“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness. … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.”

With regard to public schools and sexuality, this is the worst of times. It is an age of incomprehensible and destructive foolishness. It is a season of darkness into which America has been plunged by sexual anarchists like Maia Kobabe whose creepy adult comic book graphic memoir continues to divide communities.

For those unfamiliar with Kobabe’s book Gender Queer: A Memoir, click here to see images that librarians in public school and community libraries all across the country believe are appropriate for preteens and teens to see and for taxpayers to be forced to subsidize.

In obscene images, Kobabe, who has a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man, tells the disturbing story of her journey to her disordered “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual person.

In January 2022, two courageous middle school teachers in Community United School District 200 (CUSD 200) in Wheaton, Illinois filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Media” in which they rightly assert that Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer is “pornographic” and “vulgar” and doesn’t belong in the district’s high school libraries.

Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services Charles Kyle selected ten staff members to serve on a committee to evaluate the book challenge. The two middle school teachers shared their reasons for the book challenge with the committee, which was composed of Craig Lawrence, John Disanza, Kristin Diaz, Laine Pehta, Melissa Murphy, Traci Burnham, Matt Biscan, and Erica Valenti, after which the committee met twice and then presented their recommendation to retain the obscene book. Some Wheaton taxpayers should find out the vote of each of these CUSD 200 employees.

In their excellent presentation, middle school teachers Brian Wiewiaro and John Ferguson made clear that their opposition to Gender Queer was not born of book-banning impulses or bigotry:

To be clear, we are not here to remove every book that might possibly be the slightest bit objectionable. We are not here to remove every book with LGBTQ+ themes or characters. This is not the beginning of some crusade to empty our libraries. This is also not a fight against a specific group of people. We have both taught many students throughout our careers, some of whom are LGBTQ+ students. We value all students and welcome them into our classrooms.

They also pointed out that the CUSD 200 Board of Education policy says,

Students are prohibited from … accessing at school any publication that is socially inappropriate or inappropriate due to maturity level of the students, including but not limited to material that is obscene, pornographic, or pervasively lewd and vulgar, contains indecent and vulgar language.

Wiewiora and Ferguson posed several questions to the committee, including these:

• Would you be comfortable posting these images in our high schools? On the district web page? At a Board meeting? In your own office?

• If these images had been drawn by a student for a class project, would they be appropriate?

Apparently, the committee members are comfortable with making available to other people’s minor children a book with drawings depicting strap-on dildos and dialogue about tasting one’s own vaginal secretions. If so, then students should be free to draw such pictures in art class and write such dialogue in English papers.

Either those committee members are ignorant or they’re too cowardly to stand for truth in a tyrannical public school culture rife with systemic leftist bigotry.

But it gets worse. The book challenge then moved on to the board of education where six of the seven board members voted to retain Gender Queer. Here are some of the rationalizations offered by adults who lack the courage, wisdom, and intelligence to serve in any school leadership position.

First up was Brad Paulsen who said this:

One of the data points I’ve heard recently, um, that I believe is true—I haven’t validated this, but I’ve seen it in a couple different locations—that 70 percent of our LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide. And so, I thought about the consequences of our vote on those students and those members of our community. And so, I … I kind of asked myself, you know, depending on our vote, can we just help one person, one student that’s going through this, and if we can, that makes me feel good. And so, with those, um, with that thinking and all the conversations we had, when I vote, I’m going to say yes.

I kid you not, Paulsen said that.

Maybe the fact that I’m not a statistician explains why I have no idea what “70 percent of LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide” means. Perhaps at the next board meeting, Paulsen could explain to his community exactly what it means. That should give him ample time to validate the data point he cited.

And perhaps at the next board meeting, he could answer these questions:

Since he used this data point as justification for retaining Gender Queer, should he have “validated” it?

Does he have conclusive, research-based evidence for his bizarre contention that reading Gender Queer will prevent suicides of “LGBTQ” youth?

Since many young adults are detransitioning; telling their tragic stories of suffering and regret; and blaming social media, doctors, and schools for affirming their “trans” identities, should school libraries request from publishing companies books that tell those stories? Wouldn’t Paulsen feel good if one person could be spared such suffering by reading them?

What if reading Gender Queer harms one person? What if reading it exacerbates confusion or contributes to a decision that has permanent and lifelong consequences and which they may later regret? Would the harm done to one such teen be sufficient justification for removing Gender Queer from the high school library?

Will Wheaton high schools purchase other books that include graphic depictions of and dialogue about sex toys and sex acts? Could those books include photos rather than cartoon drawings as long as someone could argue that one person may be helped by reading them? Would Paulsen et al. support the purchase of a memoir that depicts a woman’s journey to becoming a consensual non-monogamist, replete with graphic images of her sexual journey with multiple people? If not, why not?

(As a related aside, do any of the Wheaton high schools carry Abigail Shrier’s important and compelling book titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters?)

Board member Susan Booton followed Paulsen and began by asserting her “deep thinker” bona fides, by which she meant that she self-identifies as a deep thinker. The evidence, however, suggests the opposite.

She echoed Paulsen by saying that “the LGBTQ community struggles with suicide and harm to self at a much higher rate than our cisgender peers.” What she seems not to have thought deeply about is whether an obscene memoir carried in a public school library will reduce self-harm.

Booton claims the district must “honor all stories.” Does that include the stories of other underrepresented groups, like zoophiles? If not, why not? They too are marginalized and shamed.

Booton defers to the judgment of “professional librarians” who choose the books for the district’s book collections. She seems to believe that a degree in library science confers on them some special knowledge about and expertise in making moral judgments about obscenity.

What Booton doesn’t share is how the library book collection game is rigged.

Librarians create what are called “Collection Development Policies” that recommend, for example, purchasing books that are “positively reviewed” by at least two “professionally recognized review journals.” Surprise, surprise, the professionally recognized review journals are controlled by leftists who either don’t review or review negatively conservative books.

In addition, publishing companies gatekeep at an even earlier de facto censorship stage. Publishing companies won’t publish books written from a conservative perspective on sexuality, so there are none to be reviewed. Leftists can ban books with carefree abandon because their banning is concealed from the public. Can’t be accused of banning books when you don’t purchase them.

Deep thinker Booton doesn’t see how “removing this book helps” the mental health “crisis that we’re facing in this—in our world.” While helping mental health crises is a noble endeavor, is it the task of public school English teachers and librarians? Does Boone wonder why, during this unprecedented time of approval and even celebration of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, “LGBTQ” adolescents are suffering so tremendously? Why aren’t conservative kids whose beliefs and feelings are mocked and scorned in schools and the culture at large experiencing such high rates of suicide? Does the troubling degree of suffering experienced by “LGBTQ” youth not lead Booton to ask hard questions on whether “progressive” sexuality dogma is harming kids?

In addition to assuming without proving that Gender Queer may help one “LGBTQ” teen, board member David Long believes that strap-on dildo sex and vagina-tasting scenes are acceptable as long as they’re brief. Wiser adults would argue that no matter how brief, the presence of scenes so repugnant and controversial render a text unsuitable in schools funded by taxpayers.

The board chair, Ms. Chris Crabtree concluded by making the inane argument that the book should remain in district libraries in order to show that “this board cares about kids, it cares about the LGBTQ+ community.”

Choosing to remove one book because of egregiously obscene drawings and dialogue that violate school policy means the school doesn’t care about the LGBTQ+ community? Is the board so myopic and uncreative that they are unable to find other ways to show students they care?

Moreover, does caring require affirmation of all student feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts? Is it the business of public school leaders to affirm arguable ontological and moral assumptions on controversial topics?

Board member Rob Hanlon emoted about love, loneliness, shame, and isolation, implying that the removal of Gender Queer will increase loneliness, shame, and isolation, and keeping it will increase love for “LGBTQ” students. What a bunch of hooey.

There’s a lot of hooey spouted by school leaders struggling mightily to defend the indefensible. They cite prizes awarded to obscene books by leftist organizations as just justification for purchasing, recommending, and teaching garbage to kids. They also cite the lousy decisions of other schools to purchase, recommend, and teach garbage to kids as the reason to follow suit.  Let’s call that the lemming defense.

What was notably missing in all the claptrap was any discussion about the virtue of modesty and whether this book may further erode what little remains of respect for modesty in our coarse, unsafe culture.

