7-year-old “trans activist” used in campaign by Transgender Europe, a German NGO partially funded by US State Department

US taxpayers, did you know that some of your hard-earned money goes to a foreign NGO which uses a 7-year-old child to promote a trans activist agenda? Transgender Europe (TGEU), which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, states on its website (see bottom of page) that the US State Department is a donor.

TGEU State Dept funding

How is it that a US government agency is funding a foreign trans activist organization?

President Obama issued a directive in December 2011 to heads of executive branch agencies (which would include the US Department of State):

I am deeply concerned by the violence and discrimination targeting LGBT persons around the world whether it is passing laws that criminalize LGBT status, beating citizens simply for joining peaceful LGBT pride celebrations, or killing men, women, and children for their perceived sexual orientation.

President Obama’s memorandum goes on to list five areas for support of foreign NGOs: Combating Criminalization of LGBT Status or Conduct Abroad, Protecting Vulnerable LGBT Refugees and Asylum Seekers, Foreign Assistance to Protect Human Rights and Advance Nondiscrimination, Swift and Meaningful U.S. Responses to Human Rights Abuses of LGBT Persons Abroad, Engaging International Organizations in the Fight Against LGBT Discrimination.

Pursuant to the memorandum, the Global Equality Fund was established as a funding mechanism, “a collaborative effort led by the U.S. Department of State, bridging government, companies and NGOs with the objective of empowering LGBT persons to live freely and without discrimination.”

In September 2014, the US embassy in Budapest issued a statement on their website:

…Charge d’Affaires  of the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, M. Andre Goodfriend, delivered opening remarks at the 5th European Transgender Council Meeting, a gathering of 200 transgender activists, allies, researchers, and funders, in Budapest, Hungary – the first such conference to take place in Central and Eastern Europe. …

He congratulated the activists on the success of their efforts thus far, and emphasized that holding the conference sent a strong signal that the human rights of transgender persons should be protected everywhere.

The Department remains committed to advancing the goals of the Presidential Memorandum on International Initiatives to Advance the Human Rights of LGBT Persons, and to expanding its support, through the Global Equality Fund, embassy and consulate outreach, partnership with like-minded governments, corporations, and private foundations, and by continuing to learn from and partner with civil society organizations – such as Transgender Europe and TransVanilla [a Hungarian trans activist organization]- to promote and protect the human rights of transgender persons.

If the US State Department was only involved in “promoting and protecting human rights” and helping people to live “freely and without discrimination;” if it were about the right to nondiscrimination in jobs, housing, education; the right to protection against violence for all LGBT people, I’d be completely on board. But organizations like TGEU are taking this further.

Production values on the 1.5 minute promo featuring the 7-year-old are high. The video was clearly made by skilled professionals, with excellent camera work, fine sound engineering, and a catchy guitar soundtrack. This is not the work of an amateur.

The child also has a “public figure” Facebook page (aka a fan page), adorned with stereotypically “feminine” trappings, and describing the child as “a 7-year-old trans activist.”

WN Facebook

What is the 7-year-old trans activist being used to promote? The “depathologisation” of trans people. On its website, TGEU “calls on the World Health Organisation and governments to ensure that gender variant children are not labelled as sick.”

So far? Sounds good. Gender nonconformity is not a pathology. Let little girls and little boys look, play, and behave any way they like.  Is this what TGEU is promoting?

The Depathologisation Resources page links to this proposal by the GATE working group, which argues for abolishing the “gender incongruence” diagnosis being considered for the next version of the international diagnosis codes (ICD-11). The group praises Argentina, which

… passed the first gender identity law in the world that recognizes the human right of trans people to access legal recognition and transition-related health care services (including hormone therapy and surgical procedures) without requiring any kind of diagnosis.

