This Debunking From Christian Media Still Seems a Little Bunked…
What’s fact and what’s fiction in a “Telling Myth From Reality” style article about Jon Stewart’s viral moment? We ran some numbers.
by Evan Urquhart
At Assigned, we simply LOVE a good fact check. Cannot get enough checking and re-checking and quadruple-checking all our facts. So when we saw the Christian Post had an article entitled “4 myths Jon Stewart perpetuated about radical gender theory,” we were eager to find out what, if any, errors the meticulously researched Stewart’s interview of Leslie Rutledge might have had, and if op-ed contributor Nicole Russell had actually found any at all.
So without further ado, let’s fact check the Christian fact checker, or at least, see how she did:
MYTH #1: Sex and Gender are Complicated
This isn’t starting well for Nicole Russell of the Christian Post. To start out, 1 percent equates to 1 in one hundred people. My very small high school had about 500 students. So, even in my small town, and using her own half of 1 percent figure, the odds are there were at least a few students who were intersex. While half of 1 percent sounds like a small number, for something like this it’s actually rather large (it’s also misleading, because the author seems to be using a very conservative definition of intersex). If all schools needed to have bathrooms for every sex, and intersex conditions were lumped together as a single “third sex” category, there would never be a school that didn’t need to build a bathroom for that third sex.
More broadly “this is simple, as long as we ignore the parts that make it complicated” does not make for a particularly good fact check. 0/10
Myth #2: Bills against transgenderism are hateful
This is a little hard to fact check, because the “myth” is just an opinion some people hold, and the “reality” is the author’s own opinion. Ummmmm… 5/10?
Myth #3: Only transitioning can aid suicidal trans youths
The framing from Russel here is already misleading, because most young trans people do not kill themselves. In the screenshotted section, she further misleads by claiming that Jon Stewart thinks that parents should “immediately” transition. In truth, it generally takes time to understand if I child is transgender, or if they’re playing pretend, or just saying something weird for no reason at all. No one wants parents to “immediately” transition their kids, just give them room to explore and take prudent, individualized steps to help them thrive.
Setting the framing aside, the fact check is a cherry-picking fest, and far from the best one that I’ve seen. Affirming care for youth has some of the most robust data available, precisely because people are reluctant to intervene, and the default assumption is always to avoid anything that might do more harm than good. Still, though, Russell has some links, she tries to present evidence, this is to some extent a new-ish area of medicine with more to learn. Grading on a curve, let’s give her 3/10.
Myth #4: Youths don’t outgrow gender dysphoria
This is false. No other way to put it. The desistance study with the highest number I’m aware of, and I looked into all these numbers thoroughly for Slate in 2018, and that number was 80 percent. In my interview with the man whose number that was, Thomas Steensma, he agreed that the rates had dropped as diagnostic criteria improved. However, I’d grant anyone using the 80 percent figure and crediting Steensma with at least making some attempt to be evidence based, however cherry-picked their number was.
Russel links to a study from 1989 to support the 98 percent figure, a time nothing like a gender dysphoria diagnosis like what medicine uses today existed. That study doesn’t deserve the dignity of being called cherry-picked. A cherry-picked study is, at least, a cherry. This one’s a turd. 1/10
In conclusion, our fact checking of the Christian fact checker gives us a score of 9 out of a possible 40. That’s around 22 percent, or a low F.