Reminder to school boards, administrators, and teachers: Teachers are public servants hired to teach math, science, literature, world languages, social studies, and P.E. They are not hired to butt in to the emotional, moral, and psychological lives of other people’s children.

Once upon a time, I held a naïve hope that public education could be pried loose from the grimy grip of self-righteous, presumptuous, intolerant, diversity-loathing, idea-banning, illiberal bullying leftists fluent in Newspeak. That was then. This is now.

Now I know that is not possible—at least not in time to educate properly children who are currently in school or soon-to-be in school. There are good signs that a movement is afoot to challenge the MAN—who now is a homosexual, drag queen who uses the pronouns fae, faer, faers, and faerself.

A few communities are battling to replace their partisan/activist school boards. There is growing vocal opposition to the promotion of critical race theory-derived assumptions, gender theory, and obscene material. And a few state legislatures are banning cross-dressing boys from participation in girls’ sports.

While these are significant developments, even if successful, they are but a pea shot into an ossified, systemically biased, massive infrastructure composed of leftist controlled school administrations, school boards, state boards of education, state legislatures and ancillary leftist controlled organizations like teachers’ unions; the American Library Association; the Modern Language Association; the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, the Illinois “Safe” Schools Alliance, and all the organizations that profit from selling their racist “anti-racism” and pro-homosexual, pro-“trans”-cultic snake oil to public schools—all in the purported service of “safety” and “inclusion.”

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that in recent years, Illinois’ ideologically non-diverse General Assembly has passed several laws requiring taxpayer-funded schools to preach leftist assumptions about “gender” and sexuality starting in kindergarten and to indoctrinate faculty with those same assumptions through “professional development.”

Here are articles about three bills that passed requiring leftist indoctrination in public schools:

Leftist Public School Indoctrination Bill Moving Forward in Springfield

Another K-12 School Indoctrination Bill Coming Through the Illinois Sewage Pipeline

Leftist State Board of Ed and Lawmakers Collude to Indoctrinate Illinois Students

It’s not just Illinois, the Land of Illiberalism that’s corrupting public education. What’s taking place just over the border in Wisconsin illustrates the presumptuousness of public servants in indoctrination camps that self-identify as “schools.”

Last month, Empower Wisconsin exposed a bit of what an Eu Clair Area School District (ECASD) in Eu Claire, Wisconsin imposed on all staff and faculty during their Feb. 25, 2022 “Equity Professional Development” on “Safe Spaces.” (Is there any word more abused by leftists than “safety”?) A slide presentation included this galling statement:

Remember, parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned.

Who put leftists in charge of what parents are entitled to know about their own children? Who gave leftists the moral authority to conclude that parents must earn the right to know their children’s “identities”?

That claim is brazen and presumptuous. For those who have worked in public schools or studied closely what’s been taking place incrementally over the past three decades, such a claim is not, however, surprising. And it’s widely shared by leftists in schools across the country.

The Federalist reported that Superintendent Michael Johnson justified this violation of parental trust by saying he wants to create an “equitable, safe and inclusive” place “for all students.” Further, Johnson said,

Our staff often find themselves in positions of trust with our students. The staff development presentation shared extensive data and information to assist our staff members in our ongoing efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all students. … The ECASD prides itself on being a school district that makes all students feel welcome and safe in our schools.

Does being in a position of trust require staff members to affirm all identities? Does it require concealment of all identities or just the ones staff members have concluded are good, healthy, and morally acceptable?

If staff members found themselves in positions of trust with students who identified as zoophiles, sibling lovers, or polyamorists, would parents have to earn the right to that information?

Are Johnson et al. concerned about cultivating the trust of parents or about making all parents feel welcome and included?

Johnson asserted that “the staff training focused on data showing students who identify as non-heterosexual have a higher incidence rate of mental health issues than heterosexual students.” Did Johnson and his buddies look at long term health risks from “transitioning”?

Did they examine material suggesting that gender dysphoria—like depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation—may be a symptom of some other underlying condition or caused by trauma?

Did Johnson and his propaganda collaborators look at the data and information regarding detransitioning?

Have Johnson and his ideological compeers researched deeply the issue of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria—a social contagion that is resulting in explosive growth in the number of adolescent girls suddenly deciding they’re boys—a heretofore nonexistent phenomenon?

Every organization leftists cite to justify their efforts to promote their views of “gender” and sexuality in schools are controlled by leftists. And every statistic and tidbit of “information” leftists cite to justify their efforts is arguable. But no debate is permitted by ideological tyrants who presume their subjective assumptions are inarguable objective facts.

I will conclude with this call from philosopher, theologian, and Princeton law professor Robert P. George a year ago–a call that’s even more urgent today:

If you have kids in public schools in New Jersey or a state that has similar laws mandating the indoctrination of children in public schools on matters of sexuality, and if you do not believe in the “Woke” ideology into which your kids are being indoctrinated, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to get your children out of those schools. The indoctrination literally begins in Kindergarten and First Grade.

The state-run schools in New Jersey and elsewhere now reflect the adoption by the State of an established religion. It is not a traditional religion, and it is not theistic, but it is a religion nonetheless–a system of ideas embodying a particular view of human nature, the human good, human dignity, and what is most important (“sacred”). The public schools are as “religious” today as they were at the beginning when they reflected the Protestant Christianity that was dominant when public education began in the U.S. in the 1830s. The difference is that Protestant Christianity has been replaced by secular progressive ideology.

If secular progressive ideology is not your family’s religion, your kids don’t belong in schools dedicated to promoting it–and to indoctrinating children in it. Your kids should be brought up in your own faith. Allowing them to be educated in a set of dogmas that are antithetical to your own beliefs simply makes no sense.

Get them out.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/If-You-Care-About-Children-and-Americas-Future-Keep-Your-Kids-Out-of-Public-Schools.mp3

Written by Faith Kuzma

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the recent correction by the American Journal of Psychiatry of a landmark study purporting to demonstrate mental health improvements of “transitioning.”

According to Dr. Mark Regnerus, who analyzed the data,

This is not, contrary to what Bränström [lead researcher] told ABC News, an evidence-informed treatment. That the authors corrupted otherwise excellent data and analyses with a skewed interpretation signals an abandonment of scientific rigor and reason in favor of complicity with activist groups seeking to normalize infertility-inducing and permanently disfiguring surgeries.

In its conclusions, the study claimed hormones had no effect on mental health. The researchers also claimed, however, that SRS (sex reassignment surgery) benefited the mental health of patients. Regnerus explains:

If this were a clinical trial seeking to establish the efficacy of a particularly invasive medical treatment in comparison with a non-invasive standard protocol, there is no way that these published results would favor the invasive treatment—in this case, “gender affirming” surgery—when the statistical difference in outcomes was so tiny and fragile.

Almost a dozen doctors in the U.S., U.K., and Sweden sent seven letters recently published in the journal. These doctors demonstrated the claim of positive mental health outcomes was not merited.

Because it drew from population-wide data collected by the Swedish national health service, the Yale study was initially heralded as a turning point definitively demonstrating medical transitioning yields positive health outcomes. The Yale School of Health specifically announced health outcomes “improve”:

Unfailingly, the popular press echoed this Yale branding of transitioning as beneficial. For instance, without qualification, Reuters announced: “Sex-change operations yield long-term mental health benefits for transgender people.”

Glancing through the headlines, the readership of Newsweek, NBC, and the New York Daily News would surely be satisfied that whatever risks are entailed via “transitioning” may well be justified.

Since most prior studies indicate poor mental health outcomes, the press fanfare reveals how little research  journalists did.

In recent months, the Yale imprimatur lent credence to an especially urgent demand for trans-affirmative healthcare during the pandemic.

As it turns out, however, there is anecdotal evidence many young people desisted while under less constant reinforcement of “transitioning” propaganda. One Reddit user reflected on her break from a social network that affirmed her “transition”:

I detransitioned over the lockdown period and think that the loss of constant positive affirmation of my transmale identity by friends/strangers definitely contributed to me realising that my transition was more tied to outside influences than I previously realised. When I was around others I was constantly praised and looked up to for being trans—being alone helped me uncover and look into that feeling of ‘wrongness’ that’d started to nag at me since permanent T [testosterone] changes had began.

