This picture, found on the LGBT News Facebook page, is the sort of thing that silences critics of childhood transition and cows terrified parents into submission. And it is unconscionable.
There is nothing–nothing–that could be worse for parents than the thought that their child could commit suicide. The trans activists who use these memes know that. And they are dishonest.
There is zero evidence that childhood transition prevents suicide. Zero. There IS research suggesting that bullying (by peers or anyone else, about anything) and lack of parental support for gender nonconformity can contribute to thoughts of self harm. But support for gender nonconformity (i.e, not adhering to stereotyped male or female behavior) is not equivalent to saying, “Yes, Suzie, if you say you’re a boy, you are.” The conflation of gender nonconformity with gender identity is rife in the media and deliberately used by activists. Colluding in a delusion is the polar opposite of supporting a child to express themselves however they like.
As I wrote about in this post, listen to what Ash Haffner’s mom said about her teen daughter, who committed suicide earlier this year:
She was trying to figure out her identity,” Quick said. “She felt like a boy trapped in a girl’s body. She was caught somewhat in between. People weren’t really giving her the time to figure herself out. … All she wanted was for people to just accept her. …Ash started enduring the most bullying when she cut her hair short.”
Ash was bullied when she cut her hair and didn’t kow-tow to gender stereotypes. She also wrote prior to killing herself that she didn’t want to be remembered as a “faggot.” Do trans activists ever mention homophobia as a factor in the misery of these young people? No.
Trans activists need to cease and desist using suicidality as a weapon to emotionally blackmail parents. Any child troubled enough to contemplate self harm needs immediate help, and by definition, has mental health issues beyond discomfort with gender roles or puberty-induced body changes. The facile and false cause-effect relationship that these activists and gender specialists promote is simply wrong, and deeply immoral. And to the extent the media promotes this meme, journalists are contributing to the well-known phenomenon of suicidal contagion in troubled and impressionable young people. Shame on them.
Instead of agreeing with confused young people who think their only options are transition or suicide, why not encourage them to expand the definition of what it means to be a girl or boy, using examples like this? Peachyoghurt’s parents didn’t clip her wings. As far as I’m concerned, the ones doing the real wing-clipping, the actual bullying right now, are the activists and gender specialists.
Reblogged this on Stop Trans Chauvinism.
Yes! I love the video. It’s so important and positive to see images of women being their authentic, true self and learning to love their body against all odds, despite how difficult it can be.
Now that I see the “I’d rather have a trans child than a dead one” trotted out constantly, it scares me. Surely kids told their parents they were the opposite sex at ages 2-8 before the last twenty years, and kids managed to cope and thrive. The world owes these kids role models…
I’d bet dollars to donuts that before the last 20 years kids did NOT tell their parents they were the wrong sex. But it’d be good to know for sure. So crank up the time machine!
So I think we already know this is true. The medical and psychiatric literature from earlier times would be full to bursting with girls complaining about being “in the wrong body.” Pediatricians would have reported it. There is a big increase in the number of girls claiming to be transgender. Little girls, prepubescent girls. Little girls under a certain age don’t lie. They tell the truth, because why wouldn’t they? And guess what? There is no such record in the prior literature. That ALONE tells us how much this is driven by activism and social media.
http://4thwavenow.com/2015/07/10/why-are-more-girls-than-boys-presenting-to-gender-clinics/
‘It would be in the medical literature’. Smacks head. Of course it would! 100,000 psych grad students would’ve gone mad with glee! Something new to study. You’re absolutely right. Also creepy-drawers John Money would’ve been in on it like 60.
This so completely has to end.
Did you read that article somebody posted a link to about psychiatrist Susan Bradley in Toronto? She has her head screwed on right it sounds like.
Which article? I posted about her a month or so ago, but is there something recent?
No it was old. In a Toronto community paper called Metro with green graphics. If that helps.
Freud used to write about “penis envy” from little girls (something about them realizing how imperfect they are and wishing to be better? I don’t remember exactly). Girls thinking “I wish I was a boy, then I could do all these cool stuff, like get a job, not get pregnant, do math at university, travel the world, get into politics, get rid of all those stupid dresses, not help cleaning at home, play the violent video games” and so on. It’s simply the logical reaction to what they observe (hell, I wished I was a boy quite a few times, though I really didn’t care about getting a dick).
