We’ve heard it over and over, ad nauseum, from gender doctors, trans activists, and their enablers:
- Follow the child’s lead.
- We don’t tell kids they’re trans. The child tells us!
- You can’t “make a child trans.”
- Just listen to the child.
OK, then. Just listen to this 4-minute excerpt from top pediatric gender doctor Johanna Olson-Kennedy, MD and decide whether the 8-year-old in question arrived at the conclusion that she’s a boy all by her lonesome.
Olson-Kennedy is the Medical Director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the largest transgender youth clinic in the US. She delivered these remarks at the inaugural USPATH conference in Los Angeles this past February, as part of a symposium entitled “OUTSIDE OF THE BINARY – CARE FOR NON-BINARY ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG ADULTS.”
The first four minutes of the audio are transcribed in this post. However, readers are strongly encouraged to listen to the whole clip themselves. Timestamps are in square brackets [].
Olson-Kennedy starts with background on the case:
An 8-year-old kid comes into my practice, and this is the story with this kid: Assigned female at birth, 8 years old, was completely presenting male whatever that means—short haircut, boy’s clothes–but what was happening, is, this kid went to a very religious school and in the girls’ bathroom which is where this kid was going. People are like, “why is there a boy in the girl’s bathroom? That’s a real problem.” And so this kid was like, so that’s not super working for me, so I think that I wanna maybe enroll in school as a boy. This kid had come up with this entirely on their own.
When the kid came in, mom was like, “oh we don’t know what to do, so please help us” and so we started talking about it and what was interesting is that …you know some kids come in and they have great clarity and great articulation [sic] about their gender. They are just endorsing it, “this is who I am, and yes there’s gender confusion but it’s all of you who are confused,” so there are those kids. So this kid had not really organized or thought about all these different possibilities.
Girl likes short hair and comfortable clothes: check. Kid goes to a religious school, where people aren’t comfortable with gender nonconformity: check. Parent (who we can guess is conservative, given her kid was enrolled in a “very” religious school) takes daughter to a “gender clinic,” thereby signaling to the kid that something is wrong with you, you need a doctor: check. Said doctor believes her role is to help the kid “organize” about gender “possibilities”: check.
[1:55] You know the mom had shared this whole history, and said, when the kid was 3, the kid said, “Could you stroll me back up to God so I can come back down as a boy” and the kid’s like,” Ah, I didn’t say that.” You know, 8-year-olds, [2:09] so I’m like, “I don’t think your mom made that up, that’s crazy.”
Hang on a damn minute. Genderists always want to have it both ways, and here we have another example. When a parent like one of us on 4thWaveNow says to a gender doctor, “No, my kid never said anything about wanting to be the opposite sex until a binge on social media at age 13,” the gender doc tells us we just weren’t listening. “Listen to the child. Follow the child’s lead.” But because this mom reports that her kid said God made a mistake at age 3, and the 8-year-old denies having said it, the mom in this case has to be right.
In other words: We should “just listen” to what a parent claims a child said at age 3, but openly dismiss what the more mature child says herself at age 8.
[2:10]: So at one point, I said to the kid, “so do you think that you’re a girl or a boy? And this kid was like…I could just see, there was, like, this confusion on the kid’s face. Like, “actually I never really thought about that.” And so this kid said, “well, I’m a girl, ’cause I have this body”
The kid was brought to a doctor at 8 years old because she likes short hair and “boy’s clothes” and she has gotten flak from the school about it. What is this child going to say? This is a doctor, in a clinic, in a hospital; an adult authority figure, encouraging her to question her own already-voiced sense of reality.
[2:34] Right? This is how this kid had learned to talk about their gender…that it’s based on their body.
“Had learned?” Is Olson-Kennedy actually telling her audience that a little girl demonstrating her understanding of biological reality is something that was erroneously imparted, as opposed to the doublethink-newspeak indoctrination Olson-Kennedy is about to peddle?
[2:40] And I said, “oh, so …and I completely made this up on the spot, by the way, but …I said, “Do you ever eat pop tarts?” And the kid was like, oh, of course. And I said, “well you know how they come in that foil packet?” Yes. “Well, what if there was a strawberry pop tart in a foil packet, in a box that said ‘Cinnamon Pop Tarts.’? Is it a strawberry pop tart, or a cinnamon pop tart?”
Your body is just a wrapper, a piece of foil to be discarded (more like: pumped full of hormones, sterilized and eventually surgically reconfigured) so the “real” self can be revealed.
