#wesley yang

The problem is with its content, though. I’ve yet to see a strong argument against land acknowledgements. People are understandably afraid they’ll get fired if they make one, and I am too, but fear must have its limits and truth its rights. The practice is dubious in every way. A “land” is controlled by one polity at a time. A class in that polity may seek to legitimate its rule and its own supposedly superior moral taste by demonizing its precursors and even the polity’s very founding, making elaborate shows of disingenuous xenophilia rife with “noble savage” fantasies of the kind to which out-of-touch elite classes are so prone, but this is a dangerous game and should be resisted by anyone who wishes the polity to meaningfully persist. As I wrote in my essay on Silko’s Ceremony:

When we encounter a reflux of romantic nationalism in a Native American text—as we do because, Treuer reminds us, Native American literature is a modern literature—why are we expected to nod along cheerfully, even though it rightly disturbs us when we find it in the likes of Heidegger or Yeats (who also, we might remember, enlisted indigenous myth on behalf of a colonized and dispossessed people)? I contend that such courteous indifference to political dynamite is the patronizing gesture par excellence of the white liberal. We only quarrel with those we regard as equals; with those we consider inferior, we smile politely no matter what they say—because what do we have to fear from them?

The land, anyway, has seen only a succession of regimes and trespassers, wars, foundings, and usurpations. (I am aware that some Native American communities regard themselves as autochthonous; I won’t go out of my way to insult their or anyone else’s faith but neither will I condescend by pretending I believe it myself.) The conceptual dyad of indigenous-settler is therefore both wishful and incoherent. It lacks the political and moral high ground it claims for itself when one compares it with the aforementioned romantic-nationalist ideologies of blood and soil that obviously inform it. With indigeneity’s anti-diasporic logic, it is an unavoidably fascist concept. As I wrote in my essay on Roth’s Plot Against America:

If the word “indigenous”—and its recently fashionable, all-explanatory antonym “settler colonialism”—unavoidably connotes land and lineage as identitarian essence, then any diaspora is illegitimate as such, an inorganic interloper on someone’s sacred soil, even if the soil has never witnessed anything other than a succession of trespassers claiming primacy since time began. Roth implicitly defends America as an inherently diasporic nation, a nation that is—to quote one of modern fiction’s most iconic Jewish cosmopolites—“the same people living in the same place,” nothing less and nothing more...

The chicken-or-egg problem applies: how do you get a well-known Asian actor if you don’t ever cast Asians in leading roles, which you are constrained from doing because none are well enough known? But the economics of Hollywood are changing. There is now an eye toward an ever wealthier Chinese consumer market that will soon enough dwarf our own. Back home in the U.S., the politics of diversity has made blockbusters of films that pivoted to non-white stars.

The confluence of events summoned forth a full-blown matinee idol. Henry Golding, half-English, half-Malaysian, but playing a Chinese Singaporean, emerges as a classic leading man in his first film role following a career as a television host. Golding is smoothly affable, devoid of any underlying turbulence. He lights up the screen, as if being a movie star was the most natural thing in the world for him, and as if we have always had—and always will have—Asian leading men. Will we?

by Wesley Yang

What we still don’t know about pediatric medical transition

A controversial HHS report has now been updated with peer reviews and the names of its authors.

By: Editorial Board

Published: Nov 19, 2025

In the spring, the Department of Health and Human Services published a careful, 409-page systematic review of the evidence and ethical considerations for pediatric medical transition. But one thing was missing: the names of the authors.

The official explanation of this omission was unhelpfully cryptic: “Names of the contributors to the review are not initially being made public, in order to help maintain the integrity of this process." The report’s many critics pointed out that this left readers unable to evaluate their credibility or conflicts of interest. Others went further: “That’s one more reason why I can tell you this is an ideological, political document and not a scientific one,” Casey Pick, director of law and policy at the Trevor Project, told the journal Science. “Scientists stand by their work.”

