The Difference Between Evidence And Dogma

Ordinarily, I don't pay much attention to what other bloggers write, but since "Cardinal Pole" (whoever it really is) seems to insist on not just misquoting me, but deliberately misunderstanding what I write, it's time to take his little charade to task here.

Firt up, we find Cardinal Pole going off on a half baked dismissal of transsexuality: A Herald Letter On "Trans" Matters:

In a nutshell it’s this, apparently, judging by MgS’s approving quotation of it:

In Schizophrenia, there may rarely be delusions of belonging to the other sex. Insistence by a person with Gender Identity Disorder that he or she is of the other sex is not considered a delusion, because what is invariably meant is that the person feels like a member of the other sex rather than truly believes that he or she is a member of the other sex.
(her bold type and italics,
...)

MgS highlights the part before the comma, but it’s the part after the comma that I find remarkable: G.I.D. is not a delusion because its sufferers feeeeeeeeel, not think, that they belong to the opposite sex. Got it.

Few things in the world irritate me more than some half baked attempt to quote me by taking things completely out of context. The quoted phrase Cardinal Pole references is in fact a direct quote from the text of the DSM IV-TR category for Gender Identity Disorder.

That particular point is key to addressing the often-heard "it's a delusion" argument from a variety of sources who are critical of actually providing transsexuals (in particular) with the only known effective treatment available.

Clinical delusion is quite distinct from the symptoms that are descriptive of delusion. Particularly key is recognizing that transsexuals are usually very, very aware of the reality of their situation. They fully understand that their biology is at odds with their emotional sense of themselves.

From the eMedicine article on Delusional Disorder, is the following very important paragraph:

Patients usually have little insight and impaired judgment regarding their pathology. Police, family members, coworkers, and physicians other than psychiatrists are usually the first to suspect the problem and seek psychiatric consultation. Seeking corroborative information, when permitted by the patient, is often crucial.

This is an important differentiation between clinical delusion and transsexualism. The transsexual is quite conscious of their status at all levels. There is no lack of insight or impairment of judgment involved.

In fact, if one spends any amount of time paying attention to the clinical literature relating to transsexuals, it quickly becomes clear that the attribution of delusion is at best ill-informed, if not simply the product of downright sloppy thinking.

I've addressed the myriad problems that "gender as pure construct" reasoning suffers from in numerous other posts on this blog.

In parting, I leave Cardinal Pole with the following thought, in direct response to his intellectual dishonesty and typically circular reasoning:

Bill 44 - Subtle and Destructive Legislation

Frankly, I think that much of what has been said about Bill 44 is based on misinterpretations of the wording in the legislation.

When Brian Rushfeldt opens his yap, you have to wonder just where Charles McVety's hand is, though:

The head of a national Christian lobby group says parents, not educators, will decide when to apply new rights allowing them to pull kids from controversial classes if enshrined in Alberta's human rights laws.

Provincial officials have insisted Bill 44, which saw some heated debate Wednesday during second reading in the legislature, would exclusively apply to teachings of sexuality, sexual orientation and religion.

But Brian Rushfeldt, co-founder of the Calgary-based Canada Family Action Coalition, says the proposed human rights provision can be more widely interpreted.

"It's up to the parent to make (the legislation) as broad or as narrow as they want," said Rushfeldt, who welcomed the proposed changes.

"I don't know that the schools nor the government should be the ones to put parameters on it and say it's only sexuality classes or only evolution classes or only religion classes."

The reason I don't buy a broad interpretation here is simple. The proposed wording (at present) is quite limited:

subject-matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or
sexual orientation.

That said, however, we have to recognize that the wingnuts are going to try to use it any way they think they can get away with. That will doubtless include vocal and incessant whining when some of Shakespeare's works are being studied; or for that matter contemporary literature of any sort.

I don't think it will allow them to pull their children out of science class, when the subject happens to offend someone's religious views - that isn't my sense of the wording.

However, what it does do is quite fundamentally undermine the very notion of tolerance and understanding when it comes to sexual minorities. Because sexuality and sexual orientation are specifically mentioned, this in essence gives a blanket right to parents to continue to foster ignorance and bigotry towards GLBT Albertans. It appears to once again reinforce the double standard of conservatives when it comes to equality rights.

From Alberta's Hansards:

Ms Notley: Well, I suspect that the minister had trouble understanding
the question because he doesn’t understand the issue. Your
proposed policy will clearly allow children to be removed from
classes which discuss sexual orientation. Presumably, that includes
where a teacher instructs that sexual orientation is a protected
equality right under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Why is the
minister supporting a plan to limit the ability of teachers to talk
about our human rights code to our Alberta children?

