Gender Ideology - God’s Good Creation

August 28, 2024September 5, 2024

Our Girls – Part 1

Originally posted June 7, 2021

Okay, in my last post I made some important points about Freedom of Conscience. I defended an ordained minister in the Church of England who was perhaps not the most “sensitive” sermonizer. But I’m sure you agree, based on the facts as we know them, he should not have been reported to the Goverment Terrorist Watchdog, Prevent, or the British equivalent of Child Protective Services. And perhaps you agree he shouldn’t have been fired over this issue.

But he was.

If you followed the details link I gave you in that post and scrolled to the end you would have read the following from Rev Randall:

 “I was terrified. I did not sleep. What was I supposed to tell my family? Being reported as a potential terrorist, extremist and a danger to children are arguably the worst crimes you could be accused of.

“When I found out that they had reported me without telling me, my mind was blown trying to comprehend it. I had gone to such lengths in the sermon to stress that we must respect one another no matter what, even people we disagree with. I am not ashamed to say that I cried with relief when I was told that the report to Prevent was not going to be taken further.

“I was doing the job I was employed to do. I wasn’t saying anything that I should not have been able to say in any liberal secular institution. Everyone should be free to accept or reject an ideology. Isn’t that what liberal democracy means?

“I 100% see what has happened to me in Orwellian terms. Truth matters, but increasingly powerful groups in our society do not care about the truth.

“My career and life are in tatters. I believe that if this is the Cross that I have to carry to help prevent others from experiencing the same as me, I have no choice but to pursue justice.

***

Let me introduce you to another sympathetic voice. Actually, more than one.

“Our girls are in trouble!” — Mothers

I was alerted to a new crisis about 9 months ago when I read an eye opening book by Abigail Shrier.

Shrier is a graduate of Columbia College who went on to earn a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford and a JD from Yale Law School. Her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters was named a “best book” by The Economist and The Times of London. [2020, 2021]

The reviewer in the Times of London says:

“Irreversible Damage….has caused a storm. Abigail Shrier, a Wall Street Journal writer, does something simple yet devastating: she rigorously lays out the facts.”

Shrier first became aware of this problem when she investigated a disturbing trend and wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal about the spike of young girls identifying as boys. Afterwards she was contacted by many mothers, most of whom considered themselves liberal or politically “progressive.” One mother told Shrier when her teenage daughter suddenly identified as a boy she wanted to be supportive but she remained unconvinced her daughter was a “Trans-kid.” Unfortunately the daughter, affirmed by all her online “friends,” offline friends, and Internet Influencers, not to mention school counselors and therapists, began the process of transitioning from young woman to young “man,” a process that took off in earnest once she enrolled in college. But after studying the issue, the mother just couldn’t reconcile her daughter’s belief with the daughter she raised. “I know my daughter,” she said. Her daughter “dated boys” and was always a “girly girl” who didn’t show any early signs of gender dysphoria. [Up until the last few years the research literature said that virtually all gender dysphoria presented at an early age (2-4) and was almost exclusively among boys, not girls.]

Something else was going on. So this very “progressive” mother got in touch with a journalist who began snooping around for “the bigger story.”

As Shrier’s investigation grew she tried to “farm the story out” to some top notch investigative journalists, (Shrier was an opinion journalist at the time), but nobody would touch it, she said. So she did the “gumshoe work” herself. And Irreversible Damage is the result.

For her efforts she has been called a “trans-phobe” by some. It’s a untrue slur. I’ve read her book twice and have seen her give multiple lengthy interviews. She’s not a trans-phobe. In fact, she goes to great lengths to voice support for the many transgender adults she interviewed in her research for this book. She wanted to know from adult members of the Trans community what the transitioning experience was like, and whether it had been considered successful by them. In online interviews she’s reiterated that most of these transgender adults do not identify with the ideological goals of many Transgender Activists, the vast majority of whom are not Trans.