[3:00] The kid’s like, “Duh! A strawberry pop tart.” And I was like, “so…”
At this point [3:09], there is a staged pause and we hear the audience laugh loudly and knowingly.
[3:12] And the kid turned to the mom and said, “I think I’m a boy and the girl’s covering me up.”
[3:17] Audible murmurs and “wows” from Olson-Kennedy’s rapt audience
Johanna Olson-Kennedy is not a developmental psychologist. Of course, it doesn’t take a PhD, an MD, or even a high school diploma to know that children as young as eight still believe in Santa Claus; that they can transform themselves into animals or super heroes; have not learned to distinguish fact from fantasy. (Then again, developmental psychologists like Diane Ehrensaft are jettisoning decades of knowledge about child development as they hop aboard the trans-kid bandwagon, so there’s that.)
And the best thing was that the mom was like, [squeals] and she goes and gives the kid a big hug and it was an amazing experience. But I worry about when we say things like “I am a” vs “I wish I were” because I think there are so many things that contextually happen for people in around the way they understand and language [sic] gender.
Here we go again with having-her-cake-and-eating-it-too. Olson here is referring to the trans-activist talking point that a kid who claims they ARE the opposite sex is truly trans (vs one who just says they “wish” they were); it is claimed (without evidence) as a surefire diagnostic indicator. But Olson is having it both ways: Because this kid did not fit that particular trans-activist talking point, it must be dumpstered (or put another way, the goalpost must be moved).
Regarding the evidently overjoyed mom, an aside: “Progressive” doctors/activists show no shame, none at all, when using religious conservatives as mascots for their trans kid cause. Take Kimberly Shappley, a conservative Christian mother from Texas, who initially (by her own admission) tried to spank and shame her effeminate toddler son into behaving “like a boy”. Shappley finally showed love and acceptance when the child essentially gave in and announced he must be a girl at age 4. Shappley is now a celebrated activist, who is trotted out by the transgender press, Slate, and the Huffington Post as a model parent of a “trans” kindergartner.
Back to Johanna Olson-Kennedy and her 8-year-old client:
[3:41] So, I don’t think I made this kid a boy.”
Again, a dramatic pause for appreciative laughter. No, Johanna, you didn’t “make this kid a boy.” You made her believe she is a boy, authority figure that you are.
I don’t THINK so.
More laughter.
[3:44] I mean, and if I did, and I’m wrong, then I’m totally gonna come to this conference and tell people that I was wrong. I will.
That probably won’t be necessary. You did a bang-up job teaching a young child that she can change her sex, that her defiance of gender norms means she’s not a girl, so desistance is unlikely at this point. We’re on the road to blockers, cross sex hormones, and sterilization. The whole enchilada.
Of course, Dr. Olson-Kennedy could study whether leading questions and kid-friendly analogies have any impact on persistence of a trans identity, using some of the taxpayer money she got from the NIH, but it doesn’t appear to be a particularly urgent research question for her at the mo.
[3:58] But I think giving this kid the language to talk about his gender was really important.
“Important” would be one word for it.
And actually, it did not make him a boy, it gave him language to understand his gender.
[4:03] An unidentified audience member or co-presenter interjects: Why are we talking about this again?
Oh, how do you talk to people about…Oh and are you a medical provider? Ok, this is something I learned from being married to a mental health person.
Another unidentified participant: “Tell me more about that.”
More raucous laughter and extended applause.
But “tell me more about that” isn’t what Olson said. Even if psychologically counseling children were in her scope of practice, Olson-Kennedy didn’t use what is referred to as “active listening” with this kid. That would have meant validating the kid when she denied saying God made a mistake (why doesn’t Olson-Kennedy give any weight at all to the insight of an 8-year-old vs a 3-year-old?). If she’d been “actively listening,” Olson-Kennedy would have taken seriously the little girl’s stated understanding that she was, in fact, a girl. Instead, Olson-Kennedy “gave him the language” that she was actually a boy.
Make no mistake: This approach is what is on the ascendant when it comes to gender nonconforming children and how such kids—our kids—are being treated in the United States of America in 2017. Johanna Olson-Kennedy is one of the leading pediatric gender doctors in the US, running the largest clinic in the country. She is not some fringe figure. She is one of the recipients of a $5.7 million grant from the NIH to “study” kids like this 8-year-old (with no control groups of non-transitioned children).
Olson-Kennedy favors lowering the minimum age for genital surgeries. She is not averse to calling Child Protective Services on parents who won’t transition their kids (something she and other gender docs openly discussed at the same USPATH conference). Johanna Olson-Kennedy is a true believer in medicalizing gender nonconformity, with all the very grave repercussions stemming from that belief.
