Gender Ideology - God’s Good Creation

September 8, 2024September 8, 2024

My Truth, Your Truth – Podcast

The Good Creation Podcast – My Truth, Your Truth

Podcast Script

Welcome to the Good Creation Podcast. Today’s topic will be a little more difficult than some. And it will take a little longer.

If philosophical analysis is not quite “your cup of tea” as the Brits say, at least scroll down to the video below and take a look.

Ok, here we go….

Some people have been trained to make a virtue out of doubt. They ask questions like: Who can know? Who can tell? Who can judge? For that matter what can we know? (They ask)

These people will approach the question of Truth in a particular way.

But If you believe in a supreme Creator Who is trustworthy, incapable of deceit, and has been revealed to us in various ways, that is to say, if you believe in a God who has not been distantly silent, but One that communicates, then you’re going to approach the subject of Truth differently.

I believe God is knowable and that God’s creation is knowable. Not fully. But truly. Also, as a Christian I believe God’s creation is bi-natured. “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” Both were created. Or as our creeds put it, God created both invisible and visible things. And God’s intent was for that creation to be integrated. Two parts operating as one. As a whole unit.

Now let’s take this right down the scale to the individual person. I believe God created us so that there is harmony between our inner perceptions of the external world and the external world as it actually exists. We can trust that our perceptions under normal circumstances, are not mere mirages. Unless we are taking a leisurely stroll across the Mohave desert we may be certain that we perceive real things. Things that are really out there. Not fully, again, but truly.

How? Because our Trustworthy God created a world where the visible (the outer object) and invisible (our subjective ideas & impressions) can meet and know each other. Not exhaustively, once again, but truly.

This touches on the “mind-body” problem I briefly introduced in my “Starting Again” post/podcast. I’ve repeatedly emphasized on this blog God’s intended creational harmony between, among other things, the mind and the body. God intends perfect alignment between our invisible and visible nature. The ultimate goal of human wholeness brings that perfect alignment. Just like God intends perfect overlapping and interlocking alignment between Heaven and Earth. The central image to help us understand this alignment appropriately is marriage.

God’s bi-natured creation was designed to be an integrated whole but without losing its distinctive bi-natured qualities. Just like a marriage. Today’s gender ideologues argue against any divinely designed human integration and seek to “convert” biological fact so that it aligns with internal identity desires. One partner’s wishes in this marriage is dominant. As we all know, that’s an unhealthy marriage. Also, the human desire to identify as a gender different than their biological sex takes precedent over God’s creational design, according to gender ideologues.

Even if you are not a Christian you surely see the “conversion” logic at work here. Converting a perfectly healthy body with cross-sex hormones and surgeries to fit some internal sense of self is the real conversion therapy.

Of course, Christians know all of us humans have from time to time, disordered desires. Desires, that if satisfied, will actually produce harm. So, if we are thinking correctly, we don’t affirm those disordered desires. We seek healing. We seek creational wholeness.

Philosophy students will recognize the mind/body problem relates to a long standing Epistemological puzzle.”

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, specifically addressing the questions; how do we know what we know? What are our methods for knowing, and what is the scope of possible knowledge?

I believe knowledge of God’s world is possible. I subscribe to the Christian hermeneutic of trust and not the Postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion.

God created an apprehensible world that may be known by persons created in God’s image and shared in common with other persons created in God’s image via a variety of communication methods, including texts. Again, not exhaustively, but truly. Our experiences as humans are not hermetically sealed and incommunicable to others. And speaking more broadly, Sex, Ethnicity, Race & Culture do form patterns of experience which should be accounted for and respected, but in the Spirit of a Trustworthy Creator these boundaries may be lovingly crossed. We can understand one another. And share life together.

I share the Postmodern critique of the pretensions of Enlightenment Modernity with its overweening pride in human rationality and the scientific method, but if nothing can be taken on trust & everything is to be regarded with suspicion you have a philosophy that “eats its own tail.”