The study design did not initially include assessment of health outcomes for those who, from necessity or choice, did not go through with medically and surgically “transitioning,” After the response led researchers to recalculate, their results showed no difference in outcomes.

Moreover, psychological treatments similar to what is known according to the misnomer “wait and see”  model (actually an active talk therapy model demonstrated as successful by Dr. Kenneth Zucker) did not figure into the study. Surely it is important to examine what treatment paths might have led specifically to desistance, especially given the increasing number of therapy bans that make it dangerous to use talk therapy in response to gender-confused youth and adults.

It’s worth wondering how many online readers will realize the study’s conclusion was retracted. A reader without a medical background likely is unaware of the errors in basic calculations that led to the study authors acknowledging their conclusion was unmerited. Why did the peer review process overlook vested interests, motivated research methods, and in at least one instance, misrepresentations of data?

Why is the American Journal of Psychiatry continuing to maintain on its publication site a discredited study sponsored by donors who back LGBT causes, thereby causing a conflict of interest? Lobbying in the form of endowments provides academic cover of objectivity. Yale, in particular, has huge financial incentives from the Pritzker family, the Arcus Foundation and LGBT-dedicated alumni donations.

A few decades back, A.J. Reynolds sponsored research finding health benefits from cigarette smoking. Unsuspecting onlookers now as then are likely to take the study claims at face value.

Such financial ties incentivize research conclusions favored by donors and require up-front disclosure on the American Journal of Psychiatry website. Regarding such studies, Julian Vigo observes:

What this means, when you sift through the bios of the principal investigators and many on the advisory board who hold seats on other granting institutions, editorial committees, and institutional seats of great power, is this: that an enormous amount of money has been thrown at academics who are using public funds for political activism within a dishonestly formulated project.

Not just the publishers of such research but professional organizations as well are to blame for mainstreaming bogus research on “transitioning.” In at least two instances, professional medical organizations amplified the false benefits claim and basically continue to carry water for the “trans” lobby by further nesting and codifying transitioning within established practice.

The Butterfly Effect of “Trans” Advocacy in Research

Within months of the Yale study being published, systematic embedding of “transitioning” as best practice in “trans” healthcare began. This butterfly effect is seen in the ways professional associations dovetailed guidelines to fit the 2019 study.

Just two months after the Yale research appeared, the AMA issued a statement in support of “transitioning”:

Receipt of gender-affirming care has been linked to dramatically reduced rates of suicide attempts, decreased rates of depression and anxiety, decreased substance use, improved HIV medication adherence and reduced rates of harmful self-prescribed hormone use.

At the very least, the AMA needs to issue a correction. Dr. Mary Davenport, OBGYN writes:

This is a very serious error. It caused the AMA to state that surgery was an important treatment for gender dysphoria, and that justice requires insurance and the military to pay. (comment on social media). 

It wasn’t just the AMA, however, that extended the butterfly effect of the Yale study.

Sorry, Not Sorry

With evangelical zeal, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) also loaned its considerable professional authority to effectively endorse the study’s discredited conclusion with a headline that even now serves to support “transitioning”: “Study Finds Long-Term Mental Health Benefits of Gender-Affirming Surgery for Transgender Individuals.”

Despite its being fully discredited, the erroneous claim is updated by links to the journal’s correction, but it is still essentially being propped up by the APA. Initially hidden behind a paywall, the correction was virtually unseen and unavailable to online readers who still are likely to assume the APA underwrites or even champions the biomedical approach. Put plainly, the corrected publication now finds that neither time on hormones nor SRS surgery improves mental health outcomes. Yet this information is not clearly stated on the APA’s “update” page.

Additionally, while the APA links to the journal’s statement, it is written in academic jargon for specialists who know their niche area, not a general readership, which can still gloss the headline as legitimizing transitioning. Even for medical generalists, the continued posting of the study is misleading and harmful. Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist, commented in a recent conference presentation that most doctors are too busy to research information about new developments in care and rely on guidelines often drafted within small work groups by activists.

Clearly, both the journal and the professional associations are minimizing the study’s shortcomings in a way that deliberately misleads.

Helena, who is a re-identified woman, sums up how reframing of data to show positive outcomes undermines the trust patients have in medical institutions:

[T]here are a multitude of reasons why the unquestioning acceptance of these interventions as “care” is both ethically and scientifically flawed. It is true, and will always be true, that people who identify as transgender should receive support as well as proper, evidence-based, mental and physical healthcare. The issue is that as it stands today, the trans healthcare industry, and increasingly the institutions of the broader medical establishment (including the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society, among others), have broken away from the traditional standards originally set by rigorously developed medical ethics and the scientific method.

Inescapably, academic standing is undermined by the simultaneous effort to avoid public scrutiny. Public confidence can only be restored by a full retraction, including removing mention of the study from online publications and websites.

As an inflection point in the activist normalization of medical “transitioning,” research not only informs but directs healthcare policies and standards. The butterfly effect extends to teaching materials provided to doctors as part of continuing education requirements. For instance, the study was quickly repurposed as CME, (Continuing Medical Education) and turned into a key class that U.S. physicians take to keep their license. The course teaches physicians that “The findings support the decision to offer surgery to transgender individuals seeking it, as well as policies that ensure coverage for surgery” (Posted on Twitter by SEGMtweets). This statement needs to be expunged since the Yale study shows no such thing. If that does not happen, organizations posting such claims need to be held liable for disseminating misinformation.

Because the study’s statistical analysis was invalidated and a correction issued, such statements need to be removed from teaching materials and websites. Hacsi Horvath, an epidemiologist who has reviewed this study and others like it, advises,

institutions should strongly consider removing [such] documents … to  prevent  potential  patient  harms  that  may  accrue  if individuals, clinicians and  policy-makers take  their  “findings” at face value.

Talk Therapy Beats Surgical Disfigurement

So many structural changes to the practice of medicine appear to hinge on this one Yale study. Rippling out to affect society-wide structures, the study’s over-reach has already led to enormous changes in the way doctors practice medicine. Researchers, banking on the elite schools they work for, sell off their brand to mega foundations and agenda-driven donors.

The increasing overlap between the fields of psychiatry and medicine is wasting away the skills and strategies of traditional psychiatrists. Dr. Deborah Soh, non-conservative author of the recently published book The End of Gender  recommends a return to letting therapists do their job:

[Medical professionals] can’t do their jobs right now. Anyone who is ethical has left or is choosing not to work with gender dysphoria.  They can’t do their jobs properly.  So what you have instead is the people who are currently operating are activists, and they will facilitate what the patient wants, whether or not that may be the best thing for them.

Because many of the activist definitions have been enshrined in law, therapists and medical doctors no longer routinely complete an assessment. Few if any engage gender-confused patients in historically demonstrated successful modes of talk therapy now possibly subject to bans. As a result, many psychiatrists have left the field. At the UK’s Tavistock gender clinic, an alarming 35 clinicians recently resigned over concerns about gender affirmation, basically over-diagnosing kids who otherwise might well go on to desist.

Organizations with “trans”-affirmative protocols need to be held to account. The ways the Yale 2019 study positioned affirmative practices as the best approach show how powerful a weapon it became in convincing the public of the efficacy of “transitioning.” The social engineering goals of those with moneyed interests in this medical growth industry need to be identified and named by any organization promoting the affirmative response.

From risky off-label hormones in an unregulated sphere of medicine, “transitioning” became essential healthcare under the halo effect of the Yale 2019 study. Now that this claim is rejected, it’s time to fully retract the “trans” affirmative standard of care and allow medical practitioners to do their jobs and their organizations to advocate only what is legitimately evidence- based.

