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

Conservative parents with kids in Illinois public schools, WAKE UP! Leftists on the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and in Springfield aren’t anywhere near done with their indoctrination mandates. A new amendment to Illinois State Board of Education teacher standards has been proposed by an ISBE committee to infuse the assumptions of Critical Race Theory, identity politics, BLM, and the 1619 Project into 1. all teacher-training programs/education majors, 2. all Professional Education Licensing (PEL), and 3. all public school classrooms. The proposed standards are called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards”–translated: Leftist Responsive Indoctrinating Diktats.

In an excruciatingly detailed 2,400- word document, leftists laid bare the comprehensive nature of the indoctrination they seek to mandate. These “standards” will apply to all teachers, administrators, school counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, school nurses, and speech language pathologists.

Not surprisingly, the ten-member steering team of the Diverse and Learner Ready Committee that concocted the new indoctrination standards has three lawmakers—all Democrats (Fred Crespo, Mary Edly-Allen, and Maurice West).

Knowledge of objective facts and the development of the capacity to think logically through critical examination of diverse ideas are relegated to the back of the “education” bus in favor of promoting propaganda about identity, “systems of oppression,” “sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege,” and “Eurocentrism.”

I will attempt to make clear the loathsome outlines and dangerous implications of this proposal while sparing readers many of the excruciating details.

Teachers are expected to accept as objective truth and implement the following:

1.) Understand and value the notion that … there is not one “correct” way of doing or understanding something.

2.) Affirm students’ “backgrounds and identities.”

3.) Assess how their own biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own racist, sexist, homophobic, Eurocentric behavior or unearned privilege.

4.) Be aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action to better empower diverse students and communities.

5.) Align expectations … used in the classroom with the values and cultural norms of students’ families.

6.) Encourage and affirm the personal experiences … students share in the classroom.

7.) Consistently solicit students’ input on the curriculum.

8.) Co-create, with students, the collective expectations and agreements regarding the physical space and social-emotional culture of the classroom.

9.) Create a risk-taking space that promotes student activism and advocacy.

10.) Invite family and community members to teach about topics that are culturally specific and aligned to the classroom curriculum or content area.

11.) Intentionally embrace student identities and prioritize representation in the curriculum.

12.) “Curate the curriculum.”

13.) Employ authentic and modern technology usage inspiring digital literacy through an equity lens.

14.) Ensure assessments reflect the enriched curriculum that has embedded student identities.

15.) Embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives … toward traditionally marginalized populations.

16.) Implement and integrate the wide spectrum and fluidity of identities in the curriculum.

17.) Ensure text selections reflect students’ classroom, community, and family culture.

18.) Ensure teacher and students co-create content to include a counternarrative to dominant culture.

19.) Use a resource tool to assess the curriculum and assessments for biases.

20.) Promote robust discussion with the intent of raising consciousness that reflects modern society and the ways in which cultures and communities intersect.

21.) Consider a broader modality of student assessments, such as … “community assessments, social justice work, action research projects, and recognition beyond academia.”

So many issues raised by this ethically repellent, logically contradictory bill:

Should lawmakers, the ISBE, or departments of education that train teachers require school professionals to value the dubious claim that “there is no correct way of understanding or doing something”? If so, does that claim apply to the claim itself? Perhaps the claim that there is no correct way of understanding or doing something applies to the entire amendment, in which case it must, by its own logic, be rejected.

Is it the proper role of lawmakers, the ISBE, or departments of education to require school educators to affirm all “identities”? Would those identities include trans-racialists like Rachel Dolezal? Trans-ethnicists? Trans-speciesists? Minor-Attracted Persons? Polyamorists? Zoophiles? Infantilists? Trans-ableists who identify as amputees or paraplegics? Who gets to decide which “identities” educators must embrace and affirm? I guess if there’s no correct way of doing or understanding anything, then “educators” must include all those marginalized groups or any others that may emerge.

Don’t be fooled by any of the tricksy rhetoric used in this amendment. None of the marginalized groups that will be valued, embraced, affirmed, coddled, and mollycoddled will be conservatives or theologically orthodox Christians. The leftists who wrote this amendment are not interested in the “backgrounds, communities, or cultures” of conservative students or theologically orthodox Catholics or Protestants.

Does anyone think the “enriched,” “curated” curricula and assessments, or the community speakers and robust consciousness-raising discussions will include conservative beliefs on race, cross-sex identification, and homosexuality?

The “broader modality of assessments” is a way to incentivize and reward leftist activism. Leftists want, for example, an award for youth activism from BLM or a “trans” cultic organization to count toward a student’s grade.

Lest anyone be unclear of the focus of these new standards, Capitol News cites ISBE spokeswoman Jackie Matthews, who said this about the proposed standards:

Culturally responsive practices are especially important in better supporting Illinois’ LGBTQ+ youth.

As reported by Capitol News,

The state board is scheduled to act on the [proposed standards] at its Dec. 16 meeting. If the board approves them, the new rules would be published a second time, starting another 45-day period during which the proposed standards would be reviewed by the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR.

If approved by JCAR, the standards would become part of the standards by which all teachers and administrators are evaluated.

This is how garbage gets into our children’s classrooms: It starts by either leftist professors in education departments, or state boards of education committees, or in state legislatures using their positions to advance their ideological beliefs.

Illinois leftists in control of everything have already mandated that K-12 public schools teach positively about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, and now they’re about to mandate that all college and university teacher training programs and all professional educators affirm leftist beliefs about systemic racism, homosexuality, and “trans”-cultism. If conservative Illinoisans are unwilling or unable to stop this, they better get their kids out of our government indoctrination centers pronto.