Why should anyone trust a philosophy which says nothing can be trusted? Some Postmodern Thinkers believe precisely that. Some believe only the self can be trusted. Or only the group.

I also share the excitement of Christians who believe the discoveries of Modern Physics, i.e. quantum theory, opens up new paths to explore theologically, for example, as it relates to genuine freedom in the Universe. Everything that happens is not predetermined. And yet, we must refuse to worship at the altar of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The words and deeds of a Trustworthy Creator argue otherwise.

I mentioned the word hermeneutic earlier. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. In the case I mentioned earlier, the “hermeneutic of trust” is an interpretive method that extends trust to the “author” of a “text” (text could be any form of communication). This interpretive method understands that most authors are not consciously engaged in subterfuge designed to mask another intention which may be to exercise some level of control over us, the readers/listeners. Rather we believe, those who exercise a hermeneutic of trust, that these authors are genuinely interested in discussing what is True. They may in fact not be trustworthy for various reasons. But we don’t assume that upfront.

Unfortunately, the post-modern hermeneutic of suspicion believes all communication is either knowingly or unknowingly engaged in subterfuge. For the appearances of texts are deceptive and explicit content actually hide deeper meanings or implications. The hermeneutic of suspicion draws its philosophical inspiration from the “masters of suspicion”, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and most recently Michel Foucault.

Marx: to understand anybody you must know their class consciousness, a consciousness shaped by their material circumstances and those circumstances alone. If their class is bourgeoisie, those who own the means of production, or have all the money, they will never understand the working class or concepts like social justice.

Freud: teaches us that humans are driven by unconscious desires, desires which are at root sexual, and formed at the earliest stages of human development. Psychoanalysis is required before one comes to terms with these internal drives. A more recent development of this idea is that sexual identity is our core identity.

Nietzsche: Pronounces a pox on all our well-known certainties. Claims to truth are nothing more than metaphors concealing self-interested bids for power. Morality (especially Christian morality) is nonsense, something the weak use to manipulate the strong and squelch the aspirations of the great men among us. We must move beyond good and evil. And allow the creative geniuses, the Supermen, the Uber-menschen to lead us.

Foucault: (and other purveyors of “critical theory”) takes Nietzsche to an extreme. Every claim to Truth is in fact a claim or exercise of power. Everything is being “spun” to exercise power violently over you. It’s a very cynical view of the world and people. Other postmodern thinkers agree and say that any unitary accounts of ‘truth’ are inevitably oppressive.

Each of these driving forces within the individual and within society are often very much out of sight and beneath the surface of things. Therefore suspicion is a social imperative.

I know if you haven’t studied these issues before, it can be more than slightly opaque. But I wanted to give you some philosophical underpinnings to help you understand why we have arrived at today’s Gender Fluid moment.

This is what I think of the “masters of suspicion.” And their, for the most part, atheistic assumptions. I want to suggest that these thinkers should suspect their suspicions.

Because….I believe….

A God who communicates created a coherent, meaningful, knowable world. The pinnacle of God’s creation, God’s image bearers, are capable of apprehending that world as it truly exists and speaking meaningfully to one another about that world. Put very simply, all mentally healthy individuals know the difference between up and down, for example, or male and female, at least they should once the terms are properly defined.

And most of us know radical evil when we see it. Most of us.

I know, I know, at the Quantum or Sub-Atomic Level, we find, we think, an element of randomness and unpredictability from which, in my opinion, many unwarranted philosophical conclusions are drawn.

But I still have faith in a God who created a knowable world. Not exhaustively, but truly knowable. Mysterious at times. But that’s okay. Up here where we human’s live, communicable knowledge and real shared values are possible for God’s Image Bearers.

But today the postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion teaches you to interpret every communication, every action with suspicion. There are hidden meanings and intentions underneath. Nothing can be taken at face value. How does one build a loving community on the basis of that?

Although philosophical skepticism is ancient, ironically doubt as a method got renewed emphasis in the Western world with the work of a Christian thinker by the name of Rene Descartes (1596-1650). In fairness to Descartes he was trying to develop a philosophical system to tackle the problem of doubt.