UPDATE 7/24/17: A reader sent us the following commentary in response to this piece via email today:
Olson-Kennedy appears to be unaware of the decades of research on suggestibility, which is defined as “the quality of being inclined to accept and act on the suggestions of others when false but plausible information is given.” Research psychologists have demonstrated repeatedly that children are vulnerable to suggestion when being interviewed by adults. They can be influenced by an interviewer’s status, interviewer bias, and leading and repeated questioning.
In one study, children witnessed a staged event, and were then interviewed by adults who were given incorrect information about what they children had seen. The study found that “children’s stories quickly conformed to the suggestions or beliefs of the interviewer.”
In the cited transcript, the question Olson-Kennedy first asks – “so do you think you’re a boy or a girl?” – is leading. A leading question is defined as “a question that prompts or encourages the desired answer.” To ask the question “do you think you’re a boy or a girl” is to suggest that it is possible that either is an option. Olson-Kennedy tells us that the child provided a clear answer to the question that was based on the child’s knowledge of her own biology. However, Olson-Kennedy signaled to the child that she is not satisfied with this response. She did this by repeating the question using the pop tart metaphor rather than accepting the child’s answer. A repeated question carries with it the implication that the initial answer given was not satisfactory. We must assume that the child picked up that she had given the “wrong” answer by stating that she was a girl.
Within the repeated question, Olson-Kennedy offers an alternative explanation for the child’s experience – couched in alluring, child-friendly image of sugary pop tarts. The child complies with Olson-Kennedy’s implied suggestion that she is in fact in the wrong body, and receives affirmation for this compliance in the form of breathless acclamations by both mother and the high-status doctor. By “providing the language,” Olson-Kennedy encouraged this child to conceptualize herself as having been “born in the wrong body,” complete with the imprimatur of a major medical center. The kid didn’t stand a chance.
Sexism and homophobia.
This is the monster that the gender industry has created with its non-stop propaganda machine & media mouthpieces running 24/7.
Rather than having demanded that the school deal with inappropriate student behavior which created the child’s distress or having supported & accepted & expressed unconditional love for her child –as is –with the right to dress how she felt most comfortable, the mother immediately *assumed* that her child needed a “gender expert.”
And the “expert,” also unwilling to accept the child *as is,* performed like a hammer who sees these kids a nails, shamelessly manipulated & reinforced the self-doubt instilled by peers & parent.
This monster eats our young. What will it take to stop it?
The Christian conservative mother of this child is.probably.thrilled her daughter will now not grow up to be a lesbian, and no longer continue embarrassing her and her husband at.church, in the neighborhood, and at the PTA,.because no.doubt, other parents have been.making disapproving comments to the mother, and it’s mom’s job, always, to make sure her children turn out socially acceptable. If they don’t, she’s a “bad” failed mom. So she’s GOT to get her sex-role non-compliant (SRNC) 8 year old girl to agree she’s really a boy, and headed down the trans medical path.
Yep. I can almost hear the mom now. “My child is NOT a homosexual!!! HE was born in the wrong body. It’s a birth defect, a medical condition– NOT a sin.”
I find it laughable that you all seriously believe that this trans hysteria came from the Christian community. NO real Christian would accept or agree with the transgender movement. The vast majority conservatives are against the transgender movement. Any Christian who supports it, is most likely from a liberal/leftist Christian denomination. Liberal Christians are like Reform Jews, they claim the label but do not believe in the bible and are more into social justice activism.
Face it. Responsibility for the transgender movement lies solely on the Left,liberals, progressives and the LGBT community. The political parties that most of YOU have voted for all your lives are to blame for this. Us “bigoted” conservatives and Christians are the ones who have been warning you people for decades that opening up Pandora’s box was a slippery slope. We tried to tell you.
Well guess what? Now the tables have turned. Everything that you all did to us, is being done to you. You are no longer allowed to have your lesbian only or gay only spaces anymore. The same laws that were used to shut down Christian Bakeries and business who didn’t want to participate in gay weddings are being used to force transgenders into your events ,your lives, and your spaces and there’s nothing you can do about it. Now you are considered bigots and no one gives a damn about your plight.
You made your bed, now lie in it.
ETA: Oh and assuming a little girl is a lesbian because she dresses like a boy is no different than transing her, You people prejudge children based on stereotypes as well.
You are partly right here. The liberals have really pushed this agenda and it is interesting to see the tables turned in the way you describe. However, although they certainly don’t openly push the trans agenda, I know that plenty of ultra-orthodox Jews and Muslims and conservative Christian parents have taken the trans way out when they have a gender stereotype non-conforming child.