Those whose kids are grown or who don’t have kids ought not be complacent, because this indoctrination will use their taxes to infect the hearts and minds of kids who will be their culture-makers in 10-20 years. Those whose children are in private schools ought not be complacent because this amendment will affect teachers in their schools as well. And home schoolers should care because their taxes are being used to infect the hearts and minds of kids who will be their culture-makers in 10-20 years—culture-makers who will one day try to ban homeschooling. Leftists are nothing if not all-inclusive totalitarians.

Leftist lawmakers in Illinois, who with their supermajorities in both the state Illinois House and Illinois Senate own our public schools, are hell-bent on supplanting education with indoctrination. The concern of leftist lawmakers and leftist activists operating in our public schools is to indoctrinate Illinois school children with leftist dogma on race, sexuality, and American history–dogma that will undermine faith and foment yet more division. They want to make it impossible for conservative parents to shape their own children’s views on these fundamental issues. Leftists achieve that goal through legislation, ISBE guidelines, professional development, curricula, and fervent opposition to school choice.

Teachers, leave those kids alone.

Take ACTION: It is vital that the members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) hear from all Illinois taxpayers. Please click HERE to send a message to this committee urging them to vote against any proposal that would mandate left-leaning standards for educators in Illinois public schools.

The Democratic Co-Chairman is Illinois Senator Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago). His office number is (773) 445-8128.

The Republican Co-Chairman is Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora). His office number is (630) 345-3464.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Indoctrination-Efforts-Accelerate.mp3

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the “Transing” of Language

Yesterday I commented under an article on The Hill on Merriam-Webster Dictionary adding “they” as a pronoun for “gender nonbinary” persons, an article that also referred to British singer Sam Smith‘s announcement that he’s “nonbinary.” Like Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Tribune has bought hook, line, and sinker the “trans” language rules. Writing about the singular man Sam Smith, the Trib wrote this embarrassing sentence:

Smith said they were excited and privileged for the support, adding that they’ve been “very nervous” about the announcement because they ”care too much about what people think.”

Someone responded to my Hill comment, and here’s the short confab I had with “NukeNado” about this nonsense:

Laurie: The “trans” community doesn’t have the right to unilaterally restructure English grammar in the service of their science-denying ideology. While “trans”-identifying persons may believe that each person creates his or her own “reality,” others believe real material phenomena exist, can be known, and matter. My reality includes the real phenomena in the world, like the fact that Sam Smith is a singular person and a man. And my reality excludes lying.

NukeNado: Language is a lie. It’s all made up and agreed upon. It is not some god given immovable property. This is just fake rage you are communicating. No one is going to haul you off to jail if you don’t use the correct pronoun. But if a trans person says they prefer to refer to by gender neutral pronoun, you could be courteous and respect that. However, you’re a free person. You can always reserve the right to be a d**k.

Laurie:You evidently don’t read enough. NYC passed a policy that will fine people up to $250,000 for refusing to use incorrect pronouns in the service of a destructive, science-denying ideology. You can’t actually be naïve enough to think “trans” cultists and their dogmatist friends will stop at NYC. Whether using incorrect pronouns is respectful or harmful depends on whether the ideology reflects reality and is harmless. It doesn’t and it isn’t. I wouldn’t pretend that Rachel Dolezal is black. I wouldn’t pretend a 50-year-old man is 30 or 6. And I wouldn’t pretend “amputee wannabes” (i.e., those who have BIID) are amputees either. Am I a d**k for living in reality with regard to race, age, and disability too? You mistake superficial sentimentality for true compassion and respect, both of which are inseparable from truth.

Monsignor William Smith warned that language is a critical factor in effecting societal change:

[A]ll social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering. There are many things that simply cannot be brought about if it is clear to everyone what is going on…. What happens is that you get very negative things wrapped in very pretty paper, and that helps change the focus of discussion; because before the unthinkable gets thought, and the undoable gets done, the unspeakable must be spoken of in a different way…. The way we think about things is the way we speak about things which eventually affects the way we do things…. Always listen to the words. When you hear terminology, such that it’s not exactly clear what someone is talking about, we should all have the guts to say “just what is it you are talking about?”

Language matters. Never capitulate to the language diktats of the “trans” cult, who are promoting a body-, soul-, and culture-destroying ideology.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Merriam-Webster-Dictionary.mp3

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What’s the Difference Between Transgender, Transabled, Transracial, Transspecies and Transage?

Thanks to Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner and many others, we’re all familiar with the concept of being transgender. But what about being transabled or transracial or transspecies or transage? Are these all valid and real? Or are all of them — including being transgender — based primarily on mental or emotional disorders?

The question of being “transage” — referring to someone who feels he or she is a child trapped in an adult’s body — was recently in the news with this shocking headline: “TRANS-AGE: Pedophile Charged With Abusing 3 Girls Says He’s A 9-Year-Old Trapped In Man’s Body.”

Putting aside the inexcusable nature of this man’s alleged crimes, he’s hardly the first to make this claim. Consider the story of a married man with 7 children who now lives as a 6-year-old girl with his new adoptive “parents.”

Then there are those who identify as “transabled.” This headline explains: “Becoming disabled by choice, not chance: ‘Transabled’ people feel like impostors in their fully working bodies.”

Yes, people like this are tormented by their healthy bodies, feeling the compulsion to be crippled or without a hand or blind. Some have even frozen a foot until it had to be amputated, sawed off their legs (literally) or blinded themselves, all in a desire to find inner peace and wholeness. And once the gory job is done, they are thrilled with their radical choice.