He failed.

But unfortunately he did succeed in setting us on the philosophical road to radical human autonomy with the ultimate result being alienation, first and foremost a further alienation from God, but also alienation within God’s good creation, for example, the alienation between mind and body.

It’s a long story but it ends with the ruling assumption among many of our elites today and the teachers of our future generations, that objective reality is finally unknowable and incommunicable. So that all we are left with are subjective interpretations of our world. We can’t know anything objectively.

Subjectivism is the doctrine that “our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience.” So as a practical matter, from Elementary school to our institutions of Higher Learning, our young people have often been taught you have “your truth” and I have “my truth.”

Radical Individualism is one expression of this worldview.

Also taught in our institutions of learning is a less radical worldview which says my group has its truth while your group has a different truth. The worldview animating many parts of the today’s Anti-Racism movement taps into this less radical view of group truth.

This view can lead one to understand the world as a never ending struggle of competing “interpretations” or “narratives.” To use the common coin of today, it is sometimes seen as a conflict pitting oppressors against oppressed (a dichotomy borrowed from Marxism). For example, Whites vs People of Color, Rich vs Poor, Male vs Female, Binary vs Non-Binary.

Since it is assumed group truth is largely inaccessible to members of other groups, especially dominant groups, struggle for group supremacy is inevitable. Revolutionary actions are warranted by those who take a more Marxist view of the conflict. Critical Theory (1930’s) from which we get Critical Race Theory (1970’s, developed by Derrick Bell of Harvard and others) are two theories that draw nourishment from the seed beds planted by the “masters of suspicion” Marx, Freud and Nietzsche.

Perhaps you may be somewhat familiar with these less radical worldviews. They’ve been “hangin’ round the house” lately in case you haven’t noticed.

The fundamental teaching is that all Truth is relative and either individuals or groups are the final authority regarding normative questions. There is no universally valid or normative Truth. To suggest otherwise is to engage in an oppressive power play.

Of course all Christians recognize, or at least we should, that Truth in some areas may be difficult to ascertain, therefore humility is advised, and honestly, sometimes we don’t fully know ourselves and our motivations. You can’t read the Bible without being confronted with the fact of our broken human nature. We are easily deceived. But that is not the same as saying any universal claims are illegitimate. And nothing more than a power play. Yet that is what our young people are being taught today. And it has real world consequences. [See the video at the end of this podcast.]

***

As a Christian, I believe there is a unifying center to reality and that center appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. It is a center that allows all who accept the Lordship of Christ to come together as God’s single family in the Temple of God, Christ’s Body, the Church. As Paul said:

For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. [the promise of God’s worldwide flourishing human community on earth.] – Gal 3:26-29 (NRSV)

Ideally, this family unit won’t be characterized by conflicting power relationships, but by mutual love one to another. Which means this community will be characterized by patient receptivity not suspicion. We will read each other through the kind lens of charity, what I like to call the hermeneutic of love. But for this to work, we have to accept each other as family. Not groups pitted against one another. We won’t prejudge anyone based on skin color, for example, or any perceived social or class status. And, as a Christian, I would argue this community only becomes possible by the power of God’s Spirit. For it won’t be easy. And it cannot be coerced.

There is a single grand narrative, a single Truth. It is the story of a creative, loving, Triune God. Before anything was created, there was Loving Community. That’s what the Trinity teaches us Christians. Conflict is not the prime principle that makes things go.… If one begins instead from the Trinity, conflict isn’t the first way one would begin to talk about diversity or change, but rather harmony. And that’s our model.

We all are part of that story. Whether we know it or not. We have all been created by the same Triune God.

***

Hopefully, after these musings and viewing the video below you will see how today’s gender ideology draws “nourishment” from and grows out of the philosophical position known as subjectivism and its variant, group identity.

We can only know what we as individuals know. That’s the claim. Or less radically, what our group knows.