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Here are just two of the countless unbearable stories of sorrow and regret that the mainstream press doesn’t want to tell. Here are just two of the many nightmarish stories that “gender therapists,” cosmetic surgeons, urologists, endocrinologists, pharmaceutical companies, and vocal coaches who profit from the confusion of children don’t want you to hear. Here are the accounts of bone-deep anguish from young people who feel betrayed by adults who facilitated the chemical and surgical ravaging of their once whole and healthy bodies:…

read more here

Here are just two of the countless unbearable stories of sorrow and regret that the mainstream press doesn’t want to tell. Here are just two of the many nightmarish stories that “gender therapists,” cosmetic surgeons, urologists, endocrinologists, pharmaceutical companies, and vocal coaches who profit from the confusion of children don’t want you to hear. Here are the accounts of bone-deep anguish from young people who feel betrayed by adults who facilitated the chemical and surgical ravaging of their once whole and healthy bodies:

I’m 16 and my body is ruined. I destroyed every piece of me that made me a female, or at least, the parts that made me look and feel like one. I was on testosterone for a year and a half so my voice is fucked, my boobs are gone, I’m very hairy. … Just don’t really see the point in living if it’s gonna be like this. I can’t believe that everyone in my life failed me so hard. How are we letting insecure 14 year old girls make the decision to mutilate and ruin their bodies. I’m angry. I’m angry at this sick agenda. I’m angry at the sick people who think you have any other choice but to accept what you were given at birth. I’m angry that these sick people are pushing their sick agendas on sick, insecure, damaged, naive, gullible, children. Children don’t know what they want. Neither do the rest of these “trans” people. I’m sorry but you can’t change who you are. All it will do is send you into madness. Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn that lesson the hard way. I don’t “feel” like a girl or a boy. I just am. I’m just me. I wish someone could’ve told me that I was beautiful just the way I was. I was so beautiful. Now I am ruined. I was a singer. I had a delicate, soft voice. Now it’s harsh, like a teenage boy’s. All of these regrets, all of these memories, the pictures on my phone that I can’t stop staring at, staying up all night crying, listening to recordings of my old voice, realizing how if someone had just paid attention to me, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation. I’m furious, and there’s nothing I can do except warn other young girls not to make the same mistake that I did. But I wouldn’t have listened either. I wanted that escape. I wanted to be a man so bad. Being a girl brought me nothing but tragedy. I was beaten and molested as a child. I felt weak. I wanted to be strong. I didn’t want to be another object for men to use. I wanted to be seen as a person. Well, now I’m a freak.

---

Two years ago, I was a healthy, beautiful girl heading toward high school graduation. But after taking testosterone for a year, I turned into an overweight, pre-diabetic nightmare of a transgender man. …

I’m one of many young women that have been failed by the medical system. I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a mental-health condition. I was treated with mega-doses of powerful testosterone that ravaged my body, caused me to gain 50 pounds, and put me at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and teenage menopause.

I’m not putting all the blame on the mental health people or the doctors. These are regretful choices I made as a teenager. But I trusted the doctor’s advice. They were the experts, who was I not to listen to them?

But telling an 18-year-old girl that mega-doses of testosterone would fix her mental health problems? They didn’t even talk to me about other treatment options! No doctor or therapist suggested I give myself time to grow up, or wait and see what happens with counseling sessions – no doctor or therapist told most young people outgrow their feelings of wanting to be the opposite sex.

The only advice I got was to take mega-doses of testosterone.

I did this to myself for almost a year. Meanwhile, my mom was crying daily about why I was doing this to myself, all the while blaming herself.

Finally, one day, my grandfather sat me down to talk about it. With tears in his eyes, he asked me to stop.

That was a saving grace. I would have let this treatment kill me before admitting I’d screwed up. His intervention saved my life.

Today, I continue to deal with the permanent side effects of messing up my body.

I’m not a political person. I’m just a young person that needed help from doctors, and unfortunately got caught up in this medical scandal.

More and more young people are being deceived every day, being told that the solution to their insecurity and identity problems is to get a sex change. The problem is, a person’s sex can’t really be changed. You can take hormones and have cosmetic surgeries, but that doesn’t really change your sex, or solve your problems. I wish I knew that when I was younger.

These young people who have stopped identifying as the sex they are not are called “detransitioners,” and there are many of them. With broken families, abuse, trauma, absence of faith, and inculcation with perverse ideologies on sexuality and “identity,” the world is creating deep wounds in children, providing distorted lenses through which these wounded children misinterpret their experiences, and offering wicked solutions for which wounded children in desperation grasp.

As the number of “trans”-identifying children and teens explodes—particularly among adolescent girls, we will hear more and more of these stories. Already there are thousands of young adults detransitioning and telling their stories. How many more do you need to hear before you speak up? Are you going to be one of those countless adults who stand silently by as children’s bodies are mutilated because you’re too cowardly to stand against the forces of ignorance and evil? Are you going to just go about your daily business, risking nothing even as 13-year-old girls have their healthy breasts amputated? Does your silence bring glory to God? Do you not love these children as yourself?

Will you protest drag queen story events for preschoolers when your local library hosts one?

Will you tell your children’s teachers that under no circumstance are your children to be exposed to any classroom discussions, activities, presentations, or resources that address cross-sex identification (or homosexuality)?

Will you tell your government school administration that your children may not share locker rooms or restrooms with opposite-sex students?

Will you ask your pediatrician for his or her view of chemical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors and change doctors if he or she affirms such destructive nonsense?

If you live in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, or Texas where bills have been proposed or will soon be proposed banning chemical and surgical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, will you vigorously and publicly support those critical bills? Will you ask your lawmakers to sign on as co-sponsors of those bills?

If you live in Illinois, where the first such bill in the nation was introduced almost a year ago by one of Illinois’ finest lawmakers, State Representative Tom Morrison, will you vigorously and publicly support both his bill and him? Will you contact your state representative and ask him or her to sign on as a co-sponsor of the bill?

If your really care about children, you will do all of the above.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/trans-nightmares_mixdown.mp3

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The 2019 Illinois Family Institute Worldview Conference on “Trans” Ideology concluded with a Q&A session moderated by IFI’s cultural affairs writer, Laurie Higgins. During this final session, speakers Dr. Michelle Cretella, Denise Shick, Walt Heyer, and Pastor Doug Wilson field questions from conference attendees.

Higgins begins by addressing the endgame of LGBTQ activists regarding transgenderism, the effect of the transgender agenda on privacy and culture, and the smoke and mirror tactics of the American Academy of Pediatrics in regard to transgender protocols. Topics and questions covered by our speakers include gender confusion and regret; transitioning/detransitioning; calls to lower the age of consent; Planned Parenthood’s evolving business model; an effective Christian approach to government schools; the biology of sex determination; and loving, biblical responses to transgender family members and friends.

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-and, please-

The God-rejecting, science-denying, incoherent “trans” ideology lurches on destroying lives, aided and abetted by ignorant people like Illinois’ governor J.B. Pritzker who is using an administrative rule to force Illinoisans to pay for “gender reassignment” surgery and risky cross-sex hormone-doping through Medicaid. At the same time, however, more and more brave souls are emerging on the cultural scene at great personal cost to fight back against the heart-, mind-, and body-destroying “trans” ideology.

Read more here

On February 26, the website Public Discourse published an article that includes the harrowing accounts of five mothers—one of whom is a lifelong Democrat, another a lesbian—whose daughters experienced Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD).

These mothers are certain that the culture, including the professional mental health community, physicians, schools, peer socialization, and social media, are providing a distorted lens through which girls are viewing and misinterpreting discomfort and confusion that results from factors like trauma and pre-existing medical conditions, leading them to believe suddenly that they are, in reality, boys. One of the mothers writes,…

read more here

On February 26, the website Public Discourse published an article that includes the harrowing accounts of five mothers—one of whom is a lifelong Democrat, another a lesbian—whose daughters experienced Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD).

These mothers are certain that the culture, including the professional mental health community, physicians, schools, peer socialization, and social media, are providing a distorted lens through which girls are viewing and misinterpreting discomfort and confusion that results from factors like trauma and pre-existing medical conditions, leading them to believe suddenly that they are, in reality, boys.

One of the mothers writes,

My daughter, at age fourteen, spontaneously decided that she is actually a male. After suffering multiple traumatic events in her life and spending a large amount of time on the internet, she announced that she was “trans.” Her personality changed almost overnight, and she went from being a sweet, loving girl to a foul-mouthed, hateful “pansexual male.” At first, I thought she was just going through a phase. But the more I tried to reason with her, the more she dug her heels in. Around this time, she was diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and anxiety. But mental health professionals seemed mainly interested in helping her process her new identity as a male and convincing me to accept the notion that my daughter is actually my son.