She’s a bright, compassionate observer, chronicalling a phenomenon that is literally sweeping through the Western world. Her book was briefly “de-listed” by Target after that corporation received, according to Shrier, two critical tweets about the book. [Shows you how squeamish corporations can be about this issue]. A week after pulling the book, and receiving a lot of pushback from concerned parents who thought this story should not be censored, Target made it available for sale again.

You can still get the book on Amazon. But there is one notable book that has been “de-listed” by Amazon. I’ll be posting about that book at a later time. It’s an important work as well.

***

As a journalist, Shrier had other reasons for digging into this issue. I’ll let her describe:

"You're not supposed to pick favorites among the amendments, because it's silly, but I have one, and it's the First.  My commitment to free speech led me into the world of transgender politics, through a back door.

In October 2017, my own state, California, enacted a law that threatened jail time for healthcare workers who refuse to use patients' requested gender pronouns.  New York had adopted a similar law, which applied to employers, landlords, and business owners.  Both laws are facially and thoroughly unconstitutional.  The First Amendment has long protected the right to say unpopular things without government interference.  It also guarantees our right to refuse to say things the government wants said."

I know this is a tough issue for some of my readers. But it needs to be fairly discussed, which I hope to do. We need reliable information about this phenomenon that will hopefully spur us into action.

Our girls deserve nothing less.

***

My next few posts will continue this book review of Irreversible Damage. But don’t just read about it from me. You should buy this book!

A “chair” of a work-group that puts together the clinical “bible” for diagnosing mental disorders (DSM-5) says so too:

“In Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier provides a thought-provoking examination of a new clinical phenomenon mainly affecting adolescent females—what some have termed rapid-onset gender dysphoria—that has, at lightning speed, swept across North America and parts of Western Europe and Scandinavia. In so doing, Shrier does not shy away from the politics that pervade the field of gender dysphoria. It is a book that will be of great interest to parents, the general public, and mental health clinicians.”

— Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D., adolescent and child psychologist and chair of the DSM-5 Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders

Zucker has gotten more than a little grief for his endorsement. But as of now, he is still employed at the University of Toronto. If you search YouTube for “Zucker McGill University” you will find his talk entitled “Children and Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria.” The follow-up Q&A is posted as well. Some in the McGill community (students and staff) wanted his talk “cancelled” and a few showed up to voice their concerns. I watched two hours full of very dry statistics and a somewhat livelier Q&A. Most of us would be left wondering about the state of higher education if a talk like this by an eminent scholar in the field could be cancelled (as some wanted) because it conflicted with the “lived experience” of others.

Increasingly that is the world we live in now. Many in both the medical and academic communities feel besieged and intimidated into capitulation or silence. (Our public school teachers too!) One Canadian scholar in particular who wanted to write truthfully about this topic but thought maybe she should wait until she got tenure to do so, was told bluntly by an older colleague, “tenure won’t protect you on this one.” She has since left the Academy and has written a very important book on the subject which I’ll blog about in the future.

***

I’ll finish this post with some definitions and vital statistics gleaned from Shrier’s work and others (l’ve done a little “gumshoe work” myself in the last 9 months.)

In 2007 there was only one pediatric gender clinic in America, located in Boston. Today there are approximately 300. It seems like a great need is being met. But why all of a sudden the explosive need for these medical services? The cynical side of me suspects money may be near the root of it all. And maybe so. But, there are other important reasons too.

In the last 10 years there has been a deluge of self-diagnosing teenage girls who are convinced they are really boys. And are doing drastic irreversible damage to their bodies. In the Western world today millions are identifying as Trans. And tens of thousands are going the distance by “aligning” their bodies to match their new identity. In Oregon today a 15 year old girl can walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic and without a note from a therapist or mom can walk out with doses of testosterone 40 times the natural female level. After just three months on “T” her body will be unalterably changed. It’s powerful and exhilarating stuff. This will likely start her down the path to a double mastectomy (“top surgery”) a few years later. Virtually no professional she encounters will counsel reconsideration. Nothing will be placed in her way.