Then there are those who identity as transracial. Wikipedia defines this as individuals “who claim to have a racial identity that differs from their birth race,” like Rachel Dolezal.

And then there are those who identify as transspecies, like the young woman who lives her life as a cat.

A story by Daniel Greenfield on Frontpage Magazine dating back to 2013 addressed this growing phenomenon. But, as Greenfield noted, the transgender community was not too happy with this.

He wrote,

Like most newly minted civil rights groups, Trannies are intolerant of Transpecies Americans accusing them of only pretending to think that they’re cats and playing the old, “How dare you compare your pain to my pain and your imaginary identity to my imaginary identity” game.

Where is the Test?

And herein lies the problem. There is no more a test to prove that someone is (or is not) transgender than there’s a test to prove that someone is (or is not) transabled, transracial, transage or transspecies. Where is the test? When are detailed neurological studies required before someone has sex-change surgery? When are chromosomal tests required before a child is put on puberty blockers or given hormones?

I’ve read transgender blog posts about people identifying as transspecies. On the one hand, the transgender community wants to be compassionate, recognizing the validity of what others perceive as reality. At the same time, not a few of them said, “But there’s a big difference, since some of us really do have male brains in female bodies, but no human being has a leopard’s brain or a wolf’s brain.”

But that raises the question: Where’s the test? How do we differentiate the case of someone who identifies as transabled? What’s the difference between a mind map telling someone that their left hand shouldn’t be there, and someone who believes she’s a woman trapped in a man’s body?

Insanity as Identity

Greenfield had this to say:

Insanity. It’s not just a mental illness. It’s also an identity. Men in dresses claim that gender is in the mind, not in the body. If you think you’re a woman, then you are a woman. What used to be a minor form of eccentric insanity has now become educational policy in schools.

But why stop at gender when you can also do species? There are people who believe that their true identity is that of an animal. And who is to say that species isn’t in the mind, just like gender is in the mind?

This isn’t just a thought-experiment or satire. It’s reality.

Species dysphoria is the equivalent of Gender dysphoria. Mentally ill persons with gender dysphoria are fashionably diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. There is as of yet no Species Identity Disorder, but that is no doubt coming.

And, he notes, like those who identify as transgender, “Transpecies Americans create special pronouns for themselves and insist that refusing to pretend that they’re cats or wolves is a hate crime.”

Love Doesn’t Do What’s Easy

Do I write this to mock those who identify as transabled or transgender? Quite the contrary.

I write this to ask what makes transgender identity different from these other, deeply perceived identities, some of which have been documented to produce deep personal pain.

And if we can agree that it is far from ideal to mutilate healthy body parts to accommodate someone who identifies as transabled, then it is far from ideal to do the same for someone who identifies as transgender.

And if we can agree that it is far from loving to affirm someone’s false sense of reality — like Rachel Dolezal — than we can agree to continue to work towards finding positive cures for transgenderism rather than affirming Bruce as Caitlyn.

It’s easy to affirm, but love doesn’t always do what’s easy. This is a call for sanity as much as a call for love.

This article was originally posted at Stream.org.

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Normalizing Deviance & Sadomasochism

In our must-read first installment in this series we used Wikipedia’s definition of the word paraphilia:

Paraphilia (from Greek παρά para “beside” and -philia φιλία “friendship, love”) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, or individuals. Paraphilic behavior (such as pedophilia, zoophilia, sexual sadism, and exhibitionism) may be illegal in some jurisdictions, but may also be tolerated.

It is in the spirit of tolerance that we’ve been examining paraphilias other than the ones represented by the letters LGBT. Why should just those four get all the attention?

A year ago this month, IFI’s Laurie Higgins posted an article titled “Homosexuality, Race and Identity.” In it, she summed up how homosexual activists “sought to transform cultural disapproval of homoeroticism into approval,” and as part of their strategy, they sought to “co-opt the fight of blacks for racial equality.”

In short, this is what liberals think—or pretend to think—in the service of normalizing sexual deviance:

* Blacks were mistreated.
* Homosexuals were mistreated.
* Therefore skin color and homoeroticism are equivalent.

“The fallacious and odious comparison of race to sexual perversion,” Higgins writes, “has been an effective stratagem in our increasingly non-thinking culture, but there was yet more rhetorical gimcrackery to come.”

The homosexual activists also began “transforming the concept of “identity”:

They sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

“By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity,” Higgins writes, progressives “demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.”

“The Left demands that society affirm all subjective feelings not only as good but also as signifiers of objective reality,” Laurie Higgins explained, and that word “all” is key when it comes to “subjective feelings.” A lot of people have a lot of different feelings. The politics of identity promises many, many more variations — and thus complication.

Something tells me, though, that few in the homosexual community foresaw just how many possible “identities” there were (and are still) to come “out of the closet.”

Before getting to our paraphilia of the day, here is how IFI’s Laurie Higgins introduced the following video that she embedded in her article:

For your chuckle ‘o’ the day, watch this short video to see the ideological Gordian knot from which post- Dolezalians can’t seem to extricate themselves:

You can read Laurie Higgins’ entire article here.

Now for everyone’s favorite part of these articles. On one side is nature’s design and intent (natural sex between men and women), and on the other is everything else. Is society prepared to give “equal rights” to the “everything else” — such as the paraphilia sadomasochism?

Technically, I think we get credit for two paraphilias (sadism and masochism) — note the italicized sentences that are included on this Wikipedia page (and note the shocking use of the word “disorder” — those intolerant bigots!):

“S&M” redirects here. For other uses, see S&M (disambiguation).

