Enthroned Madonna and Child, c. 1250/1275 – Byzantine Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Overview
The composition of this Virgin and Child is loosely based on the Hodegetria, one of the more powerful and enduring icon types of the Orthodox Christian church. The Virgin gestures toward the child to show him as the “way” (hodos in Greek), the source of salvation. The throne and her red shoes present her as the Queen of Heaven, and the archangels in the roundels beside her hold imperial regalia, which are typical attributes of archangels. The first of this type, housed in the Hodegon monastery in Constantinople, was an active part of civic and religious life in the Byzantine capital. Said to produce miracles daily, it was taken out of the monastery every Tuesday so the public could see it. It was invoked against plague and carried by imperial armies as a talisman in battle.
Expert opinion differs about the origin of this painting (known as the Kahn Madonna after an earlier owner) and the National Gallery of Art’s Madonna and Child on a Curved Throne, also of Byzantine origin. The soft shadows of this Virgin’s face and her tender expression are paralleled in a mosaic of Mary in the great basilica of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople).
Byzantine art made a powerful impact on 13th-and 14th-century Italian painting, which emphasizes the spiritual world of Paradise, with elongated and weightless figures, more like spirits than physical human beings, skies of heavenly gold, and flat, stylized patterning of drapery. The gold striations that define folds in clothing, the round volume of Mary’s veiled head, and Jesus’s frontal pose—looking more like a miniature adult than a child—are all part of the Byzantine tradition.
Welcome to The Good Creation Podcast. Thanks for listening.
About a year and half ago, Abigail Shrier wrote an important piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the American Academy of Pediatrics stifles debate regarding Gender medicine Her claim is that an important medical association has become politicized and captured by Gender Ideologues. Unfortunately, AAP is not the only one.
Here’s how she begins her WSJ piece:
Is it safe for adolescents to undergo gender “transition”? Is it wise for children to take hormones that block puberty? The American Academy of Pediatrics not only has answered these questions in the affirmative but is determined to stifle any debate. On Friday the AAP told an international consortium of more than 100 clinicians and researchers who doubt the reigning orthodoxy that they couldn’t set up an information booth at the association’s national conference. The cosmetics company L’Oreal and the National Peanut Board will be there, but not the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. Source: Abigail Shrier, WSJ Article.
Shrier is documenting the politicization of an important Medical Association, the AAP. Because the Cancel Culture is real. At the SEGM website you’ll read the following:
We are an international group of over 100 clinicians and researchers concerned about the lack of quality evidence for the use of hormonal and surgical interventions as first-line treatment for young people with gender dysphoria. We represent expertise from a range of clinical disciplines. – source: Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine
Their names and credentials are on the website. Go check them out. I’ve got links to their webpage below.
Many medical professionals are horrified by the rush to Transition young people with gender-dysphoria. But unlike SEGM, far too many of them, especially in the U.S. “keep their heads down” because of concerns about their careers. Their professional organizations in particular and licensing agencies in some states have been captured by Gender Ideology.
Unfortunately most of Shrier’s report is behind the WSJ paywall. But I read it. Here’s what I found out. Many medical practitioners in Europe are reconsidering what they have done. Europe is shifting away from the Affirmative Care model.
Europe began the process of pushing gender-dysphoric children and teens to Transition several years before we did in North America. But now the evidence is compelling them to rethink their health care models for patients under 18.
So should we.
Here’s an important quote from Shrier:
In the past year, major hospitals in Europe have ended or curtailed pediatric hormone treatments in response to their own internal reviews. In March, the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence concluded that the benefits of hormone treatments for pediatric gender-dysphoria patients were unclear. The Karolinska Hospital of Sweden, which is affiliated with the institute that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine, in May decided to end its use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for treatment of gender dysphoria for all patients under 18, except in controlled research settings. Finland’s national gender program issued new guidelines after noticing that many of the kids it treated with hormone therapy failed to show improvements in mental health. Source: Abigail Shrier, WSJ Article. [emphasis mine]
That’s was two years ago. Even more evidence has piled up against the Affirmative Care model. I’ll be podcasting about some of that soon.
Josh Hammer at his Twitter account rightly tweeted:
“When the home of the Nobel Prize in medicine stops transitioning children as a matter of general practice, and pulls it back into tightly controlled research settings, is this not a wake-up a call for the rest of the world?” (h/t @AbigailShrier) https://t.co/IjodzyHSXV
Many of our cultural institutions are in the process of being captured by Gender Ideology. It has been a well-funded walk through those institutions that lately became a sprint! Our school board members and many school administrators, leaders of our Academic institutions, leaders of our professional associations, business leaders, even some of our Church leaders have been won over.
One need not ascribe bad motives to the “captured” leaders of these institutions. The debate has been cleverly framed to be about “civil rights” and “ quality health care.” Certainly unobjectionable goals. But when you silo yourself off from those who have a different way of viewing the world, and a different way of reaching unobjectionable goals, it is very easy to develop social myopia. Often you find the rank and file membership does not support what the leaders are doing, but if licensing, professional credentials, employment or reputation are on the line many remain silent.
