speaking of being ridiculously uncharitable, people deciding “I don’t want to reply to this” (which people could decide for many reasons) is obviously not the same as them expressly saying “nothing would ever make me change my mind,” and it’s dishonest of you to pretend otherwise. Don’t do it again.
@Corso
There were in fact people doing this under medical supervision. There were clinical trials for ivermectin, and people who got doctors to prescribe it to them. However, many (most?) people taking ivermectin for covid bought the veterinary version, which was 1) not intended for human use, 2) not the correct dosage and 3) not under medical supervision. Let’s not pretend that this is the same as off-label prescribing under medical supervision.
Precocious puberty IS usually normal puberty, just early. In medically treated cases, early puberty is delayed to allow kids to wait until they are closer to the “usual” age of puberty and also more mature mentally and emotionally. Doctors also delay puberty in idiopathically short children to try to get them to grow more. Again, “normal puberty” delayed by blockers when doctors and parents think it is in the best interest of the child. There are many, many children who went on blockers, came off, and experienced puberty. Why would trans kids be any different?
If I had a child who wanted puberty blockers for whatever reason, I would spend a long time looking at what is known and unknown before making a decision. As someone who has done minimal research and is not a medical doctor, I have no business weighing in on someone else’s choice made in consultation with medical experts. And neither does anyone else.
We allow all sorts of medical treatment that have possibly terrible side effects or long term impacts. Why is medical intervention in the treatment of trans kids held to a higher standard of research and safety than other medical interventions for kids? Why do lay people feel the need to intervene in private medical decisions for trans kids but not for anyone else?
@Corso
About changing my mind – I would change my mind on allowing trans kids to take puberty blockers if there was a case made to the authorities that deal with these things (FDA or local equivalent, medical associations, etc) and this changed what experts consider to be best practice (or advisable at all). Like with any other medical intervention.
The issue of FDA (specifically–rules vary according to the laws in various countries) approval is that there are two basic reasons why a drug may not be approved for an indication:
First and by far the most common, the company making the drug never asked. Typically, if a drug that is off patent or nearly off patent the manufacturer will not seek new indications, no matter how good the evidence for them is. Even if it is still on patent, there is a limited benefit to the company, especially for (relatively) cheap drugs like GnRH agonists.
Second, because the company applied for the indication and got rejected*. The FDA is legally forbidden from publishing negative outcomes so unless the manufacturer choses to reveal that there was an unsuccessful application or there was a public discussion at an advisory committee meeting, there is no way to know for certain that this happened.
For an old, cheap drug with generics available, eg lupron, the overwhelming probability is the first case. In these situations, the standard practice is to look to the medical literature for guidance. The medical literature generally supports use of GnRH agonists in the setting of gender transition. So it is considered standard of care, despite no formal FDA approval. Like literally thousands of other medications and indications.
So overall, I agree that it’s a non-issue, but there are some subtleties.
*Technically, a drug is never “rejected”, it’s just not approved for a given indication on a given set of evidence. The maker can come back with new evidence at any time and reapply.