I think the only thing that could be said about Freud is that he gave a lot of thought and importance to penises. As I recall, the “penis envy” of girls didn’t even have anything to do with girls expressing interest in being boys, or doing things boys could that were denied to them- it was an explanation of heterosexuality(girl’s desire for penises). Freud had a low opinion of women generally, and would never have given much credence to the idea that they might want to go to universities or travel the world or not be pregnant.
OMG! That graphic is heinous. Look at the size of the scissors! And what is with the stupid pink and blue and white wings? Also why do they have 50s heads? Oh right, if you question the 1950s version of sex roles a.k.a. “gender” of the genderists/transsexuals then you’re Dr. Evil. The Little 50s Heads on the parents are their way of saying You Are Bigots. Not just the parents but us looking at it. Holy crap.
Trenchant analysis, 4th.
And is it an interesting how the transgender cadre have this manipulation instead of you know evidence. For the psychological condition they claim exists. 🙁
The wings represent the transgender flag (seriously, there is such a thing).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_flags
“The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives.”
The wording is so strange. “Finding correctness in our lives.” Already perfectly fine as they are, but in 2015, they have to “find” a way to be “correct” according to identity politics and definitions.
Holy moly. That is creeping me out so bad. And they admit they’re obsessed with pink for girls/blue for boys 50s bullshit gender distinctions, no sex-role distinctions! It’s like they completely missed the 70s. I am so sick of this garbage. They really have turned reactionary traditionalism into some fake insurgent political movement.
Also, according to the excellent Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine the pink and blue crap was only invented, by the advertising industry, in the 1920s. 💅🏼 👎🏼 💪🏼👍🏼
Thanks, overwhelmed.
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Again it’s all based on the notion that ‘gender identity’ is inborn and immutable. If that were evidentially true … they’d have an argument. But it’s so clearly not true, given the countless examples of people’s shifting ideas regarding their own gender identities.
I’ll happily accept my kid’s choices regarding gender presentation, just as parents have had to accept their kids’ presentation choices for, like, forever. If this little graphic is meant to tell me I need to do more than that — to validate a kid’s statement that they are the other SEX, or to endorse medical treatments to try to transform them into a representation of the other sex, or … my kid will suicide?
It’d be a lot easier to take the trans* ppl seriously, from an intellectual standpoint and from a compassion standpoint, if they did not keep trying this coercive tactic. “Transition or suicide” is a false dichotomy, demonstrably so.
Hear, hear! And you know what I suddenly thought of when I was reading your comment? The ‘wicked’ parents in the graphic have ginormous scissors. But it’s the trans fanatics who want to do cutting on your kid. 😠
Where was the graphic taken from? Most people don’t dress like that now, and the hairstyle of the mother is not up-to-date either.
I guess it’s meant to imply that the evil parents clipping the wings of their trans child are very out-of-date…
That graphic looks like a Chick tract!
This is a Chick tract: http://www.chick.com/m/reading/tracts/readtract.asp?stk=1009
I think that if someone says “I have to do this or I will kill myself” the answer is not to enable the person to do whatever it is that she/he wants. Once that thing is accomplished, the person will find something else that must be done or suicide will result. One can go on for 50 or more years accommodating these requests, and in the end . . . the person will kill him/her self. (I know from experience.) It is better to deal with the underlying issues at the beginning of this kind of thinking rather than spend a lifetime trying to accommodate it. To accommodate it is destructive for everyone.
Very well said.
I dont agree with surgery, but I think that a transitioned person can feel relief and doesnt wish suicide anymore. Of course I think we must know a way for obtaining relief wothout hormone and surgery!
But, please, can you explain your experience?
I’ve heard the suicide rate actually goes up for trans people who are post-surgery. I’m sure there are lots of reasons for that but if they think they’re dysphoric BEFORE the surgery, there is something about waking up and finding someone’s completely changed your body that can be very unsettling for some people.
And that’s the ones who are dysphoric. The latest thing in TransSpeak is declaring that most trans people are not in fact dysphoric, and you’re a TERF if you say otherwise. I wish I were kidding.