Category: Health Care

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The Disappearance of “Mother”

Isabella Malbin was an Art School graduate and like most graduates in that field she had to work at finding work. After many odd, unfulfilling jobs she thought helping women in the birth process would be rewarding and would fit her personality. So she started the certification process in New York State thinking she could work in a hospital, birthing center, or a clinic as a birthing assistant.

Below is a long form interview of her by Benjamin Boyce on his podcast, “The Boyce of Reason.” He calls his interviews “calmversations.” Something we desperately need in today’s insult Twitterverse, where the snarky often vulgar putdown is the preeminent form of communication.

I’m going to preview the parts that I found most compelling and on point. But do support Benjamin’s efforts by checking out his channel and watching the interview yourself. Also don’t skip the ads. (Unless it’s a 30 minute one!). He gets paid a meager stipend for his production efforts if you “watch” the ads. The full video interview is below so you can verify I didn’t jerk thangs out of context.

NOTABLE QUOTABLES {my comments are in brackets}

Isabella: (10:31) “You know, I had heard about this Postpartum Doula thing…so in 2016 I signed up for a birth and Postpartum Doula1A support person, usually female, who may not have medical or midwifery training, who provides emotional assistance to a mother or pregnant couple before, during or after childbirth. training….At the time I couldn’t find training that was just Postpartum {she was not interested in the birth part of the training but the combined training was all that was being offered.} I really wasn’t even interested in birth, other than the fact that I had heard there was injustice happening within obstetric birth and that was women were being violated and that c-sections were on the rise and I had an awareness that there was something wrong but I didn’t think that was going to be my lane.

{Isabella is a self-described Radical Feminist who believes the medical/pharmaceutical industry is abusing women by pushing unnecessary medical interventions (c-sections) opioids and, surprisingly for a Feminist, also by pushing synthetic hormonal birth control.}

(11:45) There was a cultural competency segment of the training which was that we no longer use the words “woman” and “mother.”  We say “birthing people,” “birthing person,” “chest feeder” and then later I was introduced to “menstruating human” and “uterus haver.”  And all those things.  And so this was in Brooklyn and New York City…

The term “birthing people” implies that women are not the only humans that give birth.  “Birthing people” makes space for someone to say “I’m a man and I give birth.”  Which is just factually inaccurate.  Men don’t give birth.  In the “birthing person” space, with language ideology, women are being asked to play pretend.  Right?  To pretend that that’s a woman, to make a sacrifice for someone else’s comfort of their kind of dysphoria, right, making space for their dysphoria, right?  Their belief that they are stuck in the wrong body, that they have some congenital defect, which is just healthy breast tissue, you know, so things like that.

…not only is this factually untrue but it gives power to our oppressor class to say that men give birth, right?  {I told you she was a Radical Feminist!} So it’s ironic because all these women who are in this birth Doula training are there because they want to change the world, they want to make things better for women specifically in birth.  We are only in this position because natural birth and um traditional midwifery was systematically taken away from women.  Women didn’t get together and say hey this birth thing, men and technology they just know how to do it better.  

To say that this thing that only women have the capacity to do is now something that men can claim is totally bonkers.

(21:13) we were instructed {in her Doula training} to not use the words natural birth.  I really see that as part of the pharmaceutical industry to like want to normalize c-sections so what once started out as caesarean awareness month which was like education to kind of like share what caesareans were and how they worked has become a whole really romantic glossy for women to like “shout their caesareans” “this is birth too!”  I think it came from a place of not wanted to shame and not wanting to judge…

{Isabella talks about how pervasive the ideology was in her training and why she hesitated initially to push back…fear of being called a bigot.}

(26:28) How could it be true that my Doula training and the organization itself talks more about trans ideology and inclusivity more than they do about preserving the importance of physiologic birth and protecting women and children?  You know it is so bizarre and it took me a few years to kind of wrap my head around that because I had such a, you know, before I really got clarity over what was happening on like a larger scale and what was happening with uh just the market of sex reassignment surgery and that and the money stuff.  I just, I didn’t go there for so long because part of me thought that there was this small oppressed sad population that needed my protection and if I were to utter the words “woman” and “mother” I would jeopardize their safety, I would jeopardize their well-being and, and nobody wants to be the bigot, you know nobody wants to be that person, and so yeah.

