Teen Vogue calls for the American media to censor itself because the one true path has been revealed. They’ve the right to call for anything they like of course but we do think that’s rather the wrong thing to be retailing to their target audience of teenage girls. The particular subject they’re stating this about isn’t our point. It’s that call for just the one true faith to be allowed in public, the call for dissenting views to be banished.
“The existence, importance, and legitimacy of trans people has been a topic of debate for liberal institutions like The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and notable figures within the Democratic Party,” the piece says.
The claim is that people are wrong for debating the matter.
“This “bothsiderism” is a liberal tenet; hearing all sides to an argument, in theory, is a nice idea. In reality, it’s often malpractice — and it’s something that trans writers and advocates have been calling the media out over for years.”
It is a liberal tenet, yes, and not just in the American sense of liberal meaning progressive. Also in that older one of someone reality-based, free of innate prejudices and trying to deal with the universe on its terms. For how can we find out what reality is unless we hear both sides and discuss them?
“Trans health care is not actually a debate.”
And there we have it. The truth has been revealed, even to continue to debate, let alone question it, is to be evil. This is why such debate should stop, of course.
Teen Vogue markets itself as “educating the influencers of tomorrow” which is a noble goal that we thoroughly agree with. The readership is, as we all would expect, largely teenage girls and they gain some 5 million visits a month from their efforts.
As we say, we think educating the young – even tomorrow’s influencers – is a good idea. We do think though that should be education. The insistence that this is the one revealed truth that cannot be debated is a market of an authoritarian attitude toward truth. Exactly the opposite of anything either scientific or liberal. The marker there being that absolutely everything is up for questioning all the time. Both systems also regard it as being a duty to question and debate, for only through that method can the truth actually be found. In science, for example, the truth is the thing that does not fear questioning or debate for it will survive it.
Teaching teenage girls that would be educational, wouldn’t it?