In response to “givemeabreak,” I guess I’d submit the following. First, most folks don’t tend to respond well to observations that include the words “you people” or “all of you,” much less the broad-brush indictments those words include. Having been an active member of this community for some time, I can tell you that there is hardly a uniformity of opinion or belief or political stripe among us. From the extensive reading I’ve done about this social phenomenon, there does (in some cases) seem to be a correlation between conservative parenting and transgender child narratives, although as you point out that’s hardly a unique or automatic association.
But, that’s a fairly generic comment, so to the gist of your argument – now what? As people who were or are politically liberal, should we exit this field? Are we not entitled to have any opinions or conduct any activism around pediatric transition? Or would you have us move to a more general stance of anti-homosexuality first, and then we would be ideologically pure enough to do it? Are you advocating that we all convert to conservative Christianity, and then we’ll be on the moral high ground and entitled to speak? Doesn’t that border on the facetious?
I understand that plenty of conservatives feel vindicated, that “they warned us” that we were on a slippery slope with gay marriage and the rest of it, and that now we’re sowing what we reaped. It must be pleasurable to be able to say that.
In my view, though, rather than throwing around recriminations about whose “fault” the pediatric transition movement is, today it would be much more effective and fruitful to work with advocates on all sides of the “fence.” We all realize that we’re up against some mighty powerful forces here, and that plenty of damage has already been done. There’s a lot of work to do, and not enough of “us” to do it as it is!
To Givemeabreak,
I thoroughly enjoyed your comment, as I agree with plenty of what you say, so thank you.
To clarify, my comment about the Christian conservative mom probably being relieved her daughter won’t grow up to be a lesbian, I meant part of that sarcastically. It is not my belief that being sex-role non-compliant (SRNC) will result in lesbianism. No one entirely fits the sex roles, and the sex roles vary from family to family, culture to culture. However, it is not uncommon for parents to fear that their “SRNC” child will be lesbian or gay, and for religious conservatives, in particular, though by no means exclusively, to fear that. And while there is some research that supposedly confirms a correlation between allegedly SRNC behavior or interests and future homosexuality, I am skeptical about how the research was conducted. My parents, for example, actively raised me to be sex-role non-compliant (SRNC). They intentionally wanted me to not be harmed by sexist expectations put on girls. They were also open-minded about homosexuality. So it’s not a coincidence that as an adult, I was able to become even more feminist, critical of men, and to allow myself to stop blocking my natural human capacity to feel attracted to people of my sex. I believe that humans, like thousands of other species documented to be bisexual, are genetically bisexual. We just learn to shut down awareness of our capacity to feel attraction to people of both sexes. Most of us are actively taught to shut down feelings of same-sex attraction. But the reverse can happen, where girls or women can learn to be very turned off by males because of their patriarchal socialization and our nearly constant negative experiences with their behaviors, attitudes, and bodies, and therefore it shuts down our capacity for same-sex attraction: as it logically should, frankly! To me, lesbianism is a sign of self-esteem and sel-respect. Sometimes even intelligence. I do not ascribe to the “born this way” theory of heterosexuality and homosexuality. (A politics of “we can’t help it” lacks ciurage, is dangerous, and denies the inescapable influence that patriarchy, misogyny, and internalized misogyny have on human sexual feelings.
It denies the genetic capacity of all women to break free from the harmfulness of patriarchally programmed heterosexuality, the Stockholm syndrome that has been induced in basically every girl from birth onward, by being raised in patriarchy, the religion of the planet. “I can’t help it” demeans lesbians and lesbian relationships, and what is good and desirable in us, our relationships, and culture. “Born this way” was much more common of a belief among gays than lesbians until the late 1980s and 1990s, and is part of anti-feminist, gay-centric “LGBT” politics. I am sad to see so many lesbians have accepted it.)
I agree with you if you believe that LGBT politics have been extremely aggressive. But then, everything about LGBT politics is anti-feminist, and as a lesbian *feminist,* I have no interest in LGBT politics. I am opposed to marriage, it began and has continued for almost all of its history as the law by which a male acquired a female slave, so I’m opposed to having the government endorse it for anyone. I want the government OUT of our bedrooms, not IN them. Civil unions for all. And I cannot for the life of me see why anyone needed or wanted to use a baker to make them a wedding cake who didn’t want to bake them one. That’s not my political strategy. I would rather find and support a lesbian baker, or at least a lesbian who can open a box of Betty Crocker and bake me one. (Feel free to reprint this comment in your church newsletter, with the caveat that I do not represent the opinions of all lesbians, in fact, probably not that many.)