What is going on?

Gender Dysphoria – a definition and some history:

“Gender dysphoria—formerly known as “gender identity disorder”—is characterized by a severe and persistent discomfort in one’s biological sex.¹Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, text revision (DSM-IV-TR) (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), 579.

“It typically begins in early childhood—ages two to four—though it may grow more severe in adolescence. But in most cases—nearly 70 percent—childhood gender dysphoria resolves.²Kenneth J. Zucker, “The Myth of Persistence: Response to ‘A Critical Commentary on Follow-Up Studies and ‘Desistance’ Theories about Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Children’ by Temple Newhook et al. (2018),” International Journal of Transgenderism (May 2018); See also J. Ristori and T. D. Steensma, “Gender Dysphoria in Childhood,” International Review of Social Psychiatry 28, no. 1 (2016): 13–20. 

“Historically, it afflicted a tiny sliver of the population (roughly .01 percent) and almost exclusively boys. Before 2012, in fact, there was no scientific literature on girls ages eleven to twenty-one ever having developed gender dysphoria at all. In the last decade that has changed, and dramatically. 

“The Western world has seen a sudden surge of adolescents claiming to have gender dysphoria and self-identifying as “transgender.” For the first time in medical history, natal girls are not only present among those so identifying—they constitute the majority.”

Source: page xxi Introduction - Irreversible Damage

Here are some other disturbing statistics. In 2018, the UK reported a 4,400 percent rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments (Testosterone & Puberty Blockers). Between 2016 and 2017 the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the U.S. quadrupled. Unlike in the past, now it was biological women suddenly accounting for 70 percent of all gender surgeries.

Again, what is going on?

Let me finish this post with an explanation “tease” from ID’s Introduction. Unlike gender dysphoria in the past…

“...the phenomenon sweeping teenage girls is different. It originates not in traditional gender dysphoria but in videos found on the internet. It represents mimicry inspired by internet gurus, a pledge taken with girlfriends—hands and breath held, eyes squeezed shut. For these girls, trans identification offers freedom from anxiety’s relentless pursuit; it satisfies the deepest need for acceptance, the thrill of transgression, the seductive lilt of belonging.”

As you see, Shrier’s a fine writer too. You probably want to get this book.

To be continued….

***

If you haven’t already added your email to my list, do so and I’ll let you know when the blog is updated.

Email: blog@blueridgemountain.life

July 20, 2024July 19, 2024

Embrace, Don’t Affirm

(Originally posted June 18, 2021)
I ended the last post with a stat from Facebook. That statistic came from 2016, so perhaps the number is even higher today.¹ Of course, this is Facebook. Young people left Facebook a long time ago (in internet time). Tumblr, Reddit, Tiktok, YouTube, Instagram & Snapchat are more their style. And the gender categories celebrated there are head spinning. Let’s just say “gender fluidity” is the norm. Here are a few:

Agender
Asexual
Bigender
Binary
Bisexual
Cisgender
Gay
Genderfluid
Genderqueer
Lesbian
Non-binary
Pansexual
Polysexusal
Third gender
Transgender
Transexual
Trigender
Two-spirit

Facebook, today’s hangout for “ole fuddie duddies” had 56 of these in 2016.

56.

Staking out your territory on the gender map has the feel of a competitive sport. Young people have always tried to carve out a niche for themselves, even though, truth be known, they tended to fall into congregational coolness. But today, because of the Internet, their potential universe of “friends” has grown exponentially with increasing variety. Finding someone “just like you” on the Internet is relatively easy. In the past, as a group young people weren’t all that different. Just different from their parents. But today the difference is dangerous in a way that a tattoo, a piercing, or the “Goth” look never was.

***

I do want to be clear about this. Gender dysphoria² is real. A very small number of people suffer from it. They need all the help we can give them.