This article is about the general historical concept of sadomasochism. For consenting partners engaging in sexual play behavior, see BDSM. For the medical condition involving unwilling victims, see Sexual sadism disorder. For the medical condition where pain or humiliation is required for sexual arousal and causes distress or impairment, see Sexual masochism disorder.

Sadomasochism is the giving or receiving pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer respectively to one who enjoys giving or receiving pain, practitioners of sadomasochism may switch between activity and passivity.

And to our question of the day: will therapies to help minors change their unwanted sadomasochistic desires be banned?

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics

Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Sports & Exhibitionism

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Birth Certificates and the Cultural Extinction of Biological Sex

Passing: when a person is objectively one sex but pretends to be a person of the opposite sex;
self-identification or acceptance as a member of the opposite sex.

Passer: one who passes

It’s clear from the number and nature of Facebook responses to IFI’s update on the passage of Illinois HB 1785 that many Illinoisans are passionately opposed to this bill which now moves to the Illinois Senate. HB 1785 is the bill that will make it even easier-peasier for men and women who seek to “pass” as the opposite sex to obtain fraudulent birth certificates

Illinois—so often on the cutting edge of all things feckless—was one of the earliest states in the country to allow sexual “passers” to obtain new birth certificates that certify a factual error.

For over 40 years now, sexual passers in Illinois have been able to have their birth certificates, which are historical documents, changed to certify that at birth they were identified as the sex they were never identified as. The sex that doctors identified them as at birth remains their sex forever. It may come as an unpleasant surprise to many, but there are only four states that do not permit sexual passers to change their birth certificates: Idaho, Kansas, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Ask a passer what his or her sex is. Don’t ask what their “gender” is. Don’t ask what they identify as. Don’t ask if they feel male or female. Ask what their objective sex is. I guarantee they know what it is, and they know it will never change. “Caitlyn” Jenner, “Chaz” Bono, and “Jazz” Jennings know they have a sex, they know what it is, and they know it will never change. At birth, doctors identified their sex. Doctors do not “assign” or “designate” a baby’s “gender marker.” And except in the rare cases of babies born with intersex disorders, the sex identified at birth is correct.

As stated, at birth doctors identify the sex of babies, and birth certificates record it. Like “Newspeakers” in the dystopian novel 1984, passers exploit language to alter thought. Since they know their sex can never change, passers—who deem objective biological sex irrelevant—seek to erase any public acknowledgement of it everywhere. To get around that pesky problem of reality and science that make clear that humans have a sex and it cannot change, passers want to change the language on birth certificates from “sex” to “gender marker.”

In the service of compassion, inclusivity, justice, and intellectual consistency, we’re going to need to make several other reality-denying changes:

1.) We must allow those who identify as an age different from their objective age to have the birth-date marker on their birth certificate changed to reflect their internally felt age. We should allow those people who take youth-enhancing hormones, have cosmetic surgical procedures, and cross-age dress to change their birth-date markers to identify accurately their authentic age. Who would be harmed by allowing an 80-year-old woman to change the birth-date marker on her birth certificate to correspond to her authentic felt-age of 50? If society can affirm sexual passing, why not age passing?

2.) We must also affirm racial passing. It’s not merely irrational to permit sexual passing while prohibiting racial passing; It’s unjust. Poor Rachel Dolezal who identified and passed as black for years was publicly eviscerated for engaging in this far less radical form of passing than the form in which Bruce Jenner engages. Many “progressives” argue that race is a social construct as opposed to a biological reality, but either way, if Jenner is permitted to pass as a woman and have his legal documents changed to certify that factual error, then surely Dolezal and others of Northern European descent can do likewise. If all it takes for men to pass as women is a dab of lipstick, some hair extensions, an evening gown, and a proclamation about their internal authentic “gender” identity, then surely a spray tan, jheri-curl, a dashiki, and a proclamation about their internal, authentic racial identity should be sufficient for Caucasians to pass as blacks and have all legal documents attest to that falsehood. And if Jenner is allowed in women’s locker rooms, then surely Dolezal should be able to join the National Council of Negro Women.

3.) We must be inclusive too of those who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), which is a mismatch between their objective fully functioning healthy bodies and their internal self-identification as, usually, amputees. “Transabled” persons should be able to obtain driver’s licenses that identify them as disabled and should be able to access all accommodations limited to use by disabled persons, including disabled parking permits. In addition, the medical community should be treating them appropriately, which means providing surgery to bring their bodies into alignment with their internal authentic sense of self. That is to say, disability passers should be able to access medical help in amputating limbs. Interestingly, after such amputations, they will in reality be amputees, unlike sexual passers who can never become the opposite sex. Finally, laws should be passed prohibiting the mental health community from engaging in any form of counseling other than “transable”-affirming counseling.

4.)Last but not least are the dimensional passers in our midst who are routinely marginalized. Since sexual passers can legally obtain falsified driver’s licenses, why are we not allowing those who identify internally as a height and/or weight different from their actual, factual height and weight to change the “dimensional markers” on their driver’s licenses? Objectively short high school girls who identify as tall girls should not be discriminated against based on their actual height. For example, why should girls who are 5’1” but identify as 5’10” be prohibited from applying for college scholarships from the Tall Club Foundation?

My hope and prayer is that conservatives will not allow their passion over this imbecilic and destructive bill to wane as they so often do. Some may think that because it’s already legal in Illinois for sexual passers to obtain falsified birth certificates, making it even easier is unimportant. They would be mistaken. To understand how important every little step in the march toward the cultural extinction of biological sex and the normalization of deviance is, just imagine how the community of sexual passers would respond if this bill were to fail.

Imagine Rumpelstiltskin on steroids.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email message to your state senator to ask him/her to reject HB 1785 and to uphold birth certificates as legal documents. (Read more about this legislation HERE.)