When I first came out as lesbian, I was introduced to the political perspective that I should be out, loud and “proud.” Years later, I met a young lesbian friend with a different approach that I really liked. She and her girlfriend visited her mother together, and lived together, but didn’t announce their lesbianism to her. She figured that when her mother was ready to accept that she was lesbian, she’d ask. I thought this was a kind, gentle, and loving approach. Of course, this doesn’t work in all situations, lesbians do have legal needs and rights. But in reality, cultural change takes time. We cannot force people to think and feel differently. I would have preferred that lesbians continue building our beautiful lesbian feminist cultures and have people get to know us, rather than our getting involved in gay (male-centric), in your face politics.
A lot of lesbian feminists got bullied and manipulated into supporting.LGBT politics during the AIDS crisis during the 1980s, and were manipulated into joining the LGBT movement. Some.of us who were radical feminists back then were not among them. Lesbians should have never gone along with the LGBT anti-feminist agenda, and you’re right, blew it by accepting or tolerating people who identify as trans into that movement, although there was massive silencing and demonizing of feminism within the LGBT, so maybe there wasn’t that much we could have done differently. I certainly wish I’d spoken up more, But was too intimidated to. Huge mistake. And now the LGBT has become so politically powerful that liberal politicians cannot do anything but go along with the trans nonsense. I urge liberals to stop giving any money to LGBT organizations because they’re anti-feminist.
Finally, there is a big difference between accepting same-sex attraction and the delusional belief that one is the other sex, “born into the wrong body,” or the other sex’s stereotypes. Feeling sexually attracted to the same sex is different than “feeling” one IS the other sex, because we cannot know how anyone else feels.
Oh, “Givemeabreak!” “No True Scotsman…” Transgender ideology is as regressive as anything that’s come down the pipe in recent history.
A lot of lesbian feminists got bullied and manipulated into supporting.LGBT politics during the AIDS crisis during the 1980s, and were manipulated into joining the LGBT movement. — fmnst
This is complete bullshit.
1) The movements for lesbian and gay rights in the US and Britain were established well before the AIDS crisis, and right from the beginning lesbians were involved alongside gay men. I should know, I was around at the time. But this is also well documented in histories.
2) There was no ‘LGBT’ movement during the eighties. There was a lesbian and gay movement, and as the decade went on it became increasingly common to explicitly include bisexual people and refer to the LGB movement.
3) This is not the first time that fmnst has made the groundless claim that ‘lesbian feminists’ joined the movement because they were ‘bullied and manipulated’ into it. She said much the same thing in a comment on GenderTrender six weeks ago.
I cannot do better than quote Gallus Mag’s response: “Gay men didn’t “guilt trip lesbians into joining them”. We joined forces because we had shared interests. Lesbians are not controlled by Gay men.”
fmnst found nothing to say in reply, but that hasn’t stopped her from coming over here and repeating the same offensive rubbish.
4) In Britain there was almost no political engagement by transsexual* people during the eighties: as a general rule they just wanted to transition and slip quietly into society under their new identity. I don’t think it was very different in the States, but I cannot speak on that with certainty.
* Note: The term ‘transgender’ had already been coined, but it was not commonly used at that time.
5) The acronym ‘LGBT’ was first used in about 1995, and didn’t achieve much traction until several years later.
—
I believe that humans … are genetically bisexual. We just learn to shut down awareness of our capacity to feel attraction to people of both sexes. Most of us are actively taught to shut down feelings of same-sex attraction. But the reverse can happen, where girls or women can learn to be very turned off by males because of their patriarchal socialization and our nearly constant negative experiences with their behaviors, attitudes, and bodies … — fmnst
fmnst is a lesbian-feminist separatist (see below). One of the pet fantasies of lesbian-feminists is that we are all bisexual and we can choose: ‘Any woman can be a lesbian’, to quote a song that used to be very popular in certain circles. I never believed a word of it. Some women are heterosexual. Separatist ideologues need to get over it.
As for the notion that women who don’t fancy men have necessarily been turned off them by bad experiences: that is more bullshit. Some of us just don’t fancy men. We can be deeply fond of them – as friends; but there is never any ‘chemistry’ with men, only with women.
(Note: I am not arguing here that we are all just ‘born that way’. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out on that one; but I very much doubt that it is anything like that simple.)
