The Evil of the "Trans" Movement
Four short but important posts caught my eye. The last one should terrify and enrage you, especially if you live in Virginia. They all should, actually, no matter where you live. These are the times.
Colin Wright, Reality’s Last Stand:
Most people understand the terms “man” and “boy” refer to adult and adolescent human males, respectively, and that “woman” and “girl” refer to adult and adolescent human females, respectively. These are not “identities,” but terms that describe objective facts about one’s age and biological sex.
Gender ideology, conversely, is a belief system asserting that what makes someone a woman or a girl, or a man or a boy, has nothing whatsoever to do with their sex, but is based entirely on the social roles and stereotypes with which they “identify.” Therefore, a person who identifies with feminine roles and stereotypes is a girl or woman, and a person who identifies with masculine roles and stereotypes is a boy or man—regardless of their biological sex. According to gender ideology, people who do not identify with the social roles and stereotypes typically associated with their sex are considered “transgender.”
That’s Gender Ideology 101. If it comes across as completely insane, that’s because it is.
Gender ideology has therefore proven to be a hard sell for many adults who rightfully view such ideas as regressive and sexist. After all, this worldview entails that a woman who does not fully embrace femininity is not actually a woman, and a man who does not embrace masculinity is not actually a man. If this sounds similar to the regressive and oppressive system that women’s and other human rights groups fought for decades to overcome, that’s because it is. But it’s actually much worse, since it also promotes the idea that a “mismatch” between one’s sex and “gender identity” can be medically “corrected” with hormones and surgeries.
Since adults typically make difficult converts, as any religious proselytizer will tell you, gender activists are increasingly turning their focus to children, and one of the most common ways they go about indoctrinating youngsters into gender ideology is through normalizing the “inclusive” practice of sharing pronouns. Being asked “what are your pronouns?” is often the first encounter a child will have with gender ideology, and it is therefore a common first step in creating so-called “trans kids.”
This is effective because asking a child about their pronouns mentally separates the terms “he/him” (as referring to men and boys) and “she/her” (as referring to girls and women) from one’s biological sex and instead roots it in “gender identity.” This question causes a child think hard about their own “gender identity,” a novel concept to them which will inevitably be based on masculine and feminine stereotypes they associate with males and females, respectively.
The Genderbread Person is a common educational tool for teaching children about gender identity, which it defines confusingly as “how you, in your head, experience and define your gender, based on how much you align (or don’t align) with what you understand the options for gender to be.” And in case the reliance on sex-based stereotypes wasn’t explicit enough, it depicts “Gender Identity” below the illustration as degrees of “woman-ness” and “man-ness,” and lists “personality traits, jobs, hobbies, likes, dislikes, roles, expectations” as its components.
Another common avenue for child indoctrination into gender ideology is through popular children’s books like I Am Jazz, which tells the story of Jazz Jennings, a young boy who is described in the book as being “different from other kids” because “she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body.” Other more recent books such as Call Me Max and Jack (Not Jackie) touch on similar themes, but are about young girls who believe they’re boys because they exhibit behavior and preferences more typical of boys. Many parents have reported that their young children expressed confusion about their “gender identity” after being introduced to these books.
When introduced to these concepts, whether through books or probing questions about their pronouns, gender nonconforming children, who are more likely to grow up to be gay and lesbian adults, as well as kids who don’t view themselves as paragons of masculinity or femininity, will then come to believe they're “trans” or “nonbinary,” or they’ll be extremely confused. This confusion can cause considerable distress because it overturns their prior (sane) notion that their sex made them a boy or girl. But now they’re being told their body and mind may not be “aligned” but can be made to align with hormones and surgeries.
Their teachers, with or without their parents’ knowledge or consent, may begin to socially transition them by using gender neutral “they/them” or opposite-sex pronouns. Many schools now explicitly require this. While social transitions are often presented a risk-free way to let children explore their “gender” without permanent interventions like hormones and surgeries, it is in reality a serious psychosocial intervention known to cause children to persist in rejecting their bodies. But parents are not told this.
A child’s parents will likely be very concerned at this point, having heard the widely perpetuated myth that gender-confused children are at extreme risk for suicide. And since puberty is rapidly approaching for their child, there is no time to waste in getting their child the care they need. Being the loving parents that they are, they rush their child to see a professional “gender-affirming” therapist. Because the child is showing confusion regarding their “gender identity,” the therapist is likely to recommend puberty blockers, which they will portray as a “safe” and “fully reversible” option to “pause” puberty and give the child more time to resolve their gender confusion.