Simply put, the state of Illinois has no duty or right to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates. Vote NO to HB 1785!

Recent articles by Laurie Higgins:

Questions About Restrooms and Locker Rooms Leftists Must Answer

“Trans”-Cultism and Sex-Selection Abortions

Dove Ad Features Real Dad Pretending to Be Real Mom

Drag Queens, “Queers,” and Toddlers, Oh My!

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7 Troubling Questions About Transgender Theories

Written by Trevin Wax

In case you’re just tuning in, Bruce Springsteen, Target, and bathrooms are at the center of controversy these days, as Americans learn more about the T in the LGBT acronym – Transgender.

Broadly speaking, transgender refers to people who believe their gender identity does not correspond to their biological sex. The psychological description, which applies to a narrower slice of those who identify as transgender (and some who do not so identify), is “gender dysphoria,” defined by Mark Yarhouse as “a deep and abiding discomfort over the incongruence between one’s biological sex and one’s psychological and emotional experience of gender.”

With Caitlyn Jenner’s appearance on the cover of Vanity Fair last year, and books and shows like Transparent finding an audience, there is a societal push to celebrate transgender experience as an expression of human diversity or as the next stage in extending human rights.

But this push has run into pushback. Access to bathrooms and locker rooms may be the battleground, but the bigger debate concerns the nature of humanity and, by extension, the best way to approach (or treat) gender dysphoria.

These newfound controversies are complicated, at least in part because of transgender theory itself. The unmooring of “gender identity” from “biological sex” leads to a number of unresolved questions, as well as troubling inconsistencies among advocates of transgender rights. (I realize that not every transgender person or LGBTQ activist agrees on every point or holds to the same ideology. Still, there is broad agreement on a number of important issues.)

In my reading of articles and books about gender identity in the past year, I’ve come across seven issues that challenge the coherence of transgender theories.

1. Do transgender theories undercut or contradict the idea that sexual orientation is unchangeable?

The LGBT’s success in pushing for civil rights legislation on the basis of sexual orientation has relied heavily on the assumption that sexual orientation is “fixed,” or genetically determined. But more and more scholars today argue that sexual orientation is “fluid,” not fixed (especially in females). And these two perspectives are colliding in real life situations involving transgender persons.

Last year, New York magazine’s article “My Husband is Now My Wife” by Alex Morris featured the stories of several spouses of transgender persons who transitioned later in life. Morris describes the women who witnessed their husbands’ transition as feeling pressured to not voice any disapproval, to avoid the accusation of being “transphobic.” They were expected to be “celebratory” and helpful,” no matter how their spouse’s transition would affect the rest of the family.

LGBT theory rests on the assumption that sexual orientation is determined by biology and that it is misguided, even hateful, to seek to change one’s orientation. But, as Morris points out, the spouse of a transgender person is expected to remain and support a partner during and after their transition. And for a wife to celebrate her husband’s transition means she must face questions about her own sexual orientation.

The article quotes from a woman perplexed about what it means for her, a heterosexual woman, to suddenly be the spouse of a woman. She says, “I don’t know how comfortable I would feel in a group of lesbians…Because here I am doing the very thing that they’re trying to prove is not possible” — change the gender to which she is attracted. Such an expectation destabilizes some of the foundational elements of LGBT theory on homosexuality.

2. If gender identity is fixed and unchangeable, why do many children who experience gender dysphoria lose these feelings after puberty?

The next wave of societal controversy is likely to involve one’s approach to children. Studies show that a significant number of people who experience varying degrees of gender dysphoria as children choose to identify with their biological sex after puberty.

New Jersey currently forbids any change or direction given to a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. A similar bill in Canada assumes that sexual orientation and gender identity are the same – determined at birth.

But, as Alice Dreger in Wired points out, “by ‘affirming’ a ‘transgender’ identity as soon as it appears—the clinician might actually be stimulating and cementing a transgender identity… Maybe the child who is ‘affirmed’ will be just as well off with a transgender identity as she would have been without, but the fact is that being transgender generally comes with non-trivial medical interventions, including hormonal and surgical.”

3. When a person feels a disjunction between one’s sex at birth and one’s gender identity, why is the only course of action to bring the body into closer conformity with the person’s psychological state, rather than vice versa?

If the disjunction a transgender person feels between their gender and their body is psychological, why should we recommend invasive surgical procedures to make the body more closely match the mind instead of seeking treatment that might help move the mind closer to the sex they were assigned at birth?

In other words, why do many transgender advocates claim that the only loving response to a transgender person is to support their desire for a surgical procedure? The most extensive studies of people who have undergone sex-reassignment surgeries (in Sweden, over a period of thirty years, in a culture that celebrates transgender persons) delivered disturbing results, including a much higher suicide rate.

Furthermore, how do these surgeries fit into the broader medical tradition in which the purpose of treatment is (usually) to restore bodily functions and faculties that are ordered toward certain ends? Why is it acceptable to oppose a “transabled” person’s desire to undergo surgery that would blind them, or leave them without a limb, but it is “hateful” and “transphobic” to oppose surgeries that damage body parts that are in no way dysfunctional?

4. Is the higher rate of suicide among transgender persons due primarily to the inner tensions of experiencing gender dysphoria as a disorder, or are these acts motivated primarily by societal rejection?

In the past six months, I have noticed the same trend among many transgender advocates: that questioning a course of treatment or wondering out loud about the significance or meaning of gender in a way that dissents from transgender theory is responsible for transgender suicides. According to this way of thinking, gender binaries are inherently oppressive and damaging to the mental health of transgender persons.

