Tag: Gender Identity

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The Catholic Understanding of Human Anthropology

“Children know that their mothers and fathers love them, and they trust their guidance. Now children are told that their parents’ judgment about them should not be trusted — that parents may have been mistaken from birth about ‘who’ the child really is.”

Although not a Roman Catholic, as a Christian I affirm their view of body and soul integration. And with them I recognize the creational givens of “sexual identity” over and above “gender identity.”

Here is more about the Catholic understanding.

To understand why the Church warns about gender ideology, it is critical to examine the deceptive anthropology underlying gender ideology. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the anthropological claims made by gender ideology is to look at the “gender-affirming” or “transgender” resources widely used in schools, universities and popular culture to explain “who we are.” Colorful cartoonish graphics like the genderbread person or the gender unicorn depict androgynous figures with labels proposing new categories of identity. Lesson plans designed by activist organizations teach students the vocabulary and core concepts of this new belief system that conflicts with Christian anthropology.

Rather than recognizing the truth that each person, created by God as male or female, is a unity of body and soul, gender ideology claims “the person” is a random assortment of dimensions: “gender identity” (self-perception, regardless of the body), “gender expression” (how you present yourself to others), “sex assigned at birth” (a guess about your identity made by doctors and parents), sexual attraction or emotional attraction (feelings and desires), and anatomical parts (body parts that can be replaced at will). Each of these categories is typically represented as a “spectrum” or as fluid and changeable.

These graphics encourage the child to decide his identity for himself, using these categories to shape his understanding of “who he is.” According to gender ideology, the defining or core aspect of identity of the person is “gender identity.” Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming Schools “LGBTQ inclusivity” program, for example, describes “gender identity” as “who you know yourself to be in your heart and mind” and teaches children that “our bodies do not determine our gender identity.” This directly contradicts the truth, known by reason and revealed by God, that each of us is created with a unity of body and soul, embodied as male or female. The Catechism of the Catholic Church uses the term “sexual identity” to describe embodiment as male or female and teaches that “everyone must acknowledge and accept his [or her] sexual identity” (No. 2333).

Children are taught to believe that because identity is self-defined, there is an infinite array of gender identities. In Portland’s public schools, for example, social emotional learning lessons (SEL) instruct children that there are as many different “gender identities” as there are stars in the sky. Every person has a “gender identity,” and only the individual child can say what his or her identity is. The child who declares a transgender identity must be believed and affirmed and cannot be challenged. According to gender ideology, it is normal to be “transgender” (an umbrella term for a person whose “gender identity” does not align with his body), just as it is normal to be “cisgender” (a person whose “gender identity” matches his body). This undermines the child’s natural knowledge of human nature, that human beings are embodied as either male or female, and in its place substitutes a new “binary” premised on the belief that some persons are born in the wrong body. In contrast, the Catholic Church teaches that the person is created at conception as a male or female person, with a unity of a human soul and either a male or female body. In other words, God creates you, uniting your soul with your male or female body.

But how does a child discern his or her “gender identity”? The child is taught to compare his or her own behavior and feelings to exaggerated stereotypes of what it means to be male or female. Interests, feelings and preferences are presented as reliable indicators of “gender identity,” while the sexed body is not…..

There’s more. So read the whole thing.

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Respecting our God-given nature

“What is true of creation as a whole is true of human nature in particular: there is an order in human nature that we are called to respect. In fact, human nature deserves utmost respect since humanity occupies a singular place in the created order, being created in the image of God (Gn 1:27). To find fulfillment as human persons, to find true happiness, we must respect that order. We did not create human nature; it is a gift from a loving Creator. Nor do we ‘own’ our human nature, as if it were something that we are free to make use of in any way we please. Thus, genuine respect for human dignity requires that decisions about the use of technology be guided by genuine respect for this created order.”

— “Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body,” March 20, 2023

Wisdom from Pope Francis

“It needs to be emphasized that ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated.’ … It is one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life, and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality. Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.”

— Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, No. 56

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For The Good Of Our Families

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The Transgender Children’s Crusade

With its vision of autonomous young people in touch with their innermost desires, gender identity negates all we know about growing up.

Kay Hymowitz: The Transgender Children’s Crusade

To grasp the novelty of gender identity, compare its idea of child nature with that of child psychology. The psychological approach is predicated on an idea that seems glaringly obvious to most people today: young minds differ from those of adults. Jean Piaget, one of the field’s first theorists of cognitive development, called the first two years the sensorimotor stage, when infants and toddlers explore the outside world through sensory means. They only gradually gain control of their arms and hands as they grab at their clothes and their hair, pull at their genitals, or reach for a caretaker’s necklace or hair. Anyone who has cared for a toddler knows that toddlers’ emotions are so fleeting that they forget the banana that they just demanded in a fit of red-faced rage, once distracted by a bright shiny object.