I would have preferred that lesbians continue building our beautiful lesbian feminist cultures and have people get to know us, rather than our getting involved in gay (male-centric), in your face politics. — fmnst
Separatism, when strictly practised on a full-time basis, is one of the most futile, ineffective and self-indulgent political philosophies ever dreamed up.
It is founded on a fantasy: that it is possible for a group to a) cut itself off from mainstream society and culture and b) effect major social change while doing so.
In seventies and eighties Britain:
i) A lesbian could lose custody and care of her children to her ex-husband, for no other reason than that she was a lesbian.
ii) A lesbian whose partner was ill in hospital had no next-of-kin rights and could be prevented from even visiting her if her partner’s family objected.
ii) A lesbian could be summarily sacked from her job; her union might well refuse to support her and an employment tribunal would be likely to find against her.
And so on and so forth.
It was not the lesbian-separatists who brought about change. It was the political activism of the lesbian and gay rights movement.
Read Kim Shappley’s story, written by herself. Pay attention to how firmly she held to her initial mindset and how hard she tried to convince her transgender daughter she was actually a boy like her three sons. She did everything she could to lead the child away from femininity, but the child was so insistent, persistent and consistent in a way that left no doubt it was not a whim or some stunt someone else could put HER up to.
Transgenderism is rare, but nevertheless real and deserving of respect. Most importantly, it is not harmful to anybody. But there is real danger in how you demand they use specific washrooms. A transgender girl entering a male bathroom risks severe physical bullying or rape. In a female washroom, she poses no threat to the genetic females. This is no rapist seeking a loophole for access to victims. Shame on you for suggesting she is.
“Femininity” is nothing more than a cluster of sex-based stereotypes, socially constructed & socially imposed on females. They vary over time and place and do not define what it is to be female. It sounds to me like the mom in this case was unwilling to accept a son that didn’t conform to prevailing sex-based stereotypes if she was “[doing] everything she could to lead the child away from femininity…”
Shame on you for your ignorance. Please do the research. There are over 300 reported cases of transwomen, cross dressers who may or may not be transwomen, and men who have accessed formerly all female spaces and committed crimes against women and girls. These crimes range from voyeurism to sexual assault. The policies that are being followed in all these cases are made by transwomen who insist that there cannot be any limitation on men identifying themselves as female and gaining access to these spaces. This list has over 275 of these cases: http://womanmeanssomething.com/violencedatabase/. In contrast I have found one report of a transman being attacked in a male bathroom (suggesting that they would be safer in the women’s bathroom) and two accounts of men following transwomen into female bathrooms to get them out.
Who said anything about bathrooms? If you want to convince us that your point of view is correct, you might want to respond to what is actually written here instead of a strawman.
Did Kim Shappley ever tell her child that he could be a feminine male? That it was OK for him to like sparkles and dolls instead of sports like his older brothers and it didn’t make him any less of a boy? Nobody here denies that gender nonconforming children exist, or that they often struggle with fitting in. What we have a problem with is gender nonconforming children being told that their body is wrong and that struggling to fit in as a boy makes them literally a girl.
Interesting, JK – you’ve named the problem, that “transgender girls” (that nomenclature is sort of icky, or at least I think so) are subject to male violence in restrooms. Remind me again why women are responsible for solving the problem of male violence? By compromising their own safety? If you’re feeling passionate about this issue, how about working on the real problem? You’d be doing everybody a big favor, you know.
I’m not going to hold you responsible for somebody else’s bad behavior, especially not for the behavior of a group to which you don’t even belong (and which has historically targeted your own group). I suggest you do the same.
There are millions of adult women walking around in jeans and short hair, and yet a little girl doing the same is suddenly a boy? Has the world suddenly gone quite mad?
This is female-hating at its finest. How dare females be free, by wearing jeans/pants and short hair?
This is a frightening turn that the anti-feminist backlash is taking: wear dresses and long hair, or you’ll be medically altered to *look* like you have a boy’s physiology.
I have been noticing how many conservative and /or religious parents are transing their kids. I believe that the narrative of the brave child and the brave parent treating the heartbreaking condition of having a trans child is much more comfortable for them than having to come to terms and explain to family and friends that their kid is gender non-conforming, or, gasp, gay or lesbian.
I have a lot of friends in the Orthodox Jewish community, and I don’t know anyone who’s transed his or her child. There’s something about Orthodox culture and society that’s fundamentally different from the religious Christian world, even if there are many similar rules and customs about sex roles. For example, I know a little girl who likes to dress up with a toy prayershawl, kippah, and pants, and her parents never punished her or forced her to put on “girl clothes” before coming to the Sabbath table. They’ve likewise never tried to tell her she really must be a boy.