So depathologizing appears to mean dumping any “disorder” diagnosis and just giving trans-identified people whatever they want. But for children, TGEU seems to argue for a different approach:

Gender variance in childhood does not require any medical interventions such as hormone therapy or surgical procedures. Rather, children need information and support in exploring their gender identity and expression and dealing with sociocultural environments that are frequently hostile to gender variance…research indicates it is impossible to reliably distinguish between a gender-variant child who will grow up to become trans and a gender-variant child who will grow up to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but not trans. As such, by conflating gender variance and sexual orientation, the proposed GIC category amounts to a re-pathologization of homosexuality.

Later in the document, we find this:

Further, the imposition of a diagnosis of gender incongruence on a child contradicts the principle that childhood development is a process of change and exploration. Such a diagnosis, which attempts to establish a concrete definition of a child’s gender identity precisely during the phase of life when essential aspects of identity are most in flux, is likely to create the presumption that the child is transgender, whether or not that is in fact the case.

This sounds like TGEU falls squarely in the camp that would criticize labeling children as trans, doesn’t it?

Yet in the video, the 7-year-old isn’t talking about  being “gender variant.” The kid is a boy talking about living as a trans person. A girl. If TGEU believes that children should not be presumed to be transgender, why on earth are they promoting this child as a “trans activist”?

The child’s parents are also featured on the website. What are their views on the “depathologisation” question?

Bex and James are the Family Support Officers at Gender Liberation, and Willa is the youngest activist….

As parents of a trans child they were concerned that ‘gender incongruence in childhood’ is listed in the International Classification of Diseases, particularly because others could use this classification as a tool to deter them from supporting their daughter, and it could further stigmatise Willa and keep people from accepting her.

We made the choice, we made the decision that we had to listen to our child, because we love her unconditionally.”

“Trans children only need to go through social transition, and therefore having a category in the ICD-11 that pathologizes gender diversity in childhood is completely unnecessary.”

big special girl

“She’s my special big girl and always will be.”

And there we have it.  “Gender variant” children “need” to go through social transition. Yet the very document TGEU uses in their depathologisation campaign states that the majority of these kids will desist and perhaps grow up to be gay or lesbian adults. That there should not be a “presumption” that they are transgender.

In addition, there is a body of evidence, originating with and continuing to this day, from the Dutch team who pioneered pediatric transition, indicating that social transition can be harmful. It can lock a child into a transgender identity and make it more difficult for a child to “desist.” Not only that: Being a social media star and receiving plaudits from parents and other important adults for conforming to gender stereotypes is a powerful incentive and reward. And this particular child has had a law dedicated to him. Can anyone think it would be possible for him to change his mind, after all that?

So why do they “need” social transition?  Why can’t these kids just play and explore without being coddled in the notion that they are really the opposite sex? Why do they “need” to be called “trans activists” at age 7?  What does TGEU actually believe?

Watch the video and decide for yourself: Is this 7-year-old child being encouraged to “explore their gender identity and expression”? Or would you say the child is more being urged to assume a “concrete definition…precisely during the phase of life when essential aspects of identity are most in flux… likely to create the presumption that the child is transgender”?

My life having to live as a boy was very bad. Until one day I told my mum and dad that I felt I was a girl….so they let me dress as a girl indoors….they let me live as a girl…after that when they saw that this was truly who I was they let me live as a girl….Now I am very happy living as a girl… trans kids need to be listened to. We don’t have a disorder and you can’t change us. .. we should just be allowed to live as we are because we KNOW who we are.

butterflies

So there’s agreement between organizations like Transgender Europe and critics like me. These kids aren’t “sick.” They don’t have a “disorder” just because they aren’t conforming to rigid gender stereotypes. But we differ radically in the conclusions we draw.

Transgender Europe operates campaigns—partially funded by me and other Americans–that promote the idea that a boy who plays with fairy dolls and wears pink dresses is actually a girl who should be “socially transitioned” before the world on YouTube and Facebook, defined as transgender, and who, at puberty, will be ready for all the medical services that money (and the taxpayer) can provide.