Mr. Blackett: Mr. Speaker, what we are doing is saying that, you
know, the provisions are already given to our parents in the School
Act. We will continue to do that. With respect to sexual orientation,
they have that provision to opt out now. They will have that
provision going forward.

I think Rachel Notley's speech in the legislature on Bill-44 warrants further reading as well:

Ms Notley: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m pleased to be able to
finally have an opportunity to speak at more length about this issue.
I won’t go so far as to say that I’m pleased at the opportunity
because I think that the fact that this bill is coming into this House
today is, in my view, very disturbing to me as a member of this
Assembly, and in some ways, you know, I’m quite sad today,
actually, that I need to be in the House outlining the significant
concerns that exist around elements of this piece of legislation.
What should be a time for a significant portion of Albertans to
celebrate a long-awaited symbolic recognition of their equality has
instead turned into this debate, which, in my view, undermines the
impression ofAlbertans to the rest of the world, undermines our own
collective commitment to education and to diversity and to a full,
thoughtful discussion of things, and ultimately undermines the very
new right which we are in the process of being about to recognize.
Let me just talk a little bit about that. Obviously, the key issue
with respect to this bill is section 11, and that’s, of course, the part
of the bill that would allow parents to have their children opt out of
instruction that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality, or sexual
orientation. It is this particular section which, in my view, represents
a very dark day in the history of this province.
Let me talk first about the issue with respect to religion. Now, I
respect the right of parents to choose what religious instruction their
children will or will not receive. Personally, I would prefer to see a
system where all children were given a very neutral survey course
on what different types of religion look like. That’s my personal
belief of what would represent the most enlightened approach to
educating my children. But I understand that my belief is not
everyone’s belief, and I appreciate that some people feel very
strongly that they don’t want their children’s religious instruction
that they receive at home and their beliefs – it goes beyond just
instruction – to be challenged in the school setting, and that’s fine.
Section 50 of the School Act deals with that issue. It deals with
that already. The School Act talks about education. The School Act
talks about parents’ rights in relation to their children’s education.
The School Act talks about that whole milieu. It is not necessary to
put that provision into the human rights code. The human rights
code is not a document designed to undermine the very rights which
are included in the human rights code. It is not a document designed
to, as the Member for Airdrie-Chestermere talked about, bow to
every different person’s version of what is politically correct today
or tomorrow or the next day. It is a set of rights that we presumably
all agree all people have. So I’m very concerned about muddying
the waters with a statement that we are prepared to undermine some
of those rights in certain circumstances.
Now, I’ll talk a little bit about how it is I believe we’re doing that,
but I want to just stay for a moment on the issue of religious
instruction. One of the problems with putting this into the human rights
code and taking it out of the School Act is that you make it a
human right, and with that comes a whole slew of legal consequences
and implications. It allows for a broad range of interpretive
efforts to be applied to it. What we’re putting in it right now could
be amended through a great deal of litigation in the future, and
because it’s an active right which is found in the code, it will be
treated differently than what’s in the School Act, which is essentially
an administrative provision.
Right now in our schools what theoretically happens is if religious
instruction – and, of course, the School Act only talks about
religious instruction. The School Act does not allow parents to pull
their kids because somebody talks about the dreaded sexual
orientation. Let’s just say for a moment we’re talking about the
issue of religion. If religion is brought up, the family needs to get
notice. Well, that’s fine. What does the notice ultimately look like?
At the beginning of the year, can the school board say: from time to
time in grade 12 the social studies curriculum will call on the teacher
to engage in discussions that will cover issues that may cover
religion, that may cover theories of evolution, that may cover
philosophicaldiscussionsthathaveimplicationsforcertainreligions,
which may cover the concept of, for instance, gender equity and
gender equality? If they give that notice, is that enough? Can the
parent then simply provide the notice to the teacher, and then every
time those issues come up in the teaching moments that we’ve talked
so much about, the teacher just says to the child: you have the option
now to leave the room because we’re talking about these issues. Is
that the way it would work?
Well, now that it’s in the human rights code, it is entirely possible
that the parents would be able to go and say: “Well, this right that
you’re giving me is meaningless if it’s administered this way, so in
fact what you need to do is give me notice every time it’s going to
happen. You’ve got to give me dates. You’ve got to give me
content. You’ve got to give me written curriculum because
otherwise this right that you’ve now given me in the human rights
code of my province is meaningless.” That’s what happens when
you put it in the code. So then suddenly we create chaos.
Alternatively theycan turn around and say: “You’ve given me this
right, but in my exercising this right, my child has to now sit in the
hall playing with his DS or something like that. In effect my child
is being discriminated against now because I cannot crystalize or act
upon my right that is in the code without otherwise adversely
impacting my child by making him or her sit in the hall. Therefore,
you’ve breached my right, so you need to actually come up with a
whole new way to teach my child during the time that that education’s
going on.”
With all of these things, this is not trying to create a panic. This
is not trying to blow it up beyond what it is. It’s not. This is the
kind of thing that happens when you put a new right into the human
rights code, and let’s just be clear: this is a new right that we are
putting into the human rights code. There is no other human rights
code in the country that has this right embedded in the code. It is
embedded elsewhere, not in the human rights code. This is the kind
of chaos that we will create.
Then, of course, the other thing is that under the School Act it is
not necessarily the case that the teacher would become the subject,
a respondent in a human rights commission hearing. The teacher
would not necessarily become compelled to defend their course of
study, defend the way in which the particular issue came up in the
class. They wouldn’t under the School Act. They will now, another
consequence of putting it into the human rights code.