At age sixteen, my daughter ran away and reported to the Department of Child Services that she felt unsafe living with me because I refused to refer to her using male pronouns or her chosen male name. Although the Department investigated and found she was well cared for, they forced me to meet with a trans-identified person to “educate” me on these issues. Soon after, without my knowledge, a pediatric endocrinologist taught my daughter—a minor—to inject herself with testosterone. My daughter then ran away to Oregon where state law allowed her—at the age of seventeen, without my knowledge or consent—to change her name and legal gender in court, and to undergo a double mastectomy and a radical hysterectomy.

My once beautiful daughter is now nineteen years old, homeless, bearded, in extreme poverty, sterilized, not receiving mental health services, extremely mentally ill, and planning a radial forearm phalloplasty (a surgical procedure that removes part of her arm to construct a fake penis).

Recently a 14-year-old girl in Canada took her father to court because he doesn’t want her to receive testosterone injections in her effort to masquerade as a boy. The Supreme Court of British Columbia not only decided that she is mature enough to grant consent and may start receiving testosterone immediately but also that,

Attempting to persuade A.B. [the daughter] to abandon treatment for gender dysphoria; addressing A. B. by his [sic] birth name; referring to

A.B. as a girl or with female pronouns whether to him [sic] directly or to third parties; shall be considered to be family violence under s. 38 of the Family Law Act.

This is coming to America. Big government in cahoots with Big “Trans” believes so deeply in the science denying “trans”-cultic religion that it will stop at nothing—not even our front doors—to impose it on children.

In five, six, or ten years A.B. could be Helena, Jesse, Dagny, or Chiara, four young formerly “trans”-identifying women who just launched a website called Pique Resilience Project to shed light on “detransitioning.” They are four women—decidedly not conservative—ages 19-22 who regret “transitioning,” answer “questions for detransitioners and desisters,” and tell their “personal stories and opinions as women who identified as trans and desisted.”

Their website offers several videos, this one of which I would urge IFI readers and political and school leaders to watch:

In this important video, the women discuss the dysfunctional behavior endemic to the “trans” community, which includes substance abuse and cutting. They discuss the vindictiveness of the “trans” community that prohibits members from questioning whether they really are “trans.” And they discuss the causes of their prior belief that they were “trans,” which included experiences of trauma, social isolation, and exposure to and immersion in online “trans” communities.

In an interview with self-avowed feminists Chiara and her mother Denise on 4^thWaveNow, an important website for anyone who wants to understand gender dysphoria, ROGD, and the “trans” ideology, lesbian Chiara expresses her adamant opposition to “legislation that would make it illegal for therapists to encourage clients to explore why they feel they must transition”:

I think that would be blatant malpractice. The job of a therapist is to help people overcome issues and develop the best life possible, and transition is not always the right way forward. This would also prevent therapists from digging into deeper issues behind dysphoria. If this law were to go into effect, if would only increase the number of young people who would later detransition.

This interview is a gold mine of important information, but I want to draw particular attention to three more points made by Chiara and her mom:

Chiara: Suicide is used as a “warning to parents: ‘This is what happens when you don’t let your kid transition.’ This mantra continues to be repeated online and everywhere, and perpetuates the idea that suicide is the ‘only way out’ for kids whose parents will not accept their gender identity—this is a false statement that should under no circumstance be peddled to impressionable young people….[S]uicide rates by trans-identified kids are misrepresented and used to threaten and manipulate people into ‘validating’ identities without question.”

Chiara: “Parents are often demonized, called ‘abusive,’ and beaten down by trans activists if they dare to question whether transition is right for their child. Parents are generally not in the habit of brainwashing their children—rather, most want to protect and support them. Asking your child to think critically and consider other factors at play is not abusive, it’s just parenting.”

Denise (Mom): “One of the most pernicious things trans activists and some gender clinicians do is try to drive a wedge between young trans-identified people and their families. While there are certainly abusive parents, the vast majority of us who have serious reservations about the medicalization of our gender-atypical youth do love and care about our kids and only want the best for them.”

In August of 2018, a study on ROGD by Dr. Lisa Littman, physician and associate professor of the practice of behavioral sciences at radical Ivy League Brown University, was published in which she concluded by saying that further research into the phenomenon is needed:

In recent years, a number of parents have been reporting in online discussion groups… that their adolescent and young adult (AYA) children, who have had no histories of childhood gender identity issues, experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as “binge-watching” Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions… raise the question of whether social influences may be contributing to or even driving these occurrences of gender dysphoria in some populations of adolescents and young adults.

…

The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate teens from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand rapid-onset gender dysphoria, its implications, and scope.

There has been a troubling explosion in the number of adolescents who identify as “trans,” aided and abetted by medical and mental health organizations that have been taken over by leftists. Now the “trans” cult is reaching into families with its grasping, bloodstained claws, dragging children out to destroy their bodies, minds, and hearts, and leaving heartbroken parents in its wake. Finally children scarred and parents betrayed by the “trans” cult are beginning to tell their stories.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/formerly-transgender_audio.mp3

IFI Worldview Conference

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

Despite a lack of evidence proving the safety and efficacy of chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for those who experience gender dysphoria, “progressives” plow forward mutilating the healthy bodies and manipulating the psychology of children who feel they are or wish they were the sex they are not.

The science-denying, incoherent “trans” ideology affects all of society. The end game for “trans” activists and others in cultic thrall to this superstition is not access for a few boys and girls or men and women to opposite-sex private spaces and sports. The end game is the eradication of all public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone. Think about what that means:

• It means children will be raised under the delusion that their anatomy signifies nothing. All that matters is “gender identity.” It means society will tell them that no one—not doctors, parents, or anyone else—knows if they’re male or female.

• It means putting at risk the psychological welfare of students, particularly younger students and those already struggling with other issues, including autism; depression; anxiety; body dysmorphia; eating disorders; OCD; and the effects of molestation, family dysfunction, and bullying. Introducing the “trans” ideology, which teaches the disordered nonsense that a boy can be a girl or vice versa, to at-risk children will confuse and disturb them and will provide a distorted lens through which they may misinterpret their experiences.

• It means that we must all pretend that humans with congenital penises and fake breasts sashaying through our women’s locker rooms in the altogether are women. (Many who identify as “trans” don’t believe surgery is necessary to pass as the opposite sex, which is why you’ll hear terms like “chestfeeding men” or claims like “women can have penises.”)

• It means that at public pools, beaches, and parks, our children will see topless women who pretend to be men but opt to keep their breasts.

• It means that men’s roommates in semi-private hospital rooms may be biological women. And it means women who seek sanctuary from abusive boyfriends and husbands in shelters may be forced to share rooms or private facilities with biological men.

• It means many of us will lose jobs if we refuse to refer to colleagues by incorrect pronouns, which is to say, if we refuse to lie.

• It means that our taxes will continue to subsidize the indoctrination of children with the “trans” ideology through government schools

• And it means the sterilization and mutilation of the healthy bodies of children.

Since the “trans” ideology is metastasizing throughout the sinews of American life—including our schools—all stakeholders must understand the “trans” orthodoxy better. In previous articles, I provided questions that anyone who affirms the “trans” ideology should be asked.[1] In this article, I provide information of which many are unaware, that may be useful to anyone opposing co-ed private spaces in schools, and that should make society reevaluate the barbaric path we’re treading:

• At birth, doctors identify the sex of babies. They do not assign them a “gender.” A person’s sex can never change. Biological sex is not a disorder, illness, deficiency, shortcoming, or error. Scientists and other medical professionals have recognized that biological sex is a neutral, objective, and immutable fact of human nature. Likewise, puberty is neither a disease nor a disorder.

• There is no conclusive, research-based evidence proving that if there is incongruence between one’s objective, immutable, biological sex (and its attendant healthy, normally functioning anatomy and physiology) and one’s subjective, internal sense of being male or female that the problem resides in the body rather than the mind.

• The article “Hormone Therapy for the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria” in the May 19, 2014 issue of the highly respected Hayes Directory reports that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in adults is based on “very low quality of evidence” and that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in children and adolescents has no evidence base.[2]

• There are health risks and complications attendant to the use of puberty-suppressing drugs. Boys whose puberty is suppressed will have micro-penises which present surgical problems if they should one day seek vaginoplasty (i.e., there isn’t enough skin to turn into “vaginas,” so more complicated and risky procedures must be used). The health risks of the off-label use of puberty-blockers for the treatment of gender-dysphoria include the arrest of bone growth, decrease in bone density, the “prevention of sex-steroid-dependent organization and maturation of the adolescent brain, and the inhibition of fertility by preventing the development of gonadal tissue and mature gametes for the duration of treatment.”