Given this assumption, tolerance is regarded as the highest virtue by many, but not all. Some remain intolerant revolutionaries. I’ve highlighted some of them on this blog (links are below). Those involved in Class Struggle or Race Struggle are typically not concerned with tolerance of every group. Subjugation of perceived oppressors is an ethical imperative for them. And they act on it.

But for most people the reality of human limitation teaches them to be accepting of what others know and believe to be true. So as long as they are not hurting anyone with that belief, it is said, we should tolerate different perspectives. And that is generally a pretty healthy thing to do. Except when it isn’t. If someone rejects reality, that’s unhealthy. They need help.

Which leads me to a classic YouTube video filmed at the University of Washington.

Okay, this is what I want you to do. Pause the podcast and watch this video. Then come back and I’ll finish the podcast.

Links from this blog to online resources don’t necessarily mean I support everything the organization producing these resources might believe. But this video is certainly on point about the “no lines, no boundaries” Western world our young people currently live in.

[RESUME PODCAST]

Our students did not learn this on their own. Adults taught them to think this way. You can certainly see how in a “no boundaries” world, anxious, dissatisfied, depressed young people might be driven to explore unhealthy identity options, and in the process disfigure their bodies. Especially when so many of their online “friends” say this is the secret to personal happiness. And you can also see how a worldview like the one on display in this video would affirm any choice an individual makes. Likewise you can see how the many young leaders of Facebook would feel comfortable listing 75 gender options to accommodate the subjective “truths” of those holding this “no boundaries” worldview.

Tolerance is a fine virtue, still I hope you found that video troubling. Because tolerance of absurdity leads to cultural rot & ruin. There are real world consequences to a “fluid” worldview.

Is this the world we want to live in? We better come up with some answers quick. Things are moving swiftly.

Companion Podcasts

Starting Again

Disregarding The Body

The Big Picture

Intolerant Strugglers

“Anti-Fascist” Violence

Incivility

+++

Love Refuses To Affirm Confusion

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024

Our Girls – Part 2

Originally posted July 11, 2021

I have quite a few friends across the broad spectrum we call Feminism. Some of them are reading this post. And I implore them not to cut me off after they “hear” what I have to say in a moment. But first let me establish my bona fides.

I call myself a “freedom-feminist.” (Yes. Men can be feminists too.)

These are its basic principles:

Freedom Feminism
>  Contemporary synthesis of egalitarian and maternal feminism
>  Stands for the moral, social, and legal equality of the sexes
>  Affirms for women what it affirms for everyone: dignity, fairness, and liberty
>  Opposes efforts to impose on women (or men) stereotypical social roles, yet recognizes that men and women will typically employ their equal freedoms in distinctive ways
>  Asserts that efforts to obliterate gender roles can be just as intolerant as efforts to maintain them
>  Establishes that differences between the sexes, under conditions of freedom, can be a sign of social well-being.  Freedom feminism is at peace, not at war, with abiding human aspiration¹Freedom Feminism: It's Surprising History and Why It Matters Today (Values and Capitalism) Copyright, 2013 by Christina Hoff Sommers.

***

That establishment of my feminist bona fides was a setup for what comes next. [I hope it worked!]

It may sound sexist. But hear me out. Women and men are different. I discovered this truth from living life. To bolster my claim, I’ve read a few scientific studies on the matter. And of course there are my theological commitments.

Here’s one difference, women typically process pain and stress differently than men. And they usually do it together. Unlike the lonesome cowpoke.

According to experts there is a “collective stress response” gender gap.

This explains why most “mass hysteria” outbreaks in history involve females, not males. Especially young women. (Of course, virtually all “mass murder and mayhem” outbreaks in history involve males, not females. You could call that the “collective rage response” gender gap.)

It’s not that compared to men, women are emotionally unstable. That’s the old sexist saw. Certainly “mass murder and mayhem” makes a strong claim for the label “emotionally unstable!”