(31:12). So the friends I was teaching with were affirming trans ideology, they were affirming women to take synthetic hormones, if they identified as trans, like no questions asked, and like to even question a woman who had cut off her breasts and taken testosterone for years then having a baby, to question what the effects of that long-term testosterone would be on the child was like “no, no, no, that’s not your business, you don’t go there.  That’s not something you ask a question about.” 

Ben: (33:30) California just recently is attempting to redefine breast tissue as abnormal if this mental condition called gender-dysphoria declares it as abnormal.   This one condition, gender dysphoria, is given the right to redefine what reality is, what normality is.  It is given a completely different status than any other psychological distress or mental condition and even we probably couldn’t even call it a mental condition because it’s so sacred and it’s redefining the world.  It’s very odd that this one thing has so much power.  

Isabella:  Yeah, when I saw this I was horrified.  I think the language was like congenital defect. 

Ben:  Yes, a breast is a congenital defect because of gender dysphoria.  

Isabella: (35:55). When I started to bubble up things about my discomfort with the ideology, people would say to me, friends would say to me, well you don’t know because you’ve never experienced that.  And I would say well, it’s interesting you’d say that because I remember as a teenage girl fantasizing what it would be like to slice off my inner thighs,  so I could have a thigh gap.  And of course my mom would say well that’s ridiculous you’re never, you’re not going to get liposuction, you’re 14 years old.  Imagine the damage that could have been done to me had my mom said, you know what, you know if I had threatened to harm myself if she wouldn’t let me, if I were to use suicide as a kind of manipulation technique?  Same for anorexia….If I were to beg my mom to call me fat when I was like 85 pounds that would have been really damaging.  That wasn’t my experience, the anorexia part, but certainly the desire to modify my body surgically is not something specific to trans identified women….That gender dysphoria thing is something that, or body dysmorphia experience is something that you know a lot of my friends went through and had.  What we didn’t have was someone affirming us saying you know what, you’re right, your body is wrong.  

Ben:  Is there some part of pubescence for women that’s uh, it’s a very narrow passage and wanting to escape the body or disgust with the body or a persistent desire to flee the body is a part of that passage and coming to peace with that is traditionally, up until medical ability to fiddle around with that, is a part of becoming mature, a part of becoming a woman, and becoming embodied and I guess in a way dealing not only with the social consequences but the reality of the situation of being a woman and wanting to flee that as a part of pubescence and coming of age.  And in our attempt to give people the most convenient life possible, the most easy life possible we’re starting to fiddle around with something that’s essential to the process of becoming mature.  

Isabella: (1:02:44). I think there’s something about just not being able to deny the truth of birth.  There’s no pretending…I always say there’s no room for apathy in birth.  You really, it’s something that is so grounding and so sobering and the idea that such a point of truth of humanity that one would be asked to lie or pretend really astounds me and to deny that that process, or to include men in that process even linguistically is totally weird.  It’s weird.

It’s straight up abusive to take these like young (I was 24 when I did my Doula training) these really eager young women who want to do good who want to serve women and to kind of indoctrinate them in this way to say like “you won’t have a client base unless you agree to the new lexicon”. You know which was what was like implicit in the whole training.

Isabella: (1:07:19) Again this narrative, it’s just the disenfranchised, oppressed, you know, absolutely gender non-conforming people are targeted right and attacked, I mean Buck Angel says you know that she was brutalized as a butch lesbian, dragged in the streets, then she now passes as a man in some respects.  We can hold the truth that gender non-conforming people are targeted and brutalized…but that isn’t justification to then move into this whole twisted mental gymnastics ideology where men and women are like interchangeable.