36 thoughts on “7-year-old “trans activist” used in campaign by Transgender Europe, a German NGO partially funded by US State Department

  1. Pingback: 7-year-old “trans activist” used in campaign by Transgender Europe, a German NGO partially funded by US State Department | 4thWaveNow | Stop Trans Chauvinism

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  3. This is so sad and shocking that one hardly knows what to say. It seems surreal–a 7 year old as the “expert” on social transition–a true Pandora’s box. Willa should be William (or his birth name) enjoying whatever he is interested in–purple ponies, glitter, or whatever without prejudice that his choice has propelled him into another gender!
    Our government should stay out of this, but that doesn’t seem possible given the current state of affairs that the majority of taxpayers would not approve of, and get shoved into without knowledge.

  4. Trans kids as instant fame tickets hits the UK. Great.
    The way to depathologise gender non-conforming behaviour is to let the child be, and enjoy their chosen interests and preferences, free from medical attention.

  5. What is really depressing and discouraging is that the leftist/progressive President of the US has just issued yet another unilateral edit/proclamation, (an “Executive Order”, carrying the force of law until tested/contested in the US Supreme Court), that FORCES ALL schools to allow boys claiming to be “trans” to shower NUDE with their female schoolmates.

    THAT is what sickens me!

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    • I’m not sure how to take this comment; however, it did remind me of my turning point after my daughter told me she was a trans boy. A week or two later I went to see the Argentinian movie, “The German Doctor” about Dr. Mengele performing the first hormonal experiments on a little girl in Bariloche, Argentina. It was at that moment I realized where this whole hormonal experimentation started, with the Nazi’s and has continued until now. You can make many parallels with this movie and the child trans movement today. The mother and daughter were totally brainwashed by this doctor. Of course they thought he was helping, but after all, it was just a great experiment. It’s well done, everyone should watch it if you can.

  7. Another poor child thrust into the spotlight as an activist. Obviously it was adults that encouraged this exploitation. They are using Willa to further their campaign, not concerned about his future well-being. It abhors and embarrasses me that my government had a part in this.

  8. Yes, there is a great contradiction between the presentation of Willa as a Trans Kid in the video and what TGEU are actually saying in their ”depatholigisation” manifesto. It’s as if the video makers had a slightly different brief. Why is Willa not saying ”Gender Incongruent Kids need to be
    listened to”? Is it just easier to say trans for a 7 year old, does it avoid having to make an explanation in simple terms to a public who may not be familiar with the term or is their a hidden agenda as far as ”educating” the public?

    As far as I can see TGEU regard Gender Incongruent and Trans as one and the same
    http://tgeu.org/being-told-you-have-a-disease-is-extremely-harmful/

    What TGEU says is ”Trans children only need to go through social transition, and therefore having a category in the ICD-11 that pathologizes gender diversity in childhood is completely unnecessary.” Using the wording of TGEU…..gender diversity is not a pathology (agreed) and Gender Incongruent=Trans (not agreed). Logical conclusion is therefore that trans is not a pathology and is a way of being.

    Also, to put this into context, we need to look at the legal situation in Malta, where Willa comes from. Since April of this year in order to change gender legally all that is required is a declaration of self-identity before a notary and it will be granted in 30 days. Parents can do this on behalf of their children through a court procedure, if it is deemed to be in the best interest of the child. (My aside…..divorce wasn’t possible in Malta until 2011 and still can only be granted after 4 years of separation within the last 5 years.)

    It’s also worth looking at the TGEU-Briefing for the International Day of Action for Trans Depatholigation 25th October 2015 http://tgeu.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/TGEUBriefingnote_Depathologisation_and_ICD_revision.pdf

    I think that the continued use of the word trans to describe children like Willa and to continue to conflate trans and gender incongruence in the media is deliberate. The long term aim would be to have ”self-identification” as the only criteria for legal gender change worldwide. One step at a time, in the meantime keep pushing out those videos so the only opposition will be from those radical feminists and right wing homophobes, after all we all want to be accepting liberals, don’t we?