• “There is an obvious self-fulfilling nature to encouraging a young boy with GD to socially impersonate a girl and then institute pubertal suppression. Given the well-established phenomenon of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating a girl alters the structure and function of the boy’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that will make identity alignment with his biologic sex less likely. This, together with the suppression of puberty that prevents further endogenous masculinization of his brain, causes him to remain a gender non-conforming prepubertal boy disguised as a prepubertal girl.”[3]

• Some of the effects of the off-label use of cross-sex hormones are permanent and long-term risks are unknown:

– Sterility and voice changes are permanent for both men and women.

–An interagency statement published by the World Health Organization states that “sterilization should only be provided with the full, free and informed consent of the individual” and that “sterilization refers not just to interventions where the intention is to limit fertility… but also to situations where loss of fertility is a secondary outcome…. Sterilization without full, free and informed consent has been variously described by international, regional and national human rights bodies as an involuntary, coercive and/or forced practice, and as a violation of fundamental human rights, including the right to health, the right to information, the right to privacy.”[4] Since parents or guardians must provide consent for hormonal interventions, and since parents are not being made aware of the experimental nature of the off-label use of hormones for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or of the fact that most children with gender dysphoria outgrow it by late adolescence if otherwise supported through natural puberty, parents and guardians are unable to provide fully informed.

–For biologically healthy men who take estrogen to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an “increased risk of liver disease, increased risk of blood clots (risk of death or permanent damage), increased risk of diabetes and of headaches/migraines, heart disease, increased risk of gallstones, and increased risk of noncancerous tumour of the pituitary gland.”[5] Breast tissue growth in men who take estrogen is permanent.

–For biologically healthy women who take testosterone to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and possibly of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or uterine cancer. Taking testosterone can have a “destabilizing effect” on “bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia.”[6] “Male”-pattern baldness and body and facial hair growth in women who take testosterone are permanent.

• Surgery (e.g., mastectomy, orchiectomy [i.e., castration]) is irreversible.

• Men who choose penile inversion vaginoplasty are castrated and their penises inverted to fashion a fake vagina (aka “neo-vagina”). For the rest of their lives, surgeons recommend that they use vaginal dilators once a week. Since the skin of fake vaginas is not vaginal tissue, men must also douche 2-3 times per week for the rest of their lives.

• Some men are unable to have inversion vaginoplasty. For example, because 18-year-old boy and reality TV star Jazz Jennings, who was recently castrated, started puberty blockers so young, his penis was the size of a prepubertal boy’s penis, and, therefore, too small to provide enough skin for a fake vagina. In these cases, skin from the colon or small bowel is used:

This technique… is naturally self-lubricating…. Since the secretion is digestive there is a risk of malodor and frequent secretions, and secretions are constant rather than only with arousal. Wearing panty liners or pads may be necessary for the long term. Bacterial overgrowth (diversion colitis) is common and may present with a greenish discharge…. The bowel lining is also not as durable as skin. Use of intestinal tissue also places the vagina at risk of diseases of the bowel including inflammatory bowel disease, arterio-venous malformations (AVM) or neoplasms [i.e., abnormal growths].[7]

• The Christian Medical and Dental Association “believes that prescribing hormonal treatments to children or adolescents to disrupt normal sexual development for the purpose of gender reassignment is ethically impermissible, whether requested by the child or the parent.”[8]

• The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) “urges health care professionals to adhere to genetic science and sexual complementarity over ideology in the treatment of gender dysphoria (GD) in children. This includes especially avoiding puberty suppression and the use of cross-sex hormones in children with GD. One’s sex is not a social construct, but an unchangeable biological reality.”[9]

• Neuroscientist, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Teenage Brain, Dr. Frances Jensen, explains that,

Teenagers do have frontal lobes, which are the seat of our executive, adult-like functioning like impulse control, judgment and empathy. But the frontal lobes haven’t been connected with fast-acting connections yet…. But there is another part of the brain that is fully active in adolescents, and that’s the limbic system. And that is the seat of risk, reward, impulsivity, sexual behavior and emotion. So they are built to be novelty-seeking at this point in their lives. Their frontal lobe isn’t able to say, “That’s a bad idea, don’t do that.” That’s not happening to the extent it will in adulthood.

• The oft-cited suicide rate of 41% for those who identify as “trans” is based on an erroneous understanding of a study by the Williams Institute—an understanding that ignores the acknowledged and serious limitations of the study.[10] There is no evidence that surgery or chemical disruption of normal, natural and healthy development or processes reduces the incidence of suicide.[11] J. Michael Bailey, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, and Dr. Raymond Blanchard, former psychologist in the Adult Gender Identity Clinic of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) from 1980–1995 and the Head of CAMH’s Clinical Sexology Services from 1995–2010, have written the following[12]:

–Children (most commonly, adolescents) who threaten to commit suicide rarely do so, although they are more likely to kill themselves than children who do not threaten suicide.

–Mental health problems, including suicide, are associated with some forms of gender dysphoria. But suicide is rare even among gender dysphoric persons.

–There is no persuasive evidence that gender transition reduces gender dysphoric children’s likelihood of killing themselves.

–The idea that mental health problems–including suicidality–are caused by gender dysphoria rather than the other way around (i.e., mental health and personality issues cause a vulnerability to experience gender dysphoria) is currently popular and politically correct. It is, however, unproven and as likely to be false as true.

• There is no phenomenon of women trapped in men’s bodies or vice versa, or of men having women’s brains or vice versa. Science has not proven that the brains of transgender individuals are “wired differently” than others with the same biological sex. In other words, there is no conclusive evidence of a “female brain” being contained in a male body or vice versa.[13] In fact, it is impossible for an opposite-sexed brain to be “trapped” in the wrong body. Every brain cell of a male fetus has a Y chromosome; female fetal brains do not. This makes their brains intrinsically different. Additionally, at 8 weeks gestation, male fetuses have every cell of their body—including every brain cell—bathed by a testosterone surge secreted by their testes. Female fetuses lack testes; none of their cells—including their brain cells—experience this endogenous testosterone surge.

• “[C]urrent studies on associations between brain structure and transgender identity are small, methodologically limited, inconclusive, and sometimes Even if they were more methodologically reliable, they would be insufficient to demonstrate that brain structure is a cause, rather than an effect, of the gender-identity behavior. They would likewise lack predictive power, the real challenge for any theory in science.”[14]

• Desistance is “the tendency for gender dysphoria to resolve itself as a child gets older and older.”[15] The best research to date suggests that without social or medical “transition” most (60[16]-90%[17]) gender-dysphoric children will come to accept their biological sex after passing naturally through puberty. [18] While “12- 27% of ‘gender variant’ children persist in gender dysphoria; that percentage rises to 40% amongst those who visit gender clinics.” Research shows that persistence rates rise significantly among those who are given puberty-blockers and “gender-affirmative psychotherapy,” thus suggesting that such interventions lead minors “to commit more strongly to sex reassignment than they might have if they had received a different diagnosis or a different course of treatment.”[19]

• Detransitioning is the process by which someone who has been identifying as the opposite sex, presenting himself or herself as the opposite sex, taking cross-sex hormones, and possibly had surgery rejects his or her “trans” identity and accepts his or her objective, immutable biological sex. The American College of Pediatricians confirms what “detransitioners” assert: There are many possible post-natal, environmental causes for gender dysphoria: Family and peer relationships, one’s school and neighborhood, the experience of any form of abuse, media exposure, chronic illness, war, and natural disasters are all examples of environmental factors that impact an individual’s emotional, social, and psychological development.[20]

• “Mounting evidence over the last decade points to increased rates of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and autism traits among children and adults with gender dysphoria…. It is possible that some of the psychological characteristics common in children with ASD—including cognitive deficits, tendencies toward obsessive preoccupations, or difficulties learning from other people—complicate the formation of gender identity.”[21] A study published in May 2018 “further confirmed a possible association between ASD and the wish to be of the opposite gender by establishing increased endorsement of this wish in adolescents and adults with ASD compared to the general population controls.”[22]