What’s the harm?
The harm is that, far from being a hormonal “stop sign” that allows time for deep gender introspection, studies show that nearly 100 percent of children who are put on puberty blockers persist in rejecting their bodies and continue on to cross-sex hormones, which will cause permanent physical changes and render them sterile. Some of those children will then pursue risky and irreversible “gender-affirming” surgeries. These children’s bodies are now permanently disfigured, and their endocrine systems fully dependent on the medical establishment for the rest of their lives.
Read the rest here:
Last week, the American Medical Association, the Children’s Hospital Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics sent a letter to U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland requesting that the Department of Justice “take swift action to investigate and prosecute” “high-profile users on social media” who have allegedly created a “campaign of disinformation” against children’s hospitals that offer “gender-affirming health care,” leading to threats and harassment, including a bomb-threat hoax at Boston Children’s Hospital.
The letter poses three significant problems. First, the medical associations obscure the radical nature of so-called “gender-affirming care.” The basic facts, which have caused justifiable public outrage, are well-established: according to the medical literature, American doctors have been administering puberty blockers, hormone therapies, and experimental gender surgeries on minors—including double-mastectomies for girls, which involves surgically removing the breasts, and vaginoplasties for boys, which involves surgically removing the penis and turning the tissue into an artificial vagina. Despite what trans activists have insisted, the medical evidence to support these procedures for minors is thin, weak, and contested. Medical authorities in Europe have recently turned against many of these practices.
Second, the AMA, CHA, and AAP provide no evidence, or even a working definition, of “disinformation.” The “high-profile users on social media” would undoubtedly include those of us who have published investigative reporting on radical gender medicine at children’s hospitals, often using original source materials published by the hospitals themselves. Rather than grapple with the facts, however, left-wing activists and medical providers have dismissed them with accusations of “disinformation”—even when journalists have directly quoted their own words. This unsubstantiated accusation of “disinformation” is even more troubling because, in addition to asking the Justice Department for investigations on these vague and undefined grounds, the medical associations also asked technology companies to remove critics of “gender-affirming care” from social media platforms, an essential public forum.
Third, the call to “investigate and prosecute” journalists, activists, and citizens critical of radical gender medicine is wholly contrary to the principles of free speech; if the attorney general were to carry out this request, it would be a violation of the First Amendment and a blatant attempt to criminalize political opposition and intellectual debate. At their founding, these three medical associations embraced the idea that they should be nonpartisan, neutral, and driven by scientific evidence. But by issuing this reckless call to prosecute critics, they have revealed themselves to be hostile to open debate and free scientific inquiry. They are behaving like dangerous ideologues rather than custodians of the public trust.
Ultimately, Attorney General Garland will decide whether to heed the AMA letter’s recommendation and begin prosecuting critics of radical gender medicine. On the surface, it would seem like a fool’s errand: there is no legal basis for prosecuting journalists for engaging in public criticism on a controversial topic. But Garland’s Justice Department has a troubling history of using the power of law enforcement to intimidate political opponents. Last year, using a letter from the National School Boards Association as a pretext, he mobilized the FBI counterterrorism division against conservative parents who were protesting, at school board meetings, about critical race theory in the classroom.
The author of the following post is Pennsylvania State Senator Ryan Aument (R), who represents much of Lancaster County, PA. If this is happening in conservative Lancaster, it’s ubiquitous and a big problem.
Reasonable people agree that school is not the appropriate place for a sexually charged performance by professional adult dancers. Optional or not, drag shows were never meant for children.
In a sign of the times, I honestly am shocked that this even needs to be said. Yet, the LNP | LancasterOnline Editorial Board bent over backward in a recent editorial to defend the drag performance put on at a local school without parental knowledge (“Outrage optional,” Oct. 5).
Contrary to the editorial board’s claims, opponents of what happened in Hempfield are not pushing to eliminate safe spaces for LGBTQ students. They aren’t arguing that already marginalized groups should “exist in the shadows.” And they aren’t saying that drag shows intended for an audience of consenting adults should be banned.
They’re saying that drag shows intended for an audience of schoolchildren are inappropriate and wrong. That is not unreasonable, nor is it partisan.
Reasonable people recognize that, historically and currently, not all drag performances are inherently sexual. However, the subject of this op-ed and the recent editorial (in which the editorial board claimed that drag shows can be “valuable”) is not all drag shows throughout history, but rather one specific drag show at a local high school that, as I see it, was sexual in nature.