Actually, the conservative press is filled with anti-trans articles. The people questioning the “transing” of kids are mostly conservatives these days. (Yes, some of these people are very homophobic and push their kids into certain gender roles, but they aren’t generally taking in their “tomboy” daughters or “sissy” sons to be transed.) It’s the liberal press gushing over how wonderful this child abuse is, sad to say.
They are probably clued-up parents who recognise that their daughter is playing dress-up, probably taking cues from siblings, and also taking an active interest in the culture that surrounds her.
On a different note, I have friends with children who are grateful if their kids manage to put on underpants before coming to the dinner table. Anything else is a bonus!
I believe there’s enough homophobia to go around, even in liberal circles. I live in a massively liberal area of the country, we’re the more conservative-leaning family, and WE aren’t trying to trans our kid, but EVERYONE, all the super-libs, are happy to tell us we’re hateful and don’t understand science. Every teacher and school administrator, every therapist.
This is a massive trend and there’s enough people on ALL sides who’ve lost their minds that we don’t need to say one side or the other is crazier. ANYONE, regardless of their political leanings, doing this, is wrong on this issue. Full stop.
In our neighborhood, it’s the left-leaning secular parents who have drunk the kool-aid and do all their virtue-signaling regarding the needs of the “transgender child”.
You are right about the virtue signaling parents on the left. Kids are getting transed by parents from both sides. A further question: whenever I read about a Lesbian couple transing their child it is always male to female. Does anyone know of any Lesbian couples transing a female child to male? How about gay couples?
Yes but the conservative parents who trans their kids don’t announced it like this because they are trying to cope with their kids behavior, not seek out attention or praise. They tend to keep it secret to make their social lives easier. It’s “the answer” when they can’t control the gender non conformity.
To GILAW, yes I do personally know of a lesbian couple with an “FTM” child. One of the women is a long-time queer activist and I think the odds were about 97% that at least one of her kids would “turn out” to be transgender.
That’s funny because I live in a major metropolitan city surrounded by conservative suburbs and I have NEVER seen a conservative family with a trans kid. Almost all trans kids come from liberal, left wing and yes FEMINIST homes. Even the infamous Jazz Jennings comes from a liberal democrat family. People try to label them conservatives. but its pretty easy to find out their political leanings if you do a little digging.
Then you don’t pay any attention to anything which doesn’t support your thesis. There are kids from homeschooling families — liberal, conservative, or religious — who are presenting as trans-identifying. The Grimm family who have transitioned their daughter and who was trying to get the Supreme Court to hear a school bathroom case? Conservative, very religious family. There’s a video where a school is defending its choice to teach the trans agenda and the mother they are using to push the narrative is a Republican Baptist.
My family isn’t religious, but my husband is a registered Republican and I’m an Independent and a stay-at-home mom. For the regulars here, I’m the not-Liberal. Here’s the thing — I don’t want ANYONE, regardless of their political leanings, to have to go through what I’ve gone through. What other families here have gone through. It’s unnecessary and damaging TO FAMILIES. Every single thing is NOT POLITICAL
Just coming here to say, “I told you so”? That’s no better than the transactivists. You’re just a loud-mouth jerk.
Some thoughts…
1. Even if the kid at age 3 really did say she wanted God to change her into a boy, if she denies it at age 8 then that’s what the parents and therapist should go with.
2. Who are the “people” who took issue with this child using the girls’ bathroom? Were they adults/teachers? Fellow students? Was it a one-time incident, or is it an ongoing problem? How is the school handling it? And why is social (and, inevitably, medical) transition the only proposed solution to the bathroom issue? If I am reading this right, it isn’t the CHILD who has a problem using the girls’ bathroom.
3. The pop tart thing is pure manipulation.
4. Has this doctor ever NOT labeled a kid as trans? Has this doctor ever even said, “Well, I’m not sure what’s going on here. Let’s wait and see”?
The majority of kids who express gender dysphoria (which this girl did not) go on to identify with their own sex when they go through puberty (percentage differs in these studies, some are as high as 92%, some around 70%). Gender doctors’ version of “wait and see” is to put kids on puberty blockers, socially transition them, and strongly affirm a trans identity. 100% of kids put on puberty blockers end up medically transitioning, as far as we know from the literature. This is because they are chemically prevented from experiencing the normal puberty which resolves the issue in the majority of cases. Thus, transgenderism is actually CAUSED in large part by medical treatment of children. These young people will all be sterile. Most will have a variety of medical problems stemming from lifelong dependency on steroid hormones (ranging from organ and bone problems to mood disorders), and the surgeries to remove and alter genitals seriously interfere with sexual response and sexual pleasure.