• J. Michael Bailey and Dr. Raymond Blanchard explain the phenomenon of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD):

The typical case of ROGD involves an adolescent or young adult female whose social world outside the family glorifies transgender phenomena and exaggerates their prevalence. Furthermore, it likely includes a heavy dose of internet involvement. The adolescent female acquires the conviction that she is transgender. (Not uncommonly, others in her peer group acquire the same conviction.) These peer groups encouraged each other to believe that all unhappiness, anxiety, and life problems are likely due to their being transgender, and that gender transition is the only solution. Subsequently, there may be a rush towards gender transition…. We believe that ROGD is a socially contagious phenomenon in which a young person–typically a natal female–comes to believe that she has a condition that she does not have. ROGD is not about discovering gender dysphoria that was there all along; rather, it is about falsely coming to believe that one’s problems have been due to gender dysphoria previously hidden (from the self and others). Let us be clear: People with ROGD do have a kind of gender dysphoria, but it is gender dysphoria due to persuasion of those especially vulnerable to a false idea.[23]

• Brown University Researcher Dr. Lisa Littman conducted a survey of parents whose children developed Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Littman writes,

In recent years, a number of parents have been reporting in online discussion groups… that their adolescent and young adult (AYA) children, who have had no histories of childhood gender identity issues, experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as “binge-watching” Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions… raise the question of whether social influences may be contributing to or even driving these occurrences of gender dysphoria in some populations of adolescents and young adults…. The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate teens from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand rapid-onset gender dysphoria, its implications, and scope.”[24]

• The number of children “being referred for transitioning treatment” in England has increased 4,400% for girls and 1,250% for boys, which has resulted in calls from members of Parliament for an investigation.[25]

• Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) shares several features with gender dysphoria. BIID is a condition in which “Sufferers… experience a mismatch between their physically healthy body and the body with which they identify. They identify as disabled. They often desire a specific amputation to achieve the disabled body they want.”[26] As with some cases of gender dysphoria, scientists say there is evidence for neurological involvement as a cause of the experience of BIID,[27] and yet physicians largely oppose elective amputations of healthy anatomical parts:

According to the principle of nonmaleficence physicians must not perform amputations without a medical indication because amputations bear great risks and often have severe consequences besides the disability…. for example, infections [or] thromboses.  Even though some physicians perform harmful surgeries as breast enlargement surgeries, this cannot justify surgeries that are even more harmful. Even if amputations would be a possible therapy for BIID, they would be risky experimental therapies that could be justified only if they promised lifesaving or the cure of severe diseases and if an alternative therapy would not be available. At least the first condition is not fulfilled in the case of BIID, and probably the second is not fulfilled either. Above all, an amputation causes an irreversible damage that could not be healed, even if the patient’s body image would be restored spontaneously or through a new therapy…. But since all psychiatrists who have investigated BIID patients found that the amputation desire is either obsessive or based on a monothematic delusion, and since neurological studies support the hypothesis of a brain disorder (which is also supported by the most influential advocates of elective amputations), elective amputations have to be regarded as severe bodily injuries of patients.[28]

• The American College of Pediatricians, “a national medical association of licensed physicians and healthcare professionals who specialize in the care of infants, children, and adolescents” and that split from the American Academy of Pediatrics because of its politicization of the practice of medicine, describes puberty-suppression, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries variously referred to as sex-change, sex reassignment, gender reassignment and gender confirmation surgeries as child abuse.”

• Lisa Simons, pediatrician at Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, stated in a PBS Frontline documentary that “‘The bottom line is we don’t really know how sex hormones impact any adolescent’s brain development….’ What’s lacking, she said, are specific studies that look at the neurocognitive effects of puberty blockers.” [29]

• Kenneth Zucker, one of the world’s leading authorities on gender dysphoria, states that,

Identity is a process. It is complicated. It takes a long period of time… to know who a child really is…. There are different pathways that can lead to gender dysphoria…. It’s an intellectual and clinical mistake to think that there’s one single cause that explains all gender dysphoria…. Just because little kids say something doesn’t necessarily mean that you accept it, or that it’s true, or that it’s in the best interest of the child…. Little kids can present with extreme gender dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean they’re all going to grow up to continue to have gender dysphoria.[30]

• Eric Vilain, a geneticist at UCLA who specializes in sexual development and sex differences in the brain, says the studies on twins are mixed and that, on the whole, “there is no evidence of a biological influence on transsexualism yet.”[31]

• Sheila Jeffreys, lesbian feminist scholar, warns against the “transgendering” of children: “Those who do not conform to correct gender stereotypes are being sterilized and they’re being sterilized as children.”[32]

• Heather Brunskell-Evans, social theorist, philosopher, and Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, London, UK, and Michele Moore, Professor of Inclusive Education and Editor-in-Chief of the world-leading journal Disability & Society, critique the “transgender” ideology:

[O]ur central contention is that transgender children don’t exist. Although we argue that ‘the transgender child’ is a fabrication, we do not disavow that some children and adolescents experience gender dysphoria and that concerned and loving parents will do anything to alleviate their children’s distress. It is because of children’s bodily discomfort that we argue it is important families and support services are informed by appropriate models for understanding gender. Our analysis of transgenderism demonstrates it is a new phenomenon, since dissatisfaction with assigned gender takes different forms in different historical contexts. The ‘transgender child’ is a relatively new historical figure, brought into being by a coalition of pressure groups, political activists and knowledge makers…. Bizarrely, in transgender theory, biology is said to be a social construct but gender is regarded as an inherent property located ‘somewhere’ in the brain or soul or other undefined area of the body. We reverse these propositions with the concept that it is gender, not biology, which is a social construct. From our theoretical perspective, the sexed body is material and biological, and gender is the externally imposed set of norms that prescribe and proscribe desirable behaviours for children. Our objection to transgenderism is that it confines children to traditional views about gender.[33]

• Stephanie Davies-Arias, writer, communication skills expert, and pediatric transition critic, writes that “changing your sex to match your ‘gender identity’ reinforces the very stereotypes which [transgender] organisations claim to be challenging… as, in increasing numbers, boys who love princess culture become ‘girls’ and short-haired football-loving girls become ‘boys’. Promoted as a ‘progressive’ social justice movement based on ‘accepting difference’, transgender ideology in fact takes that difference and stamps it out. It says that the sexist stereotypes of ‘gender’ are the true distinction between boys and girls and biological sex is an illusion.”[34]

• Increasing numbers of young men and women experience “sex-change regret” and are “detransitioning.” Unfortunately, some effects of “medical transitions” are irreversible. A BBC documentary includes “Luke,” a young biological woman who regrets taking cross-sex hormones and having a double mastectomy at age 20 shares her experience:

The assumption from the outset was that if I said I was transgender, then I must be. Nobody, at any point, questioned my motives. The only cure for this would be hormones and surgery…. I became very self-conscious of my body. I was developing breasts and periods which, for me, felt like there was an alien crawling out of the inside of my body.  I became very depressed. I thought the only explanation for my gender dysphoria must be that I was actually a man. I was struggling with self-harm and had attempted suicide on a number of occasions and was very much told by the community that if you don’t transition, you will self-harm and you will kill yourself. I became convinced that my options were transition or die. I didn’t understand that the degree of disconnect from and hatred of my body could be considered a mental health problem…. The darkest moment was when I realized that I had actually looked normal for a girl. That I had actually been slim and pretty. That my body hadn’t been grotesque the way I thought it was. Now, as a result of having transitioned, I will always have a female body that is freakish. I will always have a flat chest and a beard and there’s nothing I can do about that…. Nobody wants to question the received knowledge that transition is the only option because nobody wants to be the one person that puts their head up and says “hang on, I don’t think this is all right”.… If I was talking to a gender-dysphoric girl who hated her body the way I hated mine, I would tell her to get out into the mud, to climb trees, to find ways of inhabiting her body on her terms.[35]

• While the American Academy of Pediatrics has formally endorsed chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for children and teens who wish they were the sex they are not, no one knows exactly how many of the 67,000 academy members agree with this position since only about 55 members created and voted on it. [36]

It is unconscionable for anyone who cares about children and the future of America to remain ignorant of and silent on this issue.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Surprising-Stuff.mp3

Footnotes:

[1] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/questions-restrooms-locker-rooms-leftists-must-answer/

[2] http://www.hayesinc.com/hayes/htareports/directory/sex-reassignment-surgery-for-the-treatment-of-gender-dysphoria/. Accessed 3.24.16.