    • I don’t see trans, gender incongruence, and gender dysphoria as the same thing at all.

      1. Gender incongruent, gender variant, and gender nonconforming= kid who likes to dress or play in a manner more typical of the other gender. Basically, these are the girls who hate dresses and the boys who like Barbies. If the kid occasionally says, “I wish I could be a girl” or “I want to be a boy” it really means “I wish people would stop bugging me about the things I want to wear and the toys I want to play with” or “I feel it’s unfair that my ballet teacher won’t let boys wear tutus.” If the child is a girl, she might also be at a point where she realizes how women are devalued in our society and is voicing her anger about it.

      2. Gender dysphoria= kid is serious about wanting to be the other gender and obsesses over it to the point where the parent seeks professional help.

      3. Transgender= #1 and #2, plus the kid has socially transitioned and might be medically transitioning. Once the kid gets to this point, there doesn’t seem to be any turning back.

      • “3. Transgender= #1 and #2, plus the kid has socially transitioned and might be medically transitioning. Once the kid gets to this point, there doesn’t seem to be any turning back.”

        This is the poisonous conflation between the gender non-conforming kid, (GNC) and that child suffering an obsessive compulsive discomfort with their body. HU-UGE difference.

      • Yeah, huge difference, yet some activists and medical professionals insist on lumping them all together into one category. The activists judge all of these kids according to what they themselves experienced as children. As for the professionals, I’m not sure if it’s all about the $$$$$ or if their views are skewed because they’re used to seeing only the most severe cases.

  9. And to think, once upon a time, not all that long ago, there were books like William’s Doll to teach children it’s perfectly okay to play with toys society has classified as belonging to the opposite sex. Now gender-nonconforming kids are shuttled into “transitioning,” when they don’t even have the cognitive ability to understand what all this means. Did none of these adults involved in any of these cases grow up in the same era I did, when children were taught it’s okay to play with all kinds of toys and have all kinds of interests? I’m glad my oldest friend has left her son as-is and never shamed him about his love of doing his nails and other “feminine” things, since she recognizes that doesn’t automatically make him a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

    • While there is no doubt that there is money to be made in the “gender identity” business by all the “professionals” involved, the main motivator besides the ‘cover your a**’ mentality is the justification/normalization of adult fetishistic cross-dressing. These older men in dresses are just using our young for cover

  10. I wonder where a child of seven years got the idea of being trans, and also … he has obviously no dysphoria about his body. He is happy now that he can wear pink dresses. What was so “very bad” about his life as boy? Not being able to play with the toys he likes?

    • In so very many of the currently popular “look at me! I’m raising a trans kid!” stories that’s exactly what it is – the kid is forbidden from playing with the toys he likes, wearing the clothes he likes, having the hairstyle he likes, and often even from playing with the friends he wants to play with.

      The reason given for all this is always “you can’t do [whatever] because you’re a boy” or “[whatever] is only for girls, so no.”

      Given that, plus the usual little kid discovery that “boys have a penis, girls don’t” I don’t find it very strange AT ALL that such kids will suddenly start making comments that they don’t want their penis, or trying to fold it away, or praying that god will take it away, or any of the other “but wow! How would a child know to say this?” “proof they’re trans” comments those articles are always stuffed with.

      I mean, hey, if only I didn’t have this “thing” between my legs, I’d be a girl like my sister, and mom would let me wear the Elsa costume and I could line up with my BFF Lisa at lunchtime.

      It amazes me that in so many of these trans kid narratives, the parents even admit that they were gender policing like crazy (though they don’t use the term) and that the moment they “accept” their child as “truly being” the other sex “inside,” all their policing flipped to the other direction (the direction that actually matches whatever clothing/toy/friend desires the kid happens to have) and on top of it, that they then took the kid out for an entire new wardrobe and toy shopping spree (with all the stuff the kid really WANTS this time!) and yet they don’t see how any of it can be related. It’s like some massive blind spot they have.