If you know someone with gender dysphoria, or even if they just think they have gender dysphoria (most), you should become their friend. Don’t avoid. Embrace. I have atheist friends who are, in my opinion, mentally and morally confused about God. And they know that I believe that about them. We are still friends. Unlike what happened to Rev. Randall, they won’t report me to the authorities because my view of their Atheism makes them uncomfortable. Or attacks their dignity. Or their sense of self-worth and well-being. I still treat them with respect. I still love them. And they know it. They think I’m wrong. And I think they are wrong. But we are still friends. I embrace but I don’t affirm.

Now, of course, gender dysphoria is psychologically debilitating for those who really have it. And, unlike my Atheist friends, someone with gender dysphoria suffers mental anguish. They need a different kind of help. But, as a Christian it would not be loving to affirm what I believe is mental and emotional confusion.

I can love someone with anorexia nervosa³ (another dysphoria) without affirming her body destroying behavior. It would be wrong of me to say, “you’re looking good girl, keep going! I affirm your desire to be more comfortable with your body.” It would be wrong and unloving to do that. She hates her appearance and is slowly killing herself. No matter how strongly she feels about it, I will not affirm that belief.

But also as a Christian it would be wrong to exclude her from my peer group simply because she is suffering and different. Exclusion may be more “comfortable” for me and my peers but it would be unloving. We must lovingly include her and ask God for practical wisdom as we live together. There are few “hard and fast” rules here. Reaching out and embracing is the overarching rule. The details of how we interact will no doubt vary from situation to situation.

Still a Christian mustn’t lie. A “trans-man” is not really a man. A “trans-woman” is not really a woman. But you don’t need to say everything all at once. Presenting a “solid argument” to someone who is hurting won’t work. Putting your arm around them, walking with them, listening to them, ironically, offering your embodied self to them will work much better. Paul’s great chapter about love in 1st Corinthians, the one you hear at weddings all the time, describes love first and foremost as “Patient.” And then “Kind.” So, by all means, a Christian should patiently, prayerfully embrace. It won’t be easy. But it could work wonders.

***

The comparison between anorexia nervosa & gender dysphoria is appropriate because “transitioning” via puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatment and sex-reassignment surgery does real physical and irreversible damage to the body. Believing in a Creator should keep Christians from affirming those who deny the body God gave them. We certainly can’t affirm their desire to do damage to that body. There are some clinicians and surgeons, Christian and non-Christian, who are getting out of the specialty they trained for because they can’t advise or perform double mastectomies on perfectly healthy breasts. This is not what they “signed up for” they say. They entered their professions to be healers.

Some conscientious professionals who subscribe to the Hippocratic oath, “first do no harm” are being asked to go against their conscience or leave their chosen professional field. Surgeons in the Western world are being told that if they perform double mastectomies on cancer patients then they must perform the same surgery on the perfectly healthy breasts of a young woman who claims she is a man trapped in a woman’s body.

I repeat the question from my post about Rev Randall. Is this the world we want to live in? We need to come up with some answers quick. Things are moving swiftly.

***

A sword of Damocles hangs over many heads now. Professionals are being told they must agree with the patient’s self diagnosis. Those who counsel otherwise, and advise young patients to “wait and see” may lose their license or be fired. I’ll blog about one notable person soon. They are wrongheadedly called “conversion therapists.” Some 19 U.S. states at last count have banned mental health professionals from engaging in so-called “conversion therapy” at the risk of losing their license. The U.K., Canada, and Australia have anti-conversion therapy laws. Conversion Therapy has been used in the past to “convert” homosexuals so the concept packs quite a rhetorical punch when used by Transgender Activists today. However, homosexuals don’t deny their biological sex. This is different.

There are more than a few adult homosexuals, some professional clinicians, who openly thank “their lucky stars” that they were not born in this generation. Had they been, their “gender non-conformity” may have taken them down the Trans path of irreversible bodily alteration.

Apply your practical wisdom to this question, who is the conversion therapist?

Is it the one who is trying to help a person align their thoughts and feelings with the body they were given at birth or the professional who disregards the body and proposes irreversible radical surgeries combined with life-long hormone treatments in hopes of aligning that outer body with a patient’s inner desires?