Reasonable people can also agree that adults dancing in thongs, tights and other skimpy garments is inherently sexual. So, while drag has its roots in Shakespeare and the world of vaudeville, as the editorial board pointed out, the show that was performed at Hempfield was wildly different than those performed by Shakespearean actors whose costumes covered nearly every inch of their skin and whose performances were markedly less sensual than what occurred here.
Do supporters of Hempfield’s drag show really believe that the only “safe space” a school can provide to LGBTQ students is at a drag show where adults perform seemingly sexual dances in “tight-fitting costumes”? Does the LNP | LancasterOnline Editorial Board really believe that the drag show performed at Hempfield High School wasn’t sexual in nature? If this performance was truly benign and age-appropriate, why not publish footage or photographs from the event in LNP | LancasterOnline?
Unsurprisingly, while arguing in favor of drag shows for Hempfield’s Gay Sexuality Alliance club, the editorial board also wrote in opposition to a bill I sponsored (Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1277) to allow parents to have the final say over what explicit materials their own children are exposed to in school curriculum and libraries.
It’s important to note that LNP | LancasterOnline has also not published uncensored or censored copies of the explicit images found in Lancaster County school curriculum and libraries that caused parents concern in the first place.
How could a reasonable person argue that explicit images in books and video footage from a drag show are appropriate for school-age children when those same uncensored images and that video footage cannot be published in a newspaper for adults?
Refusing to acknowledge the increase in explicit content being pushed onto children only feeds into the genuine fear of the oversexualization of children. Indeed, the main argument we heard against Senate Bill 1277 was that children are already seeing this type of content on their cellphones. So, instead of working to protect children by limiting the content, opponents want to offer more of it and the LNP | LancasterOnline Editorial Board appears to defend them.
The board’s editorial said, “There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding at work here — and little effort to try to understand.”
I agree. But before the editorial board attempts to “educate” parents on why they shouldn’t be outraged over barely dressed dancers performing in what many see as a sexually suggestive manner for children, the board members should take their own advice to understand the real issue. Pushing sexual content on children is not just unnecessary — it’s wrong, and parents are justified in their outrage.
At the end of the day, schools exist to educate children from all backgrounds and should teach students to be loving and accepting of every individual. Reasonable people can agree that this can be achieved without the use of sexually explicit materials and performances.
State Sen. Ryan Aument, a Republican who resides in West Hempfield Township, is secretary of the Pennsylvania Senate Republican Caucus and a member of the state Senate Education Committee.
The following, too, is evil thinking. Governor Glenn Youngkin’s policies are pro-parent, unlike this horrific idea. And while this legislator knows nothing of the Bible she quotes, she’s happy to misquote and abuse it to advance her agenda. Remind you of someone? Note that the reporter fails to ask the Delegate to share at what age parents' failure to “gender affirm” qualifies as child abuse.
From Northern Virginia Magazine:
Virginia Lawmaker Suggests Charging Parents Who Don’t Affirm Child’s Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation with Abuse
By Jon Simkins October 14, 2022
With childhood LGBTQ rights and parental influence in the classroom continuing to polarize Virginia school districts, one state legislator is out to introduce a law that would result in Virginia parents being charged with child abuse if failing to affirm their child’s sexual orientation and gender identity.
Democratic Virginia Delegate Elizabeth Guzman is promoting the bill, which would require reworking the state’s definition of child abuse and neglect, as a protective measure for LGBTQ children whose parents do not recognize the aforementioned preferences of the child.
The move comes in the wake of a proposed model policy from Gov. Glenn Youngkin that would require transgender students to be identified by their biological sex while using school facilities, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, or participating in organized school activities. Under Youngkin’s policy, students would be barred from using a new name or pronouns unless parental permission has been established.
“If the child shares with those mandated reporters, what they are going through, we are talking about not only physical abuse or mental abuse … the job of that mandated reporter is to inform Child Protective Services. And then that’s how everybody gets involved,” Guzman tells ABC 7 News.
Asked what penalties could be doled out if a parent fails to follow the proposed policy, Guzman says punishment “could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor.” The lawmaker also noted that the involvement of Child Protective Services “charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”
Guzman went on to state that the policy is engineered to educate parents, not criminalize them, and added that families who may object based on religion can still follow the tenets of their faith while accepting the identity of their child.
“The Bible says to accept everyone for who they are,” Guzman tells ABC 7. “So that’s what I tell them when they asked me that question, and that’s what I will continue to tell people. … I think that it’s extremely important that we show that as a community we are ready to accept each other for who they are and whom they love.”