I recall reading a columnist last year who was sympathetic to transgender concerns and who asked for patience on the part of transgender activists as he and others learned how to adopt the new linguistic guidelines and avoid causing unnecessary offense. A transgender woman fired off a response claiming that such a request is impossible because people are killing themselves due to these kinds of verbal mistakes.

It is difficult to make the case that transgender persons exhibit no signs of mental disorder while at the same time saying that the wrong pronoun can lead a person to suicide.

5. Why are the strongest critics of “gender binaries” the most likely to support gender stereotypes on display in transgender celebrities?

Feminist writer Elinor Burkett explained in the New York Times last year her surprise at seeing our society’s idea of womanhood return to the stereotypes she had long fought against.

“Suddenly, I find that many of the people I think of as being on my side — people who proudly call themselves progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination — are buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us.”

I have seen LGBT activists decry the notion that one can, by visual representation only, determine the gender of a person, and at the same time question the legitimacy of someone’s claim to being transgender based on the visual perception (or lack thereof) of their desire to transition.

Why do those who demand empathy and acceptance toward the transgender experience dismiss feminist critics who believe the movement fails to properly understand the female experience?

Burkett goes on to write:

“People who haven’t lived their whole lives as women, whether Ms. Jenner or Mr. Summers, shouldn’t get to define us. That’s something men have been doing for much too long… Their truth is not my truth. Their female identities are not my female identity. They haven’t traveled through the world as women and been shaped by all that this entails. For me and many women, feminist and otherwise, one of the difficult parts of witnessing and wanting to rally behind the movement for transgender rights is the language that a growing number of trans individuals insist on, the notions of femininity that they’re articulating, and their disregard for the fact that being a woman means having accrued certain experiences, endured certain indignities and relished certain courtesies in a culture that reacted to you as one. The ‘I was born in the wrong body’ rhetoric favored by other trans people doesn’t work any better and is just as offensive, reducing us to our collective breasts and vaginas.”

6. Why must one’s declared gender identity be accepted without question, while other forms of self-identification can be dismissed?

In making her point about women embracing men who transition, Burkett writes:

“Imagine the reaction if a young white man suddenly declared that he was trapped in the wrong body and, after using chemicals to change his skin pigmentation and crocheting his hair into twists, expected to be embraced by the black community.”

Something similar took place last year with Rachel Dolezal, the former president of a chapter of the NAACP. One columnist described Dolezal’s claim as “perverse and pathological,” a version of “identity theft” that fails to consider the cultural significance of the African American experience.

“For me, Black-identifying was not a choice so much as a fact. I am Black. Rachel Dolezal is not.”

This categorical rejection of Dolezal raises interesting questions about people’s freedom to self-identify. Unmoored from biology, what reasons can we give to oppose a white man’s decision to identify as a Chinese woman, or a man in his forties who decides to identify and live as a seven-year-old, or the tragic cases of otherkin – people identifying as animals? Please note: I am not claiming that these other modes of identification are on the same plane as gender dysphoria, only that there is no established consensus for why certain experiences are embraced and celebrated while others are considered outrageous or the sign of a mental illness.

7. Without a settled definition in our legal system for transgender, how can we avoid all sorts of problems, including bathroom access?

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes:

“Presumably, post-transition transgender people look like the gender they identify with. Who, exactly, is going to stop someone who looks like a woman from walking into a ladies’ room? Or someone who looks like a man from walking into a men’s room? The American nanny state may be out of control, but we still don’t have bathroom police.”

So why the uproar? Because, without clear definitions and markers of transgender beyond “I am what I say,” we are left with unclear guidelines and chaotic standards. Carl Trueman pointed to the incoherent regulations proposed by his local school board:

“On the one hand, it asserts that a student’s asserted gender identity has to be accepted, and must not be questioned or disregarded by staff. Moreover, the only exception is if staff have a ‘credible basis’ for believing the student is ‘improperly’ asserting a gender identity, vague and undefined terms that are open to abuse. Yet, the policy also claims that a student’s transgender status may constitute confidential medical information that should not be disclosed to parents or others, suggesting it is a medical condition. Which is it?”

Conclusion

The debate over the T in LGBT is likely to get louder in coming years. Yes, there are some in our society who would scapegoat people with gender dysphoria who would cast them as predators and “freaks.” Meanwhile, there are others who believe societal evolution depends on the abolishing of gender altogether and see the transgender experience as a way of moving beyond oppressive structures of “male” and “female.”

For Christians, however, neither of these options is available to us.

We believe God’s design of male and female to be structurally good, but we also understand gender dysphoria to be another symptom that reminds us we live in a fallen world. For this reason, we must extend love and compassion to anyone who experiences this kind of distress, even as we reject society’s efforts to establish a fluid understanding of personhood.

This article was originally published at TheGospelCoalition.com.

Jenner, Dolezal, and Teenager Caden Boone

Through their foolishness, selfishness, and arrogance, “progressives” are responsible for the harm being done to children, teens, the family, the church, the First Amendment, and what’s left of American culture.

Through our ignorance, selfishness, cowardice, and passivity (if not apathy), we Christians are complicit in this harm.

Tragic teen victim of perverse Leftist ideology

The tragic story of a teenage boy—a senior in high school—who just two months ago underwent a grotesque amputation of his genitalia, illustrates the egregious and obscene nature of the evil that too many Christians have facilitated.

Caden Boone, who has changed his name to “Katherine,” underwent what the New York Times stupidly calls an “operation that had changed her, in the most intimate part of her body, from a biological male into a female.”

Any scientist with the courage to speak truth in a public square dominated by anti-science ideologues would explain that no human can change from a biological male into a female.