Lastly, a few links to some better commentary on this subject:


The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix has an excellent take on a poorly considered piece of legislation.

Ken Chapman has covered things quite thoughtfully as well.

Don Braid catches how thoroughly screwed up the Stelmach government's priorities are.

From The Democratic Reform Party...

The intellectual dishonesty of the HarperCon$ continues apace. Consider the following claim of democracy with respect to party nominations:

Plett said 94,000 ballots were mailed nationally to party members in ridings with an incumbent, asking them whether they wanted a nomination race in their constituency. The mail-out included Calgary West, where lawyer Donna Kennedy-Glans wanted to challenge longtime MP Rob Anders.

Two-thirds approval was required to trigger a battle, while an unreturned ballot was counted as a no under new rules adopted by the Conservative party's national council in March. In the past, if people wanted to challenge a nomination, they generally could after an interview, Plett said.

Now, let's think about this. First up is the obvious bar that a 2/3 of membership creates. Anyone even mildly familiar with volunteer organizations knows that for the most part, only a handful of the overall membership is ever active, and likely to return their ballots.

Then there is the ballot counting method. An unreturned ballot is assumed to be a "no"... hmmm... so, in essence, this entire system was set up not so that the incumbents had to actually earn their nomination, but rather so that apathy would guarantee their renomination.

Coming from the party whose roots are in the grassroots populism of the Reform party, this is beyond revolting. They haven't held anything close to a democratic process. Any process which assumes the value of an unreturned ballot to be anything other than "spoiled" is fundamentally wrong.

As a long term watcher of Alberta politics, it's amazing the lengths that the CPoC has gone to in protecting Rob Anders from any kind of nomination threat. Every time there is a credible threat, they go gumby the rules about in such a way as to neutralize the threat to Anders.

But then again, it just tells us something about how conservatives win in politics - by playing on apathy. In Alberta politics, we've seen it for years - where ever dwindling voter turnout has made it possible for the conservatives to gain a virtual stranglehold on the provincial government.

More Argument By Assertion

It's amazing to me how often so-called "experts" pop up with supposedly informed commentary on subjects like transsexualism, and they so obviously have no idea what they are talking about.

Most recently (Monday, I believe), there was a court decision in Australia where the Family Court granted a court order allowing a 17 year old FTM transsexual to have his breasts removed.

Lurking in the middle of the article is the following paragraph that caught my attention:

But ethicist Nick Tonti-Filippini said mainstream medicine did not recognise hormone treatments and surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria. He said it was a psychiatric disorder qualifying under American guidelines as a psychosis because "it's a belief out of accordance with reality".

"What you are trying to do is make a biological reality correspond to that false belief."

The first thought that went through my head was "who is this twit?". Among other things, it's quite apparent that he doesn't understand the diagnostic criteria for Gender Identity Disorder at all, nor has he bothered to fully understand the diagnostic criteria for Delusion.

In Schizophrenia, there may rarely be delusions of belonging to the other sex. Insistence by a person with Gender Identity Disorder that he or she is of the other sex is not considered a delusion, because what is invariably meant is that the person feels like a member of the other sex rather than truly believes that he or she is a member of the other sex.

So, a little bit of time with Google turns up that the man is affiliated with a religious institute as a philosopher/ethicist:

* JP502 – Philosophical Foundations of Bioethics
* JP540 – Foundations of Christian Moral Life
* JP543 – Theological Bioethics
* JP544 – Beginning of Life Ethics
* JP545 – End of Life Ethics
* JP546 – Current Controversies in Bioethics
* JP547 – Theology and Practice of Natural Family Planning
* JP564 – Educating in Sexuality, Marriage, Family and Life

Oh ... now it starts to make sense. We have another case here of someone who is more than likely to be parroting whatever the Vatican spouts.