And when it comes to the issue of Gender Ideology, and the Medicalization of Identity, our silence is harming our children.
Also recent polling shows that support for LGBTQ+ is dipping. I strongly suspect this is due to the TQ+ side of the spectrum. And the outrageous “queer theory” inspired “gender-fluid” claims they are making, not to mention the uncivil actions & rhetoric exercised on behalf of those claims. Some on the LGB side acknowledge a classic case of having “overplayed our hand.”
Mostly people are waking up to the absurdity of the claim that there are more than two sexes. Or more than two genders. People are willing to accept diversity of expression and those who do not conform to rigid stereotypes. But they insist our sexuality is not a social construct from top to bottom. There are real differences between male and female that must be recognized and celebrated. Most people don’t think a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man. When I use the word “radical” this is why. I can’t think of anything more radical than the desire to dissolve the female – male sex binary, or to treat it as less than normal. Without that binary and its proper ordering we cease to exist as humans.
Those who believe they are born in the wrong body have a mental disorder.
We must lovingly care for them but we can’t affirm their confusion. I encourage all of us to…
Ironically, after having ridden in on the coattails of viewpoint diversity, continued diversity no longer interest Gender Ideologues. Any student of political history recognizes the pattern. Having gained power through a “free and fair election” those elected effectively abolish any future elections. The objective was power. And they intend to keep it.
Although concerns about the use of violence to acquire & retain power are minimal in the Western world (notwithstanding that year of organized violence by Antifa and some elements of the Black Lives Matter movement in a few of our major cities, or the QAnon inspired radicals that stormed the Capital) other tactics, like shaming, silencing, cancelling, deplatforming, and shutting down debate have become commonplace throughout our institutional and online life. Even professional associations which support free and open inquiry based on the scientific method are shutting down debate. Like the AAP.
Why? Is the science settled? Really?
I believe with the medicalization of Identity we are engaged in an outrageous experiment on our children. Many leaders in Europe are finally waking up & speaking out about this childhood experimentation. Will the leaders of North American cultural institutions listen?
From Shrier’s Wall Street Journal Article:
Clinicians across the West are acknowledging that the evidentiary basis supporting medical transition for kids is shaky and that hormone treatments on adolescents don’t produce significant mental-health benefits. Yet “there’s no home for that message inside U.S. medical societies,” as endocrinologist and SEGM co-founder Will Malone said.
The so-called Dutch protocol, a widely adopted standard of care that has been used to justify starting gender-dysphoric minors as young as 8 on puberty blockers, is based on a study of a narrow population: children with severe gender dysphoria since early childhood and no other mental-health comorbidities. The protocol is now being applied to a wildly different demographic—teenage girls who seem to have had no prior history of dysphoria, and who have high rates of anxiety and depression. Many young women who underwent hormone treatments and surgeries over the past decade now regret having done so; they call themselves “detransitioners.”
The AAP is “working very hard to give an appearance that everything’s been decided and there’s no debate. The growing numbers of detransitioners suggests that [pediatricians] don’t really know what we’re doing in this case,” said Julia Mason, a pediatrician, SEGM adviser and AAP fellow.
The National Peanut Board, Gideon International (bible distributors), and Infinity Massage Chairs were able to secure booths to present their “point of view.” But not the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. Here’s what a spokesperson for SEGM had to say:
“We show up with a valid argument, we’re not politically or ideologically driven,” Dr. Malone said. “Other countries, more liberal countries, have already come to the conclusion that we should have come to as a country years ago. And yet, because we can’t open this debate in any form . . . the debate is not occurring and kids are being harmed.”
We need more health care professionals to speak up!
Shrier continues:
Many of the pediatricians I spoke to for this article say they fear professional retribution because of their viewsand asked not to be identified.
Here is a telling quote:
In March, one of them submitted a proposed resolution, seconded by an AAP leader, asking that the AAP re-evaluate its commitment to affirmative care in light of the growing international skepticism about this treatment protocol for children and adolescents. Among the group’s membership, the resolution received wide approval: 80% of responding pediatricians indicated that they supported it, according to Dr. Mason. “What we’re dealing with is institutional capture,” she said. “The leadership is not in the same place as the membership.”
That happens in a lot of organizations.
Dr. Malone, the endocrinologist, points out that they didn’t even apply for the opportunity to debate current protocols. They simply wanted to staff a booth: “This is baby stuff. Set up a booth and hand out some information? No, we can’t even do that.”Source: Abigail Shrier, Wall Street Journal, Aug 9, 2021 [emphasis mine]
In Europe a major shift away from body altering treatments and surgeries for those under 18 couldn’t come soon enough for those of us convinced these alterations subvert God’s creational design.
Will American medicine follow European medicine? In this case. I hope and pray it will.
On Friday, the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that sex means sex (not "gender identity") under Title IX and that schools may constitutionally maintain single-sex bathrooms. Great news for women and girls! Even better … 1/3