It’s excruciating to say this, but charlatan doctors are changing teenage boys, not into girls, but into de facto eunuchs.

According to the Times, Caden Boone never demonstrated the usual childhood signs of gender dysphoria:

Kat Boone did not fit the stereotype of a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

As a child, she dressed in jeans and shirts, like all the other boys, and her best friend was a boy. She liked to play with cars and slash bad guys in the Legend of Zelda video games. She still shuns dresses, preferring skinny jeans and band T-shirts.

But as a freshman in high school in Cazenovia, N.Y., she became depressed and withdrawn. “I knew that the changes going on with puberty were not me,” Kat said. “I started to really hate my life, myself. I was uncomfortable with my body, my voice, and I just felt like I was really a girl.”

When she discovered the transgender world on the Internet, she had a flash of recognition. “I was reading through some symptoms, not really symptoms, but some of the attributes of it did click,”

Boone, whose father moved out when he was in fifth grade and who had never demonstrated discomfort with his sex, became depressed during his freshman year in high school and had his penis amputated before he graduated three years later.

The Times reporter acknowledges that “there are no proven biological markers for what is known as gender dysphoria.”

Tangled Leftist web

The Left is really getting tied up in intellectual knots as their doctrinaire assumptions about race, homosexuality, biological sex, “gender,” and “identity” come home to roost. In their lowered consciousness, “progressives” are doing what roosting chickens do: excrete excrement. Unfortunately, they’re also tracking their doo-doo all over the lives of young people.

We’ve been told for decades that race is an immutable biological reality, but now we’re told race is a social construct. We’ve also been told ad nauseum told that homosexuality is analogous to race, but if race is a social construct, then what about homosexuality?

We’ve been told that the binary categories of male and female are arbitrary and socially constructed, shaped by societal conventions and expectations. But then why do so many “transwomen” insist that their desire to dress like caricatures of 1950’s pin-up girls is evidence of their “female brains”?

And if there exist no substantive and real differences between men and women, why do homosexuals claim they’re attracted only to those of their same sex?

Who’s being compelled to lie?

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, who both is and “identifies” as black, compares Bruce Jenner’s gynophilia to the “negrophilia” of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who identifies as black:

Dolezal…says she wants to look the way she feels inside. That’s her right, as long as she’s honest about it. Jenner made news by “living his truth,” as many in the transgender community say. Dolezal lived a lie.

What about less famous “transpeople” who are hormone-doping, lopping off body parts, stitching on other body parts, changing birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and falsely claiming to be the opposite sex? Do they have an obligation to tell everyone what Jenner because of his fame will never have to tell (i.e., that he is in reality a man)? Does the obligation not to tell a Dolezal-like whopper require all “transpeople” to fess up to their real sex? Are men who are passing as women living a lie? “LGBT activists claim that “transpeople” are not living a lie, because they are living the truth of their “gender identity.” But there’s also the pesky phenomenon of biological sex. Many believe that subjective desire is subordinate in importance to objective reality.

And what about the freedom of others–you know, “cisgenders” who remain anchored to reality–who want to live the way they feel and believe? What about people who believe and feel strongly that objective biological sex is real and meaningful and should be affirmed? What about people who believe and feel strongly that pretending that a gender dysphoric boy is a girl harms him deeply and possibly irreparably?

And what about teachers who believe and feel strongly that lying is wrong and yet are being required by the government to lie by being required to refer to gender dysphoric boys as “she” and “her”? What about teachers whose identity includes a commitment to truth-telling?

Connection between love and truth

“Progressives” talk endlessly about “identity,” squishing their definition into whatever shape suits their libidinous appetite for morally untethered sexuality. My generation (referred to by a waggish millennial pastor friend of mine as the “worst generation”) advocated free love. We’ve all been duped. The costs are incalculable, and in order to know which acts (including speech “acts”) are loving requires first a knowledge of truth.

So, for example, if homoeroticism is neither ontologically nor morally equivalent to heterosexual activity, then affirming it as such is not loving.

If homoerotic desire and activity are not ontologically equivalent to race, then affirming them as equivalent is either foolish ignorance or evil.

If homoerotic activity is, in reality, immoral, it is feckless and unloving to assert that it is moral.

If our biochemistry can contribute to powerful desires to engage in activities that are immoral, then telling children that because biochemistry may contribute to homoerotic attraction, homoerotic activity is inherently moral is a foolish and dangerous statement.

If biological sex (i.e., being male or female) is an immutable, profoundly meaningful, and objectively good ontological reality, proclaiming it mutable or subordinate to disordered desire is at best ignorant, at worst evil.

If love sometimes requires that humans tell their friends or family members that they ought not act on a powerful, persistent desire, then it is deeply dishonest to assert that society must affirm homoerotic activity and relationships simply because homoerotic desire is powerful and persistent.

Identity according to “progressives”

The Left created and exploits a deformed conceptualization of identity because it serves their lust for sexual autonomy.

Identity may signify the aggregate of all personal phenomena. These phenomena can be roughly and simplistically divided into categories:

Morally neutral, unchosen phenomena (e.g., nation of origin; skin, eye, and hair color; height; I.Q.; number of siblings; food tastes)
Unchosen feelings, some of which impel us toward wrong behavior and some of which impel us toward right behavior (e.g., anger, covetousness, compassion, polyamory/”consensual non-monogamy,” gender dysphoria; heterosexual attraction; homoerotic attraction; “genetic sexual attraction,” “minor attraction”)
Unchosen experiences (e.g., music or sports that our parents required, sickness, accidents, childhood molestation)
Freely chosen phenomena (e.g., values, beliefs, actions).