[3] http://www.jpands.or g/vol21no2/cretella.pdf

[4] http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/201405_sterilization_en.pdf

[5] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_MTF.pdf

[6] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_FTM.pdf

[7] http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=guidelines-vaginoplasty

[8] https://www.cmda.org/resources/publication/transgender-identification-ethics-statement

[9] http://www.cathmed.org/assets/files/Gender_Dysphoria_Treatment_of_Minors.pdf

[10] http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf

[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

[12] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/09/08/suicide-or-transition-the-only-options-for-gender-dysphoric-kids/comment-page-1/

[13] L Mayer, P McHugh, “Part Three: Gender Identity,” The New Atlantis, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[14] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[15] https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/whats-missing-from-the-conversation-about-transgender-kids.html

[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18981931

[17] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18194003

[18] http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

[19] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20170619_TNA52HruzMayerMcHugh.pdf

[20] https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-dysphoria-in-children

[21] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zhanavrangalova/2017/11/15/growing-evidence-for-a-link-between-gender-dysphoria-and-autism-spectrum-disorders/#26953173153e

[22] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1218-3

[23] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

[24] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330

[25] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/16/minister-orders-inquiry-4000-per-cent-rise-children-wanting/

[26] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/body-integrity-identity-disorder-the-condition-where-sufferers-want-to-be-disabled-a6680306.html

[27] http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/27/voluntary-amputation-extra-phantom-limbs/

[28]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265160802588194 

[29] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-transgender-kids-transition-medical-risks-are-both-known-and-unknown/

[30] https://vimeo.com/247163584

[31] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/a-boys-life/307059/

[32] https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/sheila-jeffreys-the-mccarthyism-of-transgender-and-the-sterilization-of-transgender-children/

[33] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[34] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[35] https://vimeo.com/247163584 

[36] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/55-members-of-american-academy-of-pediatrics-devise-destructive-trans-policy/ 

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As the school year begins, public elementary, middle, and high schools across the country are being asked by parents of “trans”-identifying children to sexually integrate restrooms and locker rooms. These parents are making the presumptuous request for all children to be forced to share private spaces with opposite-sex peers. School boards and administrations are acquiescing, some because they’ve embraced “trans”-cultic assumptions and others out of fear of litigious leftists. All suffer from indefensible ignorance on an issue of urgency and critical importance.

Here are just a few of the things about which most school board members and administrators remain ignorant:

• They’re ignorant of the possible causes of sexual confusion and bodily alienation, which can include family dysfunction, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment.

• They’re ignorant of the phenomenon called “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” Fortunately for them, a study by Dr. Lisa Littman, physician and associate professor of the Practice of Behavioral Sciences at Brown University, was just published that examines this troubling phenomenon:

In on-line forums, parents have been reporting that their children are experiencing what is described here as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion. The onset of gender dysphoria seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe. Parents also report that their children exhibited an increase in social media/internet use prior to disclosure of a transgender identity.

…

The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate [adolescent and young adult children] from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand this phenomenon, its implications and scope.

• They’re ignorant of the dramatic and troubling increase in the number of teens who identify as “trans.”

• They’re ignorant of the relationship between gender dysphoria and autism.

• They’re ignorant of the low rates of suicide among gender-dysphoric children and that there “is no persuasive evidence that gender transition reduces gender dysphoric children’s likelihood of killing themselves.”

• They’re ignorant of the high rates of desistance in gender-dysphoric children who don’t socially and chemically transition. Desistance is the abatement of gender dysphoria and opposite-sex identification.

• They’re ignorant of the phenomenon of “detransitioning” (also called “trans” regret), which is when people stop pretending to be the sex they are not. The fundamental feature of “detransitioning” is ceasing to take risky cross-sex hormones.

• They’re ignorant of the conditioning that they facilitate when they allow co-ed restrooms and locker rooms. “Trans” activists and their “progressive” collaborators believe that society “conditions” children into believing that biological sex matters. They maintain the peculiar belief that stereotypes precede and shape male and female differences rather than the other way around. “Trans” activists and their water-carrying school leaders ignore that through their actions, they are engaging in egregious social conditioning. Through pronoun policing; mandatory co-ed private spaces; litigation; falsified birth certificates and driver’s licenses; public shaming and epithet-hurling; and cultural indoctrination on a massive scale through control of government schools, academia, the press, the arts, and professional medical and mental health communities, public recognition of sex differences in all contexts is being eradicated.

Ignorance and cowardice are on full display in a Kansas City, Missouri school district that has installed co-ed restrooms in two new elementary schools and retrofitted two middle schools and one high school with sexually-integrated restrooms. The walls and doors in stalls are floor-to-ceiling, and there are common areas with shared sink troughs, so boys and girls can wash up together.

Executive director of organizational development, Rochel Daniels, suggests that co-ed restrooms were necessary because of the district’s “policy about non-discrimination.” Hmmm, that’s weird because Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 says that “A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.”

Of course, the signs on the spanking new restrooms don’t say “co-ed.” That would expose too much. The signs say “gender-neutral.” That term is silly because the “trans” cult asserts with sacrilegious fervor that “gender” refers to the socially-constructed roles, conventions, and behaviors arbitrarily associated with males or females. It makes no sense to designate restrooms “role-neutral.” No one has ever cared what roles restroom-users assume or conventions they adopt as they live and move and have their being before and after excreting. All that has mattered when it comes to restroom-usage is their biological sex. The signs, however, inadvertently admit the co-ed nature of the restrooms: They also include the symbols for the two only two sexes that exist.

What these silly signs are likely alluding to is not “gender” but “gender identity,” which “trans” cultists define as the subjective, internal, felt sense of being male or female. If “trans” cultists are to be believed—which they shouldn’t be—there are scores of existing “gender identities.” If “trans” cultists win the day, signage should say something like “all gender identities,” and those pesky male/female symbols erased. As with “gender,” when it comes to restroom-usage, no one has ever cared about the subjective, internal, felt sense of the maleness or femaleness of restroom-users. Why should they? What do I care if the woman in the stall next to me wishes she were a man?

“Trans” cultists view the idea that restroom-usage should correspond to biological sex as arbitrary and socially-constructed, but it’s no more arbitrary, socially-constructed, and culturally-imposed than is the radical idea that restroom-usage should correspond to subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex or that restroom-usage should correspond to no human attributes.

In addition to the aspects of the “trans” debate listed above of which school administrators and board members are largely ignorant, there’s another relevant matter never discussed or likely even contemplated by our fearless leaders: epistemology. That’s a big word for the study of knowledge. What do we know and how do we arrive at knowledge? Can we rely on the truth of our beliefs? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that epistemology is,

the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits?

School administrators and board members are making revolutionary changes in restroom and locker room practices and policies based on assumptions and information. What are those assumptions? Are they sound? What criteria do they use to evaluate the soundness of these assumptions? If they base their decisions on information, what criteria do they apply to the research cited or the organizations that publish the research? Do they seek out and evaluate dissenting views applying the same standards to all research? So many necessary questions completely ignored.

The request by children or teens to have all others refer to them by incorrect pronouns or to force opposite-sex peers to share private spaces with them is what the “trans” cult and its collaborators refer to as “social transitioning.” The word “social” implies society, which in turn assumes the notion of the common good. How do we know whether its good for children to access opposite-sex spaces? Is it good for all children? It’s arguable that it’s good for gender-dysphoric children; it’s even more arguable that it’s good for all children. How is “good” defined?

Schools are discussing whether co-ed restrooms equipped with toileting closets and shared sinks undermine modesty. Will these types of restrooms serve as an incremental step in desensitizing students at young ages to engaging in private bodily functions with opposite-sex peers? Will these types of facilities thereby cultivate or undermine the virtue of modesty? Will these types of facilities reinforce the belief that objective, immutable biological sex per se is profoundly meaningful or will they reinforce the “trans”-cultic belief that biological sex per se has no intrinsic meaning?

So many necessary questions completely ignored.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Co-Ed-Restrooms-in-Government-Schools-Led-by-Fools.mp3

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