{She next tried to get training in what used to be called Natural Family Planning but has been rebranded in the last few decades as the “Fertility Awareness Method.” Most of the research behind FAM is by the Catholic Church (though not this training), plus, I’m pretty sure Isabella is not Catholic or religious for that matter. But, as a Radical Feminist opposed to Big Pharma, and the medicalization of identity, she is very much in favor of natural processes instead of synthetically enhanced ones that, in her view, damage women. But she got kicked out of this training too. Here’s the story:}

Isabella: (1:18:15)  I got kicked out of the FAM training.  I was already a radical feminist.  I emailed the head of the program and was like “hey this is what I’m about, let me know if you erase women, if you do I’d like to know now”. And she was like, oh no, no, I hold space for everyone and that should have been my red flag, but it was a two year teacher training that I had been looking forward to, I had actually applied the year before and not gotten in and so it was the long journey of “oh my god it’s starting and wonderful I’m going to get all this knowledge and you know deepen my knowledge and whatnot for sharing this natural family planning method with all these women.”  

(1:19:07). I kept using the word woman and mother, um, the first module was the gender unicorn, uh total indoctrination of trans ideology.

Ben:  So in the beginning before you get to the facts you have to adopt this ideology.  It’s put right in the front of reproductive health of females.  They have to adopt trans ideology before they can get to the reality of woman.  In program after program.  Pretty astounding.  

Isabella:  And this woman who is the head of this program would constantly self-censor.  She’d be like “women, oh gosh, I’m so sorry everyone I’m really working on it and I’m getting better.”  But um and then she would say to me privately, “I really resonate with some of the things that you’re sharing like, I also worry about little boys being castrated”.  You know and then totally would collude to the mob.  You know it got worse and worse and we would have private talks and I’m not kidding, I would be giving a presentation on my assignment and be saying “woman” “women” and this was all virtual training so I could see the women on the screens just being like visibly upset and so this kind of all led up to there was a lot of tension brewing and women were writing her saying that they didn’t feel safe in the program because of my critique of the gender unicorn and my stance and I wasn’t alone, I had an ally in the group and then a silent ally so…

Ben:  It’s so weird, like I’m sorry to distract…the terminology “I don’t’ feel safe” for someone having a different…this ideology is so threatening and its so frail at the same time.  It’s just a nest of contradictions.  

Isabella:  And manipulation, ridiculous you know I had this thought too, have these women never experienced real violence that they can’t distinguish between someone who is 5’1”, 110 pounds, like five states away, in a virtual space, thinking that I’m unsafe and could like harm them.  In what reality?  I mean kudos to them for having never experienced real violence but that’s like crazy shit.  

(1:21:34). So the teacher was very much like trying to be the peacemaker and like trying to find a win for all.  So, she decided to schedule a gender forum in which she said she was hiring a moderator, no I’m sorry she said an expert.

Ben:  which means an ideologue, a demagogue that comes in and lays down the law.  Am I incorrect?

Isabella:  You are spot on.  She was a trans rights ally.  As soon as I started to speak women started to cry.  They started to shake.  The one woman in the program who went by she/her and he/him, said “it’s really hard for me to be here” and she was the one shaking and crying and then the expert challenged me to a role play.  And I accepted.  So during this role play, she was a man who identifies as a woman asking to be included in my women’s circle and so it basically was:  “But Isabella you know I would really appreciate it if you would let me into your circle, you know, I really you know I’m working through a lot right now and I could really use the community and support.”  ….At one point then she started to get really jazzed up and was like “I want to kill myself” and I basically just said “Your mental health is not my responsibility.  This is a group for women and I’m really sorry to hear you’re going through a hard time and I have empathy for that and I am not giving you permission to come into this space”.  And then it was just over.  Like dead silence.  It was the end of the call.  I got an email right after, you’re out of the program.  Sorry we couldn’t make it work.  I wrote her an earful.  