Robert Bartholomew, Ph.D. in his 2017 Psychology Today article says:

"It sounds sexist, and it's sure to raise the ire of some feminists, but the literature does not lie.  Throughout history, groups of people in cohesive social units have suddenly fallen ill or exhibited strange behaviors...often all of those affected, are females.  In fact, of the 2,000+ cases in my files which date back to 1566, this pattern holds true over ninety-nine percent of the time." [emphasis mine]

Okay, I just felt a “virtual” frying pan smack the back of my skull when someone read the word “hysteria.” Or was that a Louisville Slugger?²

Who did that?

Abigail get me outta here!

"the nervous disorders of the eighteenth century and the neurasthenia epidemic of the nineteenth century.³Julie Beck, “ ‘Americanitis’: The Disease of Living Too Fast,” The Atlantic, March 11, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/the-history-of-neurasthenia-or-americanitis-health-happiness-and-culture/473253/. Anorexia nervosa,⁴Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 34. repressed memory,⁵Paul M. McHugh, Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash over Meaning, Memory, and Mind (New York, NY: Dana Press, 2008), 69 (noting that those with “false memory syndrome” were usually women). bulimia, and the cutting contagion in the twentieth.⁶Mandy Van Deven, “How We Became a Nation of Cutters,” Salon, August 19, 2011, https://www.salon.com/2011/08/19/tender_cut_interview/.

One protagonist has led them all, notorious for magnifying and spreading her own psychic pain: the adolescent girl.⁷Robert Bartholomew, “Why Are Females Prone to Mass Hysteria?” Psychology Today, March 31, 2017, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/201703/why-are-females-prone-mass-hysteria.

Her distress is real. But her self-diagnosis, in each case, is flawed—more the result of encouragement and suggestion than psychological necessity. Three decades ago, these girls might have hankered for liposuction while their physical forms wasted away. Two decades ago, today’s trans-identified teens might have “discovered” a repressed memory of childhood trauma. Today’s diagnostic craze isn’t demonic possession—it’s “gender dysphoria.” And its “cure” is not exorcism, laxatives, or purging. It’s testosterone and “top surgery.” [emphasis mine] — Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier⁸Shrier 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]

I think she’s right.

All this is not highlighting a female flaw. It is a feminine feature (not a bug) that we adore and need!

The empathic female enters into the pain and loneliness of others. Closing ranks with the sufferer. Pulling them in. Embracing them at the moment of crisis. Sharing their pain. She is, in a word, mom.

Is there anyone quite like her? Nope.

I’m not saying that men are incapable of empathy or that you can’t find women empathic as a green tomato. But, c’mon. You’ve noticed a difference, right? You could chock this up to socialization, a “social construct” as some say. That’s a popular phrase these days. Still, the “facts on the ground” reveal, girls cuddle great!

But here’s a problem. Our young girls with their maternal instincts tend to internalize the pain of their troubled girlfriends. Combine that with pubertal anxiety induced by changing bodies, some changes they may never like, and then toss in the unwanted attention of boys and men as they “develop.” Not to mention all those comparisons with each other. It’s a mixed up challenging time for girls. And given their tendencies, if they find someone hurting like they are hurting it can present a peer problem.

For example. Hospitals that have anorexic patients, another dysphoria, are careful not to place them in the same area. Because the girls, if they find each other, will “feed off” one another.

***

A critical factor emerged a few years ago. Social group formation started to change for boys and girls. Which brings us to the largest dysphoria cafe the world has ever known, a smorgasbord ideally situated to “nourish” a peer contagion pandemic.

Social Media.

This doesn’t explain everything about our current gender-dysphoric girl crisis. But it explains a lot. Adolescents today don’t hang out like they used to. Oh they communicate, like nobody’s business. But their interactions with peers have become disembodied.

This is a problem.

Here are a few relevant bullet points.

The GOOD NEWS
< Teen pregnancy has reached multi-decade lows.
< Rates of abortion among teens have plummeted.
< Teens are more tolerant of difference.
The BAD NEWS
> Teens in the West evince record levels of anxiety and depression.

