The Transgender Craze Seducing America

I haven’t blogged about Abigail Shrier in a while. Here is a YouTube interview (30 minutes) where she discusses her reporting on the insanity that is seducing our daughters, sons, and far too many adults in the Western World.

Partial Transcript

(2:06) [Why Target canceled her book]. Twitter activists complained. They [target.com] removed the book. There was an outcry.  I sold a lot of books.  It sold out everywhere.  They put the book back up for sale and then the second no one was watching they quietly deleted it again.  So it’s not available and has not been for months and months and months has not been available on target.com.  

And you you see this testing going on at all over the place.  I mean i got a letter the other day from a man in Vermont who had offered to donate it to his library and the library refused to take it.   This is a book that people are on waiting lists to read and um you know libraries won’t, you know, very often won’t carry it.  They just refuse um and and we’re seeing that you know in Halifax, Nova scotia there was, there are 150 people on the list to read the book and Pride tried to shut it down and have it removed on the grounds that in a library of literally over a million volumes this one book made them unsafe.  

THEIR REASON?  

Anything from oh she’s not a medical doctor which of course you know no journalist who writes about any medical scandal is ever a medical doctor….that’s why we interview experts.

….there is no consensus view [among medical experts]. That’s the problem. There’s a lot of disagreement within the medical community how this should be handled unfortunately what’s going on right now is a real medical scandal and the few doctors you know who are willing to speak up really risk losing their license. 

…with regard to this you know transgender health care I just pointed out you know I did an exploration of the the  sudden rise out of nowhere of teenage girls deciding they were transgender I looked at why why are they suddenly the leading demographic. We have a hundred year diagnostic history of this thing called gender dysphoria, the severe discomfort with one’s biological sex, and it was always boys and men and now overwhelmingly the leading demographic is teenage girls across the west and and I wanted to look at why, why that might be and I explored you know I talked to a lot of experts who offer a lot of different reasons and uh that’s what I explored in the book. 

(5:15). Why are girls so susceptible?  Could you summarize?

Teenage girls in mental health distress anxiety depression and other you know anything from borderline personality disorder to other, you know, psychological struggles have always been susceptible to pure contagion they’ve always been susceptible to the idea that there’s something really wrong with them and that if they just lose enough weight or, you know, if they get control these multiple personalities or I mean there’s a you know they they come up with these explanations.  Sometimes they’re introduced from by therapists in this case it’s all over the culture and the and social media and the ideas.  They look to the culture to figure out what’s wrong with them and today the answer that they’re landing on is…oh I know what the problem is I’m supposed to be a boy.  And the moment a young person says that a young woman says that she goes from a lonely teenager who may struggle to find friends to someone who is celebrated in her school congratulated by her therapist and whose doctor can’t wait to start her on a course of hormones.

(6:40). So this is kind of uh we’re taking these universal feelings that that all teenagers experience especially girls and what we have now is a they’re being presented with a with a handy kind of framework for understanding those feelings and that’s what brings them to transgenderism.

Basically that’s right.   I mean imagine you know a young woman who you know prior era would have who would be anorexic and be convinced that if she just lost enough weight everything would be better it’s very you know they they latch on to the because they are in real pain this does not discount their pain.  We know that rates are very high of anxiety depression self-harm for this generation and they’re in they’re in a lot of pain and they looked you know psychological pain is very hard to explain to someone in a way that gets you noticed and in a way that gets you you know interest and help.  And what they want they want they want the affection they want the celebration and they want the attention and one way to frame it so that they get those things um which which i think they do need they do need attention they do need compassion but the way that they’re framing it is is not necessarily accurate in fact very often i think it’s inaccurate that what they what they have is not real typical gender dysphoria.

(9:04) on social media these young women are constantly coached in you know gender ideology and told that oh if you feel uncomfortable, (every woman goes through a period around puberty of feeling uncomfortable in her body) and she’s taught and they spend tremendous amount of times social time on social media they’re taught that that feeling means you’re transgender at a time when it’s very uncool to be a straight girl who is “cisgender” you know comfortable in her body at all.  So the number of forces pushing on her to declare this identity are a lot and as soon as she declares a trans identity or non-binary identity she’s celebrated.


She goes on to discuss job insecurity within the medical profession if you disagree with “gender affirmative care” & then discusses the REAL CONVERSION THERAPY.

Companion Posts

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Love Refuses To Affirm Confusion

What Are We Doing To Our Children?

Detransitioner “KC Miller” frames the “gender affirming” hazzard.

https://twitter.com/KCMiller1225/status/1604932368048869376
Read the full conversation on Twitter for more from KC Miller

I don’t think it is possible to be “born in the wrong body.” I acknowledge that some people are very uncomfortable with their healthy bodies. For a variety of reasons. Those people need talk therapy. Not life-long body altering drugs or surgery.

Gender affirming care is the real conversion therapy.

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Love Refuses to Affirm Confusion

Who Is The Conversion Therapist? – Podcast

The Good Creation Podcast – Who Is The Conversion Therapist?

