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Opposition to “Trans” Ideology Grows

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.

The term “gender reassignment surgery” is absurd. Physicians do not “reassign” or “confirm” gender. Nor do they reassign, confirm, or change a person’s sex. The surgery Pritzker seeks to make taxpayers fund in this morally and fiscally bankrupt state is surgery that mutilates healthy bodies in order to enable those who suffer from gender dysphoria to pass as the sex they are not and never can be. Such medical malpractice is lucrative for surgeons and pharmaceutical companies but grievously harmful to its victims. Forcing Illinoisans to subsidize it is a social, political, and moral injustice.

At the same time, however, more and more brave souls are emerging on the cultural scene to fight back against the heart-, mind-, and body-destroying “trans” ideology often at great personal cost.

The number of men and women “detransitioning” grows, and they’re trying to warn others through websites like Sex Change Regret and Pique Resilience Project about the numerous problems—intellectual, moral, social, political, and medical—that are integral to the “trans” ideology.

Conservative and “progressive” women—including self-identifying lesbians—have created an organization called Hands Across the Aisle to oppose the implementation of “gender identity theory” through legislation and to prevent the sexual integration of women’s activities and private spaces.

“Gender-critical” radical feminists like Kara Dansky and lesbians Sheila Jeffreys and Julia Beck (who was kicked off of a Boston “LGBT” commission for her belief that only women can be lesbians and for her refusal to use female pronouns when referring to a male rapist who pretends to be a woman) are speaking out.

The Heritage Foundation has held two panel discussions that included lesbians, radical feminists, conservative Christians, and a man who formerly identified as a woman, all who share in common unstinting critiques of the “trans” ideology. (To watch them, click here  and here)

Scholars like Lisa Littman, Lisa Marchiano, Heather Brunskell-Evans, and Rebecca Reilly Cooper are dissecting the “trans” ideology, exposing its weaknesses.

And websites like 4thWaveNow and Transgender Trend, both started by parents of children caught up in the darkness and delusion of the “trans” ideology, are helping each other and the public at large better understand the dangers posed by the wholesale cultural embrace of the “trans” madness, including the embrace of it by medical and mental health communities, which now results in surgeons performing double mastectomies on 13-year-old girls and castrating 16- and 17-year-old boys.

The newest organization to emerge on the scene is The Kelsey Coalition, “a national group of parents whose transgender-identifying children have been harmed by physicians, therapists, and clinics throughout the US.” The Kelsey Coalition is calling for the term “gender identity” to be removed from the Equality Act and from what are called “conversion therapy bans,” which unjustifiably ban conventional counseling protocols.

The Kelsey Coalition has also mounted a critically important campaign to stop an unethical, ideology-driven five-year study of gender-dysphoric minors funded by taxpayers through a $5.7 million grant from  the National Institutes of Health (NIH)to four “gender” clinics—including one at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago headed up by HIV-positive homosexual pediatrician Dr. Robert Garofalo. A profile of Garofalowho started Lurie’s gender clinic with a huge donation from J.B. Pritker’s male cousin who masquerades as a womanin Chicago Magazine at the start of the NIH study makes this disturbing claim:

For now Garofalo’s treatments have to be seen as a radical form of medical improvisation.

This study, begun in 2015, uses children as lab rats to study the effects of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormone-doping on minors. The Kelsey Coalition’s press release states the following:

This NIH study is a five-year observational experiment in which children are treated with powerful drugs to treat a non-medical condition. The basis for inclusion in the study is little more than a child’s self-identification as transgender. There is no control group….

Young children in the study are given puberty-blocking drugs; older children, cross-sex hormones. There is neither FDA approval, nor a single safety study, to support the use of these medications by healthy children and adolescents. According to Dr. Michael Laidlaw, medical consultant to the Coalition,” These drugs will radically alter their endocrine systems, impact sexual function, and fertility, while putting them at increased risk of developing other serious medical health conditions.”

… “In 2017, the protocol was changed mid-study: the minimum age for cross-sex hormone inclusion was decreased from age thirteen to age eight. According to the 2018 progress report, 19 children have been recruited into the new 8-12 year-old cohort.”

The Kelsey Coalition contends this trial is unethical and violates laws protecting human subjects.

Through this study, taxpayers are subsidizing unethical science experiments on children as young as 8 years old.

We’re paying for quack doctors to suppress or prevent puberty, which irrevocably alters formative adolescent social experiences, making it unlikely that children will ever reclaim a proper and true sexual identity:

The impact on sexuality has not yet been studied, but the restriction of sexual appetite brought about by blockers may prevent the adolescent from having age-appropriate socio-sexual experiences.

We’re paying for the cross-sex hormone doping of minors that is supported by zero research assuring its long-term safety and which leaves children permanently sterile.

While forging ahead in its support for this medical barbarism, UnitedHealthcare Oxford ironically states that,

Clinical evidence supporting the use of GnRH analogs [puberty blockers] for the treatment of gender dysphoria is limited and lacks long-term safety data. Statistically robust randomized controlled trials are needed to address the issue of whether the benefits outweigh the clinical risk in its use.

Medical professionals believe cross-sex hormones may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, blood clots, and cancer. And they believe puberty-blockers may have deleterious effects on bone and neurological development.

Remarkably, even here in the moral and intellectual darkness that engulfs our once great state, glimmers of light offer hope to beleaguered Illinoisans. Two courageous lawmakers are taking bold public stands against the “trans” madness.

State Representative Darren Bailey (R-Louisville) announced he will be sponsoring legislation to block Pritzker’s outrageous plan to force taxpayers through Medicaid to fund medical interventions that disrupt healthy biological processes and mutilate healthy anatomy. And State Representative Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) has sponsored legislation (HB 3515) to ban chemical and surgical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors.

Tragically, there are few lawmakers at the state or national level who have the courage and wisdom to take on the “trans” ideology that wreaks havoc on the bodies and minds of men, women, and children; on families; and on the body politic. Illinoisans should support these two courageous and principled lawmakers in every way possible.

Yes, opposition to the “trans” ideology grows but not nearly fast enough. While most Christians lay low to avoid the trials God has promised us and commanded us to count as joy, the “trans” ideology lays waste to the lives and bodies of people for whom we should be willing to lay down our lives.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Governor Pritzker’s office to let his administration know that you disagree with the misuse of taxpayer funds for Medicaid so-called “gender reassignment” surgeries.  You can also voice your opinion by phone at (217) 782-6830 or (312) 814-2121.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/JB_Pride.mp3


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Stuff You Should Know About “Trans”-Cultism

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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