Alternatively, identity can refer to aggregate of unchosen feelings and freely chosen values and beliefs that individuals affirm as good and upon which they think it’s morally legitimate to act.

“Progressives” seek to confuse people by demanding that society treat all categories as ontologically identical, which in turn serves their social and political ends. In their twisted world, if it’s wicked to judge a particular eye color as wrong or inferior, then it’s wicked to judge someone’s freely chosen actions (well, primarily actions related to sexuality) as wrong.

Conversely, in this topsy-pervy world, if one ought to treat eye color as morally neutral, then one has an obligation to treat homoerotic activity and cross-dressing as morally neutral.

Of course, “progressives” don’t apply that principle consistently. They don’t argue that if society has an obligation to treat eye or skin color as morally neutral, then society has an obligation to treat theologically orthodox Christian beliefs/identity as morally neutral.

Christian identity

Anyone who claims to find their identity in Christ has an obligation to expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness and to try to protect children. Most Christians—including our religious leaders—have failed and continue to fail.

We have failed because of our own selfish desire to live outside God’s stipulations for sexuality, marriage, and divorce.

We have failed because of our own intellectual, moral, and spiritual sloth.

We have failed because of our cowardly refusal to suffer for Christ and His Kingdom.

In the current cacophonous din borne in damning darkness, our children are hearing that turning Caden Boone into a eunuch is a sign of love. And still we say nothing.

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Trans-Gendered, Trans-Raced, Trans-Abled, Trans-Aged, Trans-Specied Solipsists

Once more for the hard of hearing or weak of understanding: The athlete formerly known as Bruce is not now nor ever can be a woman. Further, it is the apex of cruelty and ignorance to pretend along with him that he is.

If the cultural dictators continue to demand that everyone in society participate in this delusional, dishonest, destructive fiction, then intellectual consistency requires that they demand everyone in society to treat Africana Studies professor and race activist Rachel Dolezal—who is in reality of Central and Eastern European descent—as if she is African American.

Dolezal has been reverse-“passing” for years, falsely claiming to be African American. She has modified her physical appearance to align with her self-conception. She is “trans-raced.”

In addition, society needs to revisit the treatment protocols available to those who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), which causes sufferers to identify as amputees (Click here to read more on BIID). In order to alleviate the disturbing sense of discordance between their feelings and their bodies, they desire to have a limb amputated. Some even go so far as to mutilate themselves in order to force the medical community to amputate a limb. Society rightly views the disordered desire of the “trans-abled” to amputate healthy body parts as barbaric. Society largely believes, for now, that the compassionate, humane treatment protocol involves medication and counseling to encourage those who suffer from BIID to accept their bodies.

Then there are scores of Americans who identify as young’uns. Many are found in Hollywood. They reject their unchosen, unwanted age and seek to modify their appearance to align with their age-identity. The “trans-aged” should be permitted to attend high school and date those with whom they identify. They should be permitted to change their birth certificates to identify the year they wish they had been born as opposed to the year they were assigned at birth. And if the “trans-aged” identify as toddlers, they should be permitted to wear diapers to work where restrooms should be retrofitted with enormous changing tables.

And finally, let’s not forget the “trans-specied” who identify as sloths. Surely an evolving society must adapt by changing its work-productivity expectations. Sloths can’t possibly produce at the frenetic pace of alpha humans or even alpha wolves.

The Chicago Tribune once again revealed how foolish smart people can be. In yesterday’s editorial on Jenner, the Trib editorial board employed the imbecilic and insulting comparison of opposition to interracial or interfaith marriage to disagreement with the ontological and moral assumptions of Leftist sexuality dogma:

There was a time when intermarriage between faiths and races was taboo….Then the culture shifted and what seemed wrong or abnormal became accepted, and normal….Now we’re in a moment of cultural discovery about another frontier in sexual politics. This moment will pass and transgenderism will seem different, but not so strange.

The board conveniently omitted any discussion of whether or how faith or race per se correspond to gender dysphoria, cross-dressing, elective amputations of healthy body parts, and cross-sex hormone-doping. Such a discussion may have revealed the speciousness of such comparisons.

The board went on to state that “gender identity is a recognized concept,” without acknowledging that the assumptions that inhere a “progressive” conceptualization of “gender identity” are substantively different from those that inhere a conservative conceptualization of “gender identity.” The board suggested reductively that those who “are not comfortable” with the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as “marriages,” will also be “utterly bewildered by transgender politics.”

It isn’t discomfort or bewilderment that impels opposition to “transgender politics.” It is intellectual reasoning and science. In contrast, the uncritical embrace of all things sexually deviant demonstrated by the Left is impelled by feelings and doctrinaire ideology, largely divorced from philosophical reasoning, common sense, and science.

The Left has embraced the moral solipsism of the “LGBTQQAP” movement, which denies that anything outside the self exists that can serve as an arbiter of moral truth. That’s why the movement is rife with intellectual and existential inconsistencies and incoherence. Of course, they then judge moral disapproval of homoerotic activity and “transgender politics” as inherently immoral.

The issue of whether to call gender dysphorics by opposite sex names is a peripheral distraction. In some contexts, their original name may be unknown, so their adopted opposite-sex name is all people will know. What is not peripheral, however, is the issue of pronoun-use. Referring to a man as “she” or a woman as “he” constitutes a denial of reality, otherwise known as lying. Gender dysphorics cannot become the other sex. That is a matter of science. Neither “LGBTQQAP” activists, nor their ideological “allies,” nor arms of the government (e.g., public schools) have the ethical right to compel others to lie. And facilitating a destructive fiction is the antithesis of love and compassion.

Oh what a tangled web…

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