Who is the conversion therapist here?

Quite an Orwellian twist, don’t you think?

Increasingly the only acceptable approach is the real conversion therapy resulting from the “affirmative care model.”

We are told we should begin our interactions, whether social or professional, with the conclusion. And that conclusion must be that a person has gender dysphoria if they say they have it. Using this “affirmative care model” clinicians are placing our teenagers on an irreversible path after a single counseling session. I’ve lost count of the stories I’ve read or seen in the last 9 months of young people who have come to regret their decision to transition (they are called de-transitioners). They tell stories of how after a single session, a one hour meeting(!) with a clinical therapist they were prescribed puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. As I mentioned in my last post, Oregon’s “age of consent” for certain healthcare services means a self diagnosing 15 year old girl can walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic and receive a dose of Testosterone 40 times the natural female level. A note from a therapist or mom is not required. She just has to sign a consent form (which no doubt has been cleared by lawyers in case a 15 year old regrets her decision and thinks about suing later in life.) After taking “T” for three months her body is forever changed. Double mastectomy is the next step of her transition, halted only by legal-age requirements which are country and state specific.

For natal females in almost every case the combination of puberty blockers to halt natural biological development and treatment with Testosterone causes infertility. And often an inability to experience orgasm in the future. There will be no going back. This is lunacy masquerading as “compassionate patient-centered care.” How many young people do you know who could wisely decide something as monumental, as life altering, as this? But parents are letting them make this choice at earlier and earlier ages because they are being told by health care professionals that their child’s well-being depends upon it. [See this post which rebuts the Suicide Myth.]

Because of the affirmative care model co-morbidities of depression, severe anxiety, autism, are largely ignored and prescribed medical treatments (testosterone or estrogen depending on the natal sex) begin these patients down an irreversible path. This is not how medicine and therapy have ever been practiced.

De-transitioners, those who regret their adolescent choice, and the body disfiguring path they’ve been on, are beginning to cry out. Like Cari. They need to be heard. Sometimes they are mocked by the online Trans community as never being Trans in the first place. Mockery is an art form on the Internet, even by those who claim to be the most tolerant and open to difference. But in spite of the obvious embarrassment of having made such a life-altering decision, de-transitioners courageously step forward to tell their updated story. I’ll highlight some of them in a later post.

We need to listen.

For it is heartbreaking.

I believe most young people claiming gender dysphoria are simply misdiagnosed. And this mad rush toward transition is disfiguring our confused young people. It is hurting them beyond physical repair. For their sake we desperately need to pay attention. Embrace. Don’t affirm.

***

Here’s where I put on my Christian hat again (actually, I never took it off).

Virtually every parent that contacted author Abigail Shrier about their concern for their daughters would self identify as “progressive” or “liberal” on the political spectrum. In telling their stories Shrier hints at the possibility that a lack of boundaries, that is to say a certain “post-modern fluidity” may contribute to their daughter’s initial confusion. She only hints at the possibility. I would do more than hint. Teenagers test boundaries. They press limits. They need guidance from the adults in the room. Unfortunately for some confused teens

What they lack in life experience, they make up for with a sex-studded vocabulary and avant-garde gender theory.  Deep in the caverns of the internet, a squadron of healers waits to advise them. - Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage.

They need guidance and healing from their Creator in the bodily form of those who know and represent that Creator.

Let me finish with a quote from an influential non-Christian. 20th century Psychologist & Psychotherapist, Carl Jung, discovered the consequences of a fluid outlook on life. Here’s how he puts it:

“I have treated many hundreds of patients, the larger number being Protestants, a smaller number of Jews and not more than five or six believing Catholics.  Among all my patients in the second half of life [that is, over 35], there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.  It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age had given their followers and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook” (emphasis added). --Carl Jung, Swiss Psychologist and Psychotherapist.

***

Jung’s practical wisdom aligns itself with a Classic Christian’s understanding of our Created yet broken world.