Good news: The names of the authors have now been released, along with a supplement to the report that includes peer reviews by experts in fields such as psychology, endocrinology and evidence-based medicine, along with the responses of the authors. It is fair to say that their work has withstood scrutiny, with minor updates.

The names include two bioethicists, Farr Curlin of Duke University and philosopher Moti Gorin of Colorado State University, and two psychiatrists, Kristopher Kaliebe of the University of South Florida and Kathleen McDeavitt of Baylor University. They also include MIT philosopher Alex Byrne, who has written extensively about the philosophy of gender, and Evgenia Abbruzzese, a health care researcher who founded the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. Rounding out the pack is Michael K. Laidlaw, an endocrinologist; Yuan Zhang, an evidence-based medicine specialist; and Leor Sapir, who researches pediatric gender issues for the Manhattan Institute.

Critics will note that many of these contributors question the evidence for pediatric medical transition, though that was fairly obvious from the report itself. But these are not ideological cranks; they are thoughtful researchers. Their core finding — that the evidence for these interventions is highly uncertain — echoes the results of systematic reviews in other countries. None of the peer reviews of the HHS report ultimately rebut that conclusion.

Reasonable people can dispute what to do about that fact. Critics of the “gender-affirming” model argue that the evidence does not reach the bar required to justify tampering with puberty, given known side effects such as infertility. Then there are unknown risks, such as what it does to developing adolescent brains and bodies. Many proponents acknowledge that more and better research is needed, but they argue the preponderance of the studies that are available suggests these treatments help.

Far too many people have behaved unreasonably in this debate. Some who favor these therapies have attacked anyone who suggests their data is too weak to justify current medical practice, and more troublingly, may have delayed or suppressed publication of research that failed to show clear benefits. Meanwhile, some critics have resorted to demeaning or hostile rhetoric. Indeed, the Trump administration’s executive order that gave birth to the HHS report was titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation."

This is an empirical question involving vulnerable children, not a political football match. Both sides need to acknowledge the uncertainties, lay out the arguments for intervening or not and support the kind of rigorous, comprehensive research program that should have been used to validate these treatments — before they were given to thousands of children.

The most contestable conclusion of the HHS report, and the place where critics are apt to get the most traction, is that “it is not ethical to subject adolescents to hormonal and surgical interventions ... even in a research trial, until and unless the state of the evidence suggests a favorable risk/benefit profile for the studied intervention." But as long as there is a chance that puberty blockers and hormones can help deeply distressed children with gender dysphoria, many parents will seek them — in another state, in another country or over the internet if they have to. It would be much better if they got them in the context of a study that can establish the benefits (or lack thereof) once and for all.

So, I did a study abroad in the Middle East with Israel and Palestine.

Would you say you're pro-Palestine or pro-israel?

Pro-Palestine.

As a gay man, I would be punished and-or put in prison or killed if I were openly gay in Palestine. how do you react to that?

... I didn't know that.

It is illegal to be gay in Palestine. You are punished by prison in death.

In Israel?

No, Israel has gay pride. Israel is completely open to lesbian and gay people. Palestine puts them in prison or kills them. You weren't aware of that?

I was not aware of that, no. So, that does pose an interesting... aspect.

Have you seen the Queers for Palestine movement? It's a very common movement. But I don't see any Muslims for Queer movements.

Uh, yes. That's where i gets gray, right? Like...

Well, for me, it's not gray. I am fearful of Islam because there is no Islamic country on Earth that embraces me as a gay man.

So, OK, OK, so maybe I'm confused because Israel, which is still an Islam country, right?

No, no, no, Jewish.

OK. OK, OK, OK.

So, Israel is Jewish, Palestinians are Islamic.

OK.

==

What the fuck did she study? Given her other answers, I'd say it's safe to conclude that "in the Middle East" means she was staying at Disneyland Paris.

Language games do not grant wishes.