Someone like Jazz Jennings would, absent being given drugs, probably grow up to be a feminine gay man who liked having a penis and enjoyed doing drag. Jazz is stuck with a micro-penis and probably can’t experience much sexual pleasure. Has he even ever masturbated?
When you get a Pop Tart that tastes differently to its label, do you change its label to what you think it tastes like? No, you just enjoy it for what it is.
Great point. Another interesting dimension of the manipulative pop tart analogy is that it works equally well (or better) in the opposite direction—just because the strawberry pop tart (read in this case female) is wearing a cinnamon wrapper (i.e., so-called boy’s clothes and hair) doesn’t mean that inside the pop tart isn’t still strawberry (female). The strawberry pop tart is whole and entire regardless of its clothing.
Has anyone ever suggested, publicly, that perhaps Johanna Olsen-Kennedy has Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy?
Because at the very least, it appears she enjoys making herself a star, professionally, by pushing the trans child medical narrative and agenda, and riding a trendy political wave.
I think it’s more about the $$$$$$$ than being trendy or making herself a star.
Likely some of both.
Great article and journalistic research. Another great find an analysis, 4th Wave Now. Great job. Thank you!
Thanks. It’s instructive, isn’t it, to hear directly, in their own words, what these celebrity gender doctors say when they are speaking to their peers.
Yes, it sure is. Maybe that celebrity status is going to her head, and perhaps she’ll let her hair down more and she will discredit herself, even to true believers/those who don’t practice critical thinking, or are afraid to under TransMcCarthyism.
I appreciate your dedication to wading through all the conference material, etc, to find gems like these. That’s a lot of work.
Look — she’s a true believer; her whole life is invested in this narrative. She’s married to a transman, in addition. If their narrative has flaws, that is gonna cause them a maximal amount of personal psychic distress, yes? (Not to mention some cracks in the professional facade of certitude/confidence. Ergo, no flaws can be confessed.) And this is the person who is working on (theoretically) unbiased NIH-funded research.
People should know this before they take their kids to see her.
Thanks, as fmnst said, 4thwave, for ferreting this out. No matter what happens going forward, this blog is full of key documentation of an era. Not to mention some very good work in pointing out the massive logical flaws inherent in her approach.
It boggles the imagination that this discussion was unfolding at a “nonbinary” symposium when the whole enterprise of pediatric transition is actually dedicated to … propping up binary gender roles. If we were truly OK with the concept of nonbinary, we’d be telling these kids they have PERSONALITIES that defy rigid gender norms and that it’s the gender norms that are the problem, not their bodies. But no. Binaries are useful for smooth functioning of patriarchial society and must be preserved at all costs. So if your poptart package is wrong, hey, you gotta remake your entire poptart self so everything “matches.”
Heaven help us all as we continue our supportive “unsupportiveness” of our … wrongly labeled poptart kids….
These stories are so depressing and infuriating. Now yet another child is being set on the one-way road to sterilizing drugs and irreversible surgeries, all because she’s not what her parents, classmates, and teachers think a girl is supposed to be. This wasn’t happening even ten years ago, and now all these people have unquestioningly swallowed trans ideology as somehow scientific and progressive.
Medical professionals were harming gay and lesbian kids 50 years ago with conversion therapy, and now they are doing it again with the help of “progressives” who are actually reactionaries.
I don’t think the majority of “progressives” are paying much attention to the issue of transitioning kids, or they have only surface knowledge of it. This is especially true among younger progressives who don’t have kids, or don’t have a background in child development. I’ve noticed whenever a mainstream magazine publishes a story about a trans kid, the majority of people commenting are NOT in favor of transitioning children. This is true across the political spectrum.
This is just sickening– another lost child. Just let the kids be. Is this the new eugenics? Is it horribly old-fashioned to say that there are many ways to be a boy or a girl or a man or a woman? There are so many reasons why this little girl may reject strict girl gender roles. Could be many things. Biology? Environment? Socializing? Does it matter?.She wasn’t “assigned female at birth”, what a creepy phrase. She is a female, a little girl. Let her grow and become the woman she will be. We are not celebrating diversity by destroying bodies.
How dare the mean doctors notice whether a child is male or female. What monsters!
There has been no objectivity or unbiased logical approach to treating this child as clearly presented in this recording. It is pure transference of their ideology. What Johanna Olson