Sure enough, he has commented on the case in question before, when Alex was first granted hormones (again through the courts, presumably because Alex is a ward of the state).

Then there's his commentary on the most recent ruling, which is particularly galling.

NICHOLAS TONTI- FILIPPINI: Most psychiatrists who treat people with gender dysphoria don't recommend the surgery and the transsexual changes. It worries me that this young woman is to have her breast cut off with the authority of the court, when the court hasn't got, well they haven’t got the mainstream view.

SARA EVERINGHAM: How do you think this should be managed?

NICHOLAS TONTI- FILIPPINI: You've got to look at it in terms of a person who is usually not well socially adjusted and so you would need to deal with those things. So that there are beliefs there, there are attitudes there which are harmful to her, that prevent her from forming normal relationships with women.

I don't even know where to begin with how dreadfully wrong Mr. Tonti-Filippini has it. Although many transsexuals do have great difficulty with relationships, those issues are secondary to the condition, not a primary root factor.

Social adjustment is something that usually improves dramatically post-transition for those who are having problems prior to transition. The other problem I have with Tonti-Filippini's reasoning here is that he's trying to deflect attention away from the base condition being addressed - Alex's cross-gender identification - thus framing his argument in the "transsexuality isn't real" context.

When he starts from a position which denies the treatment and research from the last fifty or so years, it's no surprise that Tonti-Filippini concludes that Alex is being treated incorrectly. Not unlike the decision making of Alberta's Ron Liepert, he clearly hasn't bothered to admit to his own lack of knowledge in the area, and takes it upon himself to make pronouncements without actually investigating.

Most psychiatrists who treat people with gender dysphoria don't recommend the surgery and the transsexual changes.

Sort of true, and not entirely an accurate portrayal of the WPATH Standards of Care either. Again, I will refer to section X of the SOC, which reads as follows:

In persons diagnosed
with transsexualism or profound GID, sex reassignment surgery, along with hormone therapy and real-life experience, is a treatment that has proven to be effective.

Let's see...Alex has been living as a boy since the age of 13, and is now 17. That means that he has been living full time for 4 years, and assuming that the request for breast removal surgery was made at the age of sixteen, that's well beyond the SOC guidelines for Real Life Experience. Offhand, I'd hazard a guess that Alex has more than met the diagnostic criteria that would place him in the 'surgery is medically indicated' category. While only a handful of transgender people ever pursue surgery, that doesn't mean that surgery should not be an option to be considered.

However, I suspect that Mr. Tonti-Filippini isn't interested in doing the real research to understand the background and literature surrounding transsexuality. He's already made up his mind based on his presuppositions, and quite probably whatever pronouncements have been made by the Vatican - which is already known to be hostile to transsexuals.

It's one thing to make informed criticism of things, that's not what I see here.

Ken Chapman on Bill 44

Go ... Read

It's well written, and he makes some interesting points.

Ezra's Facts - Shaken Out

So, someone decided to do a little fact checking on Ezra's historical analysis of the relationship between the CJC and the Canadian Nazi party in the 1960s.

It seems Ezra's analysis is a little bit lacking:

Indeed, facts appear to be secondary to Mr. Levant as he hunts and pecks his way through the historical record, extracting only those quotations which support his theories.

Finally, as Levant connects imaginary dots between John Garrity and CSIS mole Grant Bristow, it is significant to observe the dots that are not connected: Garrity's work destroyed the Canadian Nazi Party just as Bristow caused the implosion of the Heritage Front. They should be applauded for this work.

In the end, does Levant's contention that Canadian Jewish Congress "bank-rolled," "propped-up," "built up" or "organized" the Canadian Nazi Party of the 1960s have any merit? None whatsoever.

Somehow, this analysis comes as little or no surprise to me.

No Kidding!

Apparently, someone up in Edmonton figured out that what Stelmach and Blackett have been saying the last few days since tabling Bill 44 is at odds with what the legislation actually says:

Premier Ed Stelmach told reporters last week that the provision could be used to pull students out of classes dealing with evolution if parents preferred their kids be taught what's in the Bible instead.

Followed by the following from Minister Blackett today:

"This is opt-out on religious instruction not on grounds of religious beliefs. So the thought that somebody can get out of evolution using the fact that it's against their religious beliefs is not correct," he said. "Evolution is not a part of religious studies, it's part of science curriculum, and there is nothing that will change that going forward."

This is more or less what I read when the legislation was tabled.