Ben:  We only want women who will be penetrated at the will of people who cry in the right way.  Wow.  

Okay. That’s it for now. Take time and watch the whole video. Isabella does not claim to be a Christian. And perhaps she could have handled these moments more sensitively. But watch the video and form your own opinion. I think she is a caring person. She is just frustrated at being asked to affirm a falsehood.

Also, let’s not miss the important cultural shift clearly on display. My research in the past year confirms this kind of training is happening all over the western world. And the intimidation tactics are increasing. Professional licensing and reputation is on the chopping block if you don’t fall in line with gender ideology.

Unless you are willing to disappear mother for “birthing person,” “chest feeder” “menstruating human” or “uterus haver” you may no longer be welcomed as a health care provider in the Western World.

Is this the world we want to live in?

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LINK DISCLAIMER footnote:2 Links from this blog to online resources don’t necessarily mean I support everything found on these sites. But as adults we should embrace viewpoint diversity. And make alliances where we can.

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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

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Biological Sex and DSD’s

Sex is ordinarily determined at fertilization. Our genetic code, either the presence of an XX or XY chromosomal composition, determines our sexed body. With extremely rare disordered exceptions the human organism begins down a road of male or female bodily differentiation.

Back to our Gender Unicorn for a moment.

You will notice under the section “Sex Assigned at Birth” a blue dot for “other/intersex.” In the past, what used to be called a “disorder” is now called by many a “difference.” In our decidedly ‘post-modern’ moment, a moment designed to disrupt the very concept of normal or the fact that a natural order exists, we are told by Gender Identity Ideologues that there are a variety of ways that humans can develop. Normal and abnormal categories are obsolete and quite frankly hurtful to those who have developed differently.

Of course any sensitive person is going to treat someone who has one of these rare disorders with love and respect. But we should not ignore the obvious for the purpose of advancing a gender fluid philosophical agenda. Christians can’t do that.

Also, it’s bad science.

Clinics are being pressured to reclassify “Disorders of Sexual Development” as “Differences of Sexual Development.” Some have adopted the new terminology over a concern about stigmatizing people.

But the distinction between order and disorder is operative everywhere in science and medicine. These categories are indispensable for understanding and directing treatments toward human well-being.

Disorders of sexual development (DSDs) occur in roughly one out of every 5,000 births. These disorders can result in ambiguous external genitalia and the incomplete development of reproductive organs. Chromosomal or hormonal defects produce these abnormalities. They are rightly regarded by most medical experts as pathologies in the development and formation of the male and female body. They are exceedingly rare.

But Gender Identity Ideologues use the fact of these rare disorders as a reason for positing a “third sex” “fourth sex” etc., along a spectrum of possibilities. They argue that because of these “differences” the old-fashioned male-female sex binary is obsolete. Some people are just non-binary, they say. As I wrote in a previous post this move is nothing more than the normalization of disorder for the purpose of pushing a gender expansive ideology. (At root this irrationality emanates from an ideology called Queer Theory.)

Remember the staff trainer, Elly Barnes? Here’s the graph from my post about Rev Randall last month:

In 2018 Rev Randall attended a staff seminar at Trent College, entitled “Educate and Celebrate.”  He raised an objection when the leader, Elly Barnes, instructed the staff to chant ‘smash heteronormativity.’  For his anti-celebratory concerns he became a marked man at the college.

Barnes’ ideological, dare I say religious, fervor leaves little wiggle room for those like Reverend Randall and myself who believe God made us “male and female.” We don’t believe heteronormativity is oppressive and something to be “smashed.”

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Email: blog@blueridgemountain.life

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Who Is The Conversion Therapist?

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 “transitioning” but 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 post 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 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 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. 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 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]

If you would like more detail on how my Christian worldview informs my understanding of Sex and today’s Gender Ideology please read the following posts.

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

Love refuses to affirm confusion.

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