      I also think that in the past, when a kid in such a policed household might say “I wish I were a girl” or even “I’m a girl,” the parents would just sort of laugh it off in the same way they would do “I’m a cat today” or maybe even some of the more enlightened ones would ask “oh? Why do you think you’re a girl?” and start some actual discussion about gender policing (and perhaps some of them might even stop the policing).

      But now in 2015, it’s the “Year of the Trans” and everything is trans trans trans, and we have celebrity trans kids, and documentaries on TLC, and parents branded as heroes for “accepting” their kids as the “other” sex and how amazing, so when a kid comes up with this, more parents now jump to the “oh! I’ve seen this on TV! I know what this is! My kid must be trans! But I’m going to be a Good Mom, I’m going to accept my kid (and save ‘her’ from the 41% suicide rate!)” so they just run with the literal interpretation and the “what name do you want?” and the kid ends up in a “social transition” before you know it.

  11. Not exactly relevant to the current post but I just came across this in Reuters Health……”Trans Youth May have Improved Access to Puberty Blockers”.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/02/us-health-lgbt-youth-insurance-idUSKCN0SR24G20151102#Jv5lATTyUb0e5wWX.97
    A Dr Aron Janssen , director of NYU Langone Medical Center’s Gender and Sexuality Service, tells Reuters of the benefits of easier access to blockers in order to avoid the ”horrible” feelings provoked by puberty in transgender or gender-non conforming children. (Yes, both the words transgender and gender non conforming are used.) They link to an essay by Dr Elyse Pine et al in Pediatrics which is behind a pay-wall.

    • Puberty blockers this puberty blockers that. These drugs have actual names: gnrh agonists and they are really dangerous!! But no one mentions this because it would destroy the ilusion of “save and reversible”. Children pay a high price for the lies of trans activists.

    • The trans activists are really working hard to convey that being transgender is a typical, normal condition, just plain old vanilla (heck, they even named the one organization TransVanilla).

      The T promotes that their gender identities are just like the sexual orientation of the LGB–stable, not moving, born this way. If this was the case, though, why are there so many kids that have gone through a phase in which they believe themselves to be the opposite sex? Why are there adults that strongly believed they were transgender, but later decided not to go through with medical intervention or ended up de-transitioning? Since the stability of gender identities is not guaranteed, I see no point in promoting the acceptance of transgender kids.

      What should be promoted is that kids shouldn’t be restricted to certain colors, toys, or interests. The gender non-conforming kids should be left alone, accepted as just plain old vanilla kids. Not told they are transgender. Not told they need to alter their bodies. There is nothing normal about this.

      Gender non-conforming kids should not be lumped in with kids labeled transgender. Gender non-conforming kids, surrounded by adults who are encouraging and accepting of their interests and presentation, won’t need to go through any treatments, not even puberty blockers.

      • And not even “social transition.” That is the insidious thing here. Social transition means changing pronouns, changing restrooms, and all the rest of it. The activists keep saying it’s all reversible and harmless. But it’s not. Very young children like Willa become trapped in the idea that they are “transgender.” All you have to do is listen to Willa say “and you can’t change us.” But it’s far more than that. By being socially transitioned and told they actually are the opposite sex, life and experience and puberty and what used to be a normal part of childhood won’t be allowed to change these children either. Whether they go on to hormones and surgery or not, they are being encouraged to live a lie. And activists like Transgender Europe want to make it illegal for anyone to point out the fact that it is a lie.

      • Even more of a problem than just the fact that their gender identity isn’t stable- I’ve heard of LGB sexual orientations also sometimes being “fluid”(whether that’s because people count normal experimentation as an identity or some other reason should not be a concern)- but LGB orientations don’t require drugs or surgery, altering official documents, demanding friends and family address you on your terms only, or lying to new acquaintances about your life history. My feeling is, whether those of the LGB are “born that way” or it’s “a choice”, it’s not a characteristic that inherently requires self-deception, self-harm, or emotional abuse of other people. Transgenderism is the furthest thing from normal or vanilla, comparatively speaking.