In the past, if you were hurting, you got a hug, a real hug from a friend, especially if you were a girl. And if it was really bad, you sought therapy, religious counsel with real people. Today, increasingly, you get an electronic message and a super cool emoji, and receive counsel from an every growing group of Internet “Influencers” who are there for you 24/7, well their videos at least, to coach you through your discomfort, helping you blaze a trail to a “new you.” And words, words, words flow like a river, easy words, frictionless, effortless, blissful, abbreviated words, OMG, LOL. Distant words. From across the wide world words. Echoes really of what everyone else is saying. Teens follow trends, after all. But cliches without a body attached.

This is different.

Some of these supportive, affirming words, “group hug!” “you can do this!” discourage bodily life itself. At least the body you were given. Today’s affirming storyline is really different. And it is hurting us. Especially our anxiety ridden girls. (Our boys too, but I’ll talk about them later.)

***

The most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) the clinician’s “bible” written in 2013 puts the expected incidence of gender dysphoria at .005-.014 percent for natal males. Much lower for natal females. Fewer than 1 in 10,000 people were expected to experience this dysphoria. Until about ten years ago the overwhelming number of cases were young boys usually presenting around ages 2-4.

According to Shrier’s research:

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 numbers for this decade: Two percent of high school students now identify as “transgender,” according to a 2017 survey of teens issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).⁹

Some have argued that the reason for the “western spike” is because we’ve finally learned how to be more tolerant and excepting of difference and people now feel free to express themselves openly, especially our women.

Why then do we not see 30, 40 and 50 year old women “coming out” as Trans? Where are they? We’ve seen (MtF)¹⁰ Caitlyn Jenner. Where are the adult women identifying as Trans-men? Now is their moment.

It’s not happening. Rather, the unexpected spike is among teenage girls.

A new chapter in our story is being written. We need to read about it now.

This is the story of the American family—decent, loving, hardworking and kind. It wants to do the right thing. But it finds itself set in a society that increasingly regards parents as obstacles, bigots, and dupes. We cheer as teenage girls with no history of dysphoria steep themselves in a radical gender ideology taught in school or found on the internet. Peers and therapists and teachers and internet heroes egg these girls on. But here, the cost of so much youthful indiscretion is not a piercing or tattoo. It’s closer to a pound of flesh. Some small proportion of the population will always be transgender. But perhaps the current craze will not always lure troubled young girls with no history of gender dysphoria, enlisting them in a lifetime of hormone dependency and disfiguring surgeries. If this is a social contagion, society—perhaps—can arrest it. No adolescent should pay this high a price for having been, briefly, a follower.  — Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier

***

CHRISTIAN FIRST PRINCIPLES

Here’s where I put on my Christian hat and encourage my Christian sisters and brothers, by God’s grace, toward the Truth. (Non-Christians, give us a minute.) Although it may be difficult to apply in practice, especially in our modern context, here’s a basic principle of God’s ongoing revelation to us.

The fresh wind of God’s Spirit will never contradict God’s purposes from the beginning.

“In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.” All things visible and invisible, as the first stanza of our Ancient Creed says. Over the years I’ve expanded my understanding of God’s bi-natured world. Heaven and Earth, Spirit and Matter, Soul and Body, Male and Female make up the vital, indispensable components of God’s Good Creation. And I believe all of God’s Good Creation was, in the beginning, created equal.

Heaven and Earth, equal.
Spirit and Matter, equal.
Soul and Body, equal.
Male and Female, equal.

Different. (We are not Pantheists.) Yet equal. And meant to harmoniously overlap and interlock. As an integrated whole. A loving Unity with Plurality. Like our Creator. Our Triune (3in1) God. Before there was any created thing, there was loving community.

I call this view of creation equal dualism.¹¹ Our Big Picture Story.

Here is another excerpt from the Past, Present, and Future story of a Triune Creator:

“Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’” [Matt. 19:4] - JESUS

***

By 2016, Facebook, the worlds largest social media platform had 56 profile possibilities under the category: gender.

56.

to be continued….

(See Our Girls – Part 1)

***

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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….

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Email: blog@blueridgemountain.life