Here are other truths about young children known to experts and parents alike. They are prone to magical thinking; they believe, as Jazz Jennings did, that a fairy will change their penis into a vagina, or that they play with invisible companions, like the castle-dwelling ninjas that my grandson used to “fight” when he was five. Their sense of time is primitive. Young children have trouble thinking about being six years old; imagining themselves as 20, as they would need to do to know their identity, is like science fiction. Their personalities change; the placid infant turns into a chatterbox five-year-old, who suddenly turns into a withdrawn ten-year-old. Dysphoria itself is often a temporary condition. Assuming that they don’t socially transition, as Jazz did, the large majority of dysphoric young children will desist as they get older; most will become gay.

Yet pediatric gender experts have put psychology’s idea of the child out to pasture. In their view, kids, even those who have yet to pull themselves up in their cribs, are capable of insight that many adults don’t have. “Kids understand themselves better, and at a much younger age, than adults assume. This includes their gender identity,” theorists at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education maintain. Today’s prodigies intuit their gender identities before they can talk. Diane Ehrensaft, director of mental health at the University of California–San Francisco and one of the foremost exponents of youthful gender dysphoria, explained at a 2016 conference how preverbal children could communicate gender distress. A boy infant might pull at the snaps of his onesie, she answered, in order to “make a dress”; he is sending a “gender message” that he really wants to be a girl. Likewise, a toddler tugging at the barrettes in her hair is not trying to ease the pulling at her scalp; she’s demonstrating that she wants to be a boy.

In the past, when a child showed signs of gender dysphoria, clinicians took a stance of “watchful waiting,” an approach that recognized the inherent volatility and cognitive immaturity of creatures still sleeping in their Batman jammies and leaving cookies for Santa Claus. The essentialist logic of gender identity, however, requires teachers, parents, and therapists to take a “gender-affirming” approach. A boy who declares himself a girl must be validated: no questions asked, no therapeutic probing about anything else that might be troubling the child. The enlightened child has spoken. “If you listen to the children, you will discover their gender. It is not for us to tell, but for them to say,” writes Ehrensaft.

Source: City Journal

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Love Refuses To Affirm Confusion

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Sweden Steps Back From The Edge – Part 1

This one slipped under the blog radar. But better late than never. File under the label, experimental care, and remember, Sweden is perhaps the most Gender-fluid-friendly country in Europe.

The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden has updated the national guidelines on good care for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria. The updated guidelines, published in December 2022, emphasize the need for health regions to address accessibility problems and inadequate knowledge about treatment results.

The report calls for a quality registry to enable systematic documentation and monitoring of care and highlights the knowledge gaps in existing scientific evidence regarding puberty suppressants and gender-affirming hormone therapy. Consequently, the report advises caution in using hormonal and surgical treatments, as the risks are considered to outweigh the expected benefits for adolescents with gender dysphoria.

A crucial distinction in the report highlights the difference between classic gender dysphoria and late-onset gender identity. The former develops early in childhood & persists. The latter is overwhelmingly much later and primarily among adolescent females. And in my opinion is being stoked by gender ideologues who see this as an opportunity to “queer” social norms and strike a blow against “heteronormativity.” But you won’t find that assessment in the report. You will find this:

The documented experience with the Dutch protocol includes only adolescents with binary gender identity, and among participating experts there is a lack of clinical experience with puberty-suppressing and gender-affirming hormone therapy for adolescents with non-binary gender identity.

Other recommendations include offering psychosocial support during diagnostic assessment, systematically searching for signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and ADHD/ADD, and continuing measures such as sexology counseling, fertility preservation, voice and communication treatment, and hair removal.

Of course, as a Christian, I must say no-one is born with the wrong sex. They may not like their natal sex for a host of reasons. Also very few may be born with bodies that have experienced developmental breakdowns in the womb, (intersex patients). But those reasons are not reason enough to assert the existence of more than two sexes & jump on the gender ideology train.

As mammals, we are a sexually di-morphic species. It was only about 15 minutes ago that far too many folks in the Western world began to believe otherwise.

Psycho-social-spiritual care NOT gender-affirming care is what our young people need.

I’ve communicated several times on this blog that we are experimenting on our children for largely ideological purposes. Nothing I’ve learned in the past two years leads me to revise that statement.

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Companion Posts

Institutional Capture – Podcast
Gender Dysphoria in Young People is Rising—and so is Professional Disagreement
Finland’s Leading Expert On Pediatric Gender Medicine
SEGM Bulletpoints The Madness

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God Created Us Male Or Female