  12. I think a big part of the problem with organizations like Transgender Europe, and declarations such as the one President Obama made in 2011 is the assumption that “LGBT” is a single, monolithic unit, where all included under this acronym have identical needs, have identical problems, and need identical solutions. Many liberal people, who don’t know much about these issues, simply assume that transgender is kind of a “Super-Gay” category. But the T is very much unlike the LGB and their goals are often at cross-purposes.

    As you said, trans people, along with all other people, deserve the rights to be free of employment, housing, and educational discrimination, as well as protection from violence. Every human being deserves these rights.

    But this is where it ends. Unlike T part of LGBT, LGB people are not confused as to which sex they are and do not seek to violate the rights of others by demanding access to opposite sex facilites: public restrooms, locker rooms, sports teams, compete for single-sex scholarships meant for the opposite sex, and so on. Nor do they seek to sterilize children or give them dangerous hormones. Nor does being LGB turn an individual into a permanent medical patient.

    I’ve often read that, if left alone, children with sex-atypical personalities, i.e. “gender non-conforming” children, will grow up to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. While this is often true, I think we need to be careful about conflating non-stereotypical personalities with sexual orientation. As the old saying goes, correlation is not causation.

    I bring this up because I can remember that as a child and a teen in the 60s and 70s, that children who had sex-atypical personalities – tomboys and “sissies” – were labeled (and taunted) as necessarily being gay, much like such children have the transgender label slapped on them nowadays.

    But LGB youth, just like straight youth, have a wide variety of personality types. i think the majority of people, regardless of sexual orientation have personalities that are a mixture of the two stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, to a greater or lesser degree.

    Also, many children with non-stereotypical personalities and interests grow up to be straight, as well, myself included. After all, what did my interest in playing with Tonka trucks and hatred of dresses have to do with who I’d want to marry when I grew up?

    The upshot of all of this is that, as you often say, I think we should just let kids be kids and not be in such as rush to label them, either by sexual orientation or by so-called “gender identity”.

    We need to break the link between sex and gender: that there is such a thing as innate “gender identity” that must “match” one’s sex, and that personality, interests, and personal style have anything innately and necessary to do with one’s sex or sexual orientation. The non-sexist child raising philosophy of the late 70s and early 80s, that brought us “Free to Be You and Me”, which was explicity gender critical, promoted this goal and it’s something that needs to be revived today. (Note that non-sexist child-raising is NOT the same thing as today’s “gender-neutral” parenting which seeks to “celebrate children of all genders”, rather than de-construct the gender system altogether.)

  13. More propaganda……New book coming out in Australia on December 1st 2015, ”The Gender Fairy”. Aimed at children aged from 4 years old.

    Book description taken from promotional website http://www.thegenderfairy.com/……

    ”The Gender Fairy is a simple story about two children feeling the relief of being heard: Of two children who are taking their first joyful steps toward living as their true selves.
    It is an educational resource for all children and adults to understand what it might feel like to be a transgender child.
    For children aged four and up, The Gender Fairy is designed to be read aloud in the classroom, or at home. It includes notes for parents and teachers to aid discussion and learning, completed in collaboration with Roz Ward (La Trobe University).”

    If I was a parent in Australia I would want to know if a teacher was telling my 4 year old “Only you know whether you are a boy or a girl. No one can tell you”.

    The author, Jo Hirst, has 2 sons, one of whom socially transitioned at age 6. There are plans for a further Gender Fairy book to come out next year to explain gender fluidity and the gender spectrum to 4 year olds!

  14. A lot of these trans kid stories have a very strong whiff of Munchausen’s By Proxy about them.
    The modern trans movement seems to have a worrying trend of enabling delusional people with mental health problems.

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