The Daily Double! First, from Chris Rufo at City Journal, Oregon’s Castration Machine, "A public hospital in Portland is using a robot to create artificial genitalia."
The gender surgery program at Oregon Health & Science University, a public teaching hospital in downtown Portland, provides a productive tableau for analysis. The program is led by Blair Peters, a self-described “queer surgeon” who sports neon-pink hair, uses “he/they” pronouns, and specializes in vaginoplasty (the creation of an artificial vagina), phalloplasty (the creation of an artificial penis), and “non-binary” surgeries, which nullify the genitals altogether. Peters and his colleagues have pioneered the use of a vaginoplasty robot, which helps efficiently castrate male patients and turn their flesh into a “neo-vagina.”
Business is booming. According to Peters, OHSU’s gender surgery clinic has “the highest volume on the West Coast,” and his robot-assisted vaginoplasty program can accommodate two patients per day. His colleague Jens Berli, who specializes in phalloplasty, boasts a 12- to-18-month waiting list for a consultation and an additional three- to six-month waiting list for a surgical appointment.
This openness marks a revolution in manners and morals. In the past, transgender theorists acknowledged that their surgical transformations were disturbing and anti-normative. “I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” wrote the male-to-female transgender theorist Susan Stryker in 1994. “I will say this as bluntly as I know how: I am a transsexual, and therefore I am a monster.”
Such views no longer prevail. Today’s transgender medical providers conceal the barbarity of their practices in euphemisms. They are not postmodern Dr. Frankensteins but providers of “life-saving, gender-affirming care.” The model patient is no longer the middle-aged autogynephile but the troubled teenager, sold a new identity, mediated through technology, that promises to resolve deep-seated sexual anxieties—and advance the political cause of transgender activists.
The dismal metaphysics that lies beneath OHSU’s castration machines is academic queer theory, which holds that human beings are mere vehicles of “performativity” and that their nature can be molded and reshaped at will. In other words, the queer theorists argue, there is no “human nature” that cannot be transcended or obliterated through the application of culture and science.
OHSU’s castration machines must be seen in this light. The university’s doctors and surgeons believe that they can harness the advances of modern medical science to sublate the basic categories of human sexuality and replace them with a variety of synthetic forms: the artificial phallus; the artificial vagina; the dual phallus-vagina; nullification of both.
The technique for the robot-assisted vaginoplasty is gruesome. According to a handbook published by OHSU, surgeons first cut off the head of the penis and remove the testicles. Then they turn the penile-scrotal skin inside out and, together with abdomen cavity tissue, fashion it into a crude, artificial vagina. “The robotic arms are put through small incisions around your belly button and the side of your belly,” the handbook reads. “They are used to create the space for your vaginal canal between your bladder and your rectum.” The illustrated surgical literature is a catalog of horrors—peruse at your own risk.
This procedure is plagued with complications. OHSU warns of wound separation, tissue necrosis, graft failure, urine spraying, hematoma, blood clots, vaginal stenosis, rectal injury, fistula, and fecal accidents. Patients must stay in the hospital for a minimum of five days following the procedure, receiving treatment for surgical wounds and having fluid drained through plastic tubes. Once they are home, patients must continue on transgender hormone treatments and manually dilate their surgically created “neo-vagina” in perpetuity; otherwise, the tissue will heal, and the cavity will close.
One question provokes particular dread: Are the surgeons at OHSU using these machines on children? The answer appears to be yes. In an interview, Peters acknowledged that, in recent years, he has seen “a lot of adolescents presenting for surgical intervention” and that he has performed genital surgeries, including the robot-assisted vaginoplasty, on “a handful of puberty-suppressed adolescents.” Peters further stated that OHSU is “just putting [its] first series together” related to adolescent vaginoplasty and that “no one has published on it yet.” (When reached for comment, OHSU declined to respond.)
All this grisly detail is obscured through manipulative language. To the general public, Peters and his colleagues present their case in therapeutic terms—gender, affirmation, trauma, care, health, joy—and wrap themselves in the movement’s light blue, pink, and white flag. By comparison, the old transgender theorists were more honest. They saw themselves in Frankenstein and, in their struggle to overcome natural limits, brushed against them.
I just hope a lot of detransitioners sue the pants, or panties, or whatever, off them.
Second, Shawn Fleetwood at Da Fed sees Oregon Democrats Are One Step Closer To Rigging Elections With Ranked-Choice Voting
A measure recently passed by Oregon Democrats has put the state one step closer to adopting ranked-choice voting (RCV) for its future elections.
Under RCV, often dubbed “rigged-choice voting” by its critics, voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.
HB 2004, which was passed by Oregon Democrats in the waning days of the 2023 legislative session, would mandate RCV for federal and statewide elections. The measure also gives localities the ability to adopt the system for their respective elections.
If approved by voters in 2024, the bill would take effect on Jan. 1, 2028.
Various U.S. municipalities that have adopted RCV have experienced confusing and even inaccurate election outcomes. In an Oakland school board race, for instance, “election officials announced — two months after the fact — that they got the count wrong,” resulting in the “rightful winner … suing for his seat.” Meanwhile, a Utah town that used an RCV pilot program for its 2021 municipal elections experienced high rates of ballots being discarded or spoiled.
In the Genola City Council Race 1, for example, “58% of ballots were either discarded out of hand or otherwise spoiled,” while the Genola City Council Race 2 “had a discarded or spoiled rate of over 74%.”
Alaska and Maine — the only two states to implement ranked-choice voting so far — have also had their fair share of problems, such as election outcomes that contradict the will of voters. In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola won the state’s at-large congressional seat last year even though “nearly 60 percent of voters [cast] their ballots for a Republican.” RCV also played a major role in helping Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski win reelection during the 2022 midterms.
Similarly, in Maine, then-incumbent GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin lost to Democrat Jared Golden during the 2018 midterms, despite Poliquin winning the most votes in the first round of voting. That outcome was due to the state’s ranked-choice voting system.
And that's exactly why they want it. But if the GOP learns to manipulate the result to their favor, you may be sure it will be banned forthwith.
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