Podcast Transcript

Dr. Randi Ettner, the chief psychologist at the Chicago Gender Center, describes the standard of care treatment plan promoted by transgender activists, otherwise known as the Affirmative Care Model“:

•  Changes in gender expression and role, consistent with one’s gender identity (also referred to as social role transition).
•  Psychotherapy for purposes such as addressing the negative impact of stigma, alleviating internalized transphobia, enhancing social and peer support, improving body image, promoting resiliency, etc.
•  Hormone therapy to feminize or masculinize the body.
•  Surgery to alter primary and/or secondary sex characteristics.1“Declaration of Randi Ettner, Ph.D., U.S. District Court, Middle District of North Carolina, Case 1:16-cv-236-TDS-JEP, p. 5.”

This plan is often called transitioningbut some transgender activists regard that term as stigmatizing and inaccurate. From the perspective of the transgender person they are simply engaged in a process of “settling in to themselves” or “coming home” to what they always were inside.2“PFLAG, Our Trans Loved Ones: Questions and Answers for Parents, Families, and Friends of People Who Are Transgender and Gender Expansive (2008, 2015), p. 9, https://www.pflag.org/ourtranslovedones.”

A similar linguistic jujitsu is at work when activists prefer to speak of gender-affirming therapies instead of sex reassignment therapies. (Since when did it become the primary job of doctors to affirm?). For women these affirming therapies mean life-long testosterone, double mastectomies and the creation of a penis (phalloplasty). For men, life-long estrogen, gonadectomy, penectomy, and the creation of a vagina (vaginoplasty). Here are some affirming treatment details:

“Sex reassignment surgeries available to the MTF3male to female transsexual persons consist of gonadectomy, penectomy, and creation of a vagina. The skin of the penis is often inverted to form the wall of the vagina. The scrotum becomes the labia majora. Cosmetic surgery is used to fashion the clitoris and its hood, preserving the neurovascular bundle at the tip of the penis as the neurosensory supply to the clitoris. Most recently, plastic surgeons have developed techniques to fashion labia minora. Endocrinologists should encourage the transsexual person to use their tampon dilators to maintain the depth and width of the vagina throughout the postoperative period until the neovagina is being used frequently in intercourse. Genital sexual responsivity and other aspects of sexual function should be preserved after genital sex reassignment surgery…. Another major effort is the removal of facial and masculine-appearing body hair using either electrolysis or laser treatments. Other feminizing surgery, such as that to feminize the face, is now becoming more popular.

Sex reassignment surgeries available to the FTM4female to male transsexual persons have been less satisfactory. The cosmetic appearance of a neopenis is now very good, but the surgery is multistage and very expensive. Neopenile erection can be achieved only if some mechanical device is imbedded in the penis, e.g. a rod or some inflatable apparatus. Many choose a metaidoioplasty that exteriorizes or brings forward the clitoris and allows for voiding while standing. The scrotum is created from the labia majora with a good cosmetic effect, and testicular prostheses can be implanted. These procedures, as well as oophorectomy, vaginectomy, and complete hysterectomy, are undertaken after a few years of androgen therapy and can be safely performed vaginally with laparoscopy. 

The ancillary surgery for the FTM transition that is extremely important is the mastectomy. Breast size only partially regresses with androgen therapy. In adults, discussion about mastectomy usually takes place after androgen therapy is begun. Because some FTM transsexual adolescents present after significant breast development has occurred, mastectomy may be considered before age 18.”5“Hembree et al., “Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons,” 3149.”

Again, like I did in a previous podcast I must ask, who is engaged in conversion therapy here?

Is it the one who is trying to help a person align their thoughts and feelings with the body that I believe God created and gave to them as mediated through their parents or the professional who disregards the body and proposes irreversible radical surgeries combined with life-long hormone treatments in hopes of aligning the outer body with a patient’s inner desires?

Who is the conversion therapist?

Gender Identity Ideologues pin that label on those clinicians and pastors who try to help an individual become more comfortable with their immutable biological sex. These concerned professionals and pastors counsel them not to transition away from their birth sex. It’s called Talk Therapy. And it is very effective, especially for children with gender dysphoria. Trans Activists and Gender Identity Ideologues regard these efforts as immoral and professional clinicians are forbidden in some states and other countries from steering individuals toward accepting their birth sex.

Leveling the charge of “conversion therapist” packs quite a rhetorical punch because these therapeutic techniques are said to be just like some of the therapies used in the past to “convert” homosexuals. But that’s not true. It’s Talk Therapy! And also, as I’ve said before homosexuals don’t deny their biological sex. This is different. Helping someone align their thoughts and desires with the indisputable facts of their body is not converting them into someone different. Leveling the charge of “conversion therapist” on those professionals or pastors who don’t “affirm” is Orwellian doublespeak. Don’t believe it. And push back. Firmly. Even if you are called a bigot. Do it anyway.

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I’m a Classic Christian and regard Gender Ideology as anti-creational to the core. This blog & podcast is about “God’s Good Creation.” That’s why I’m writing about Gender Ideology. And “speaking up” as I’m confident Jesus would.

"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]

The Natchez by Delacroix – 1835
Oil on Canvas
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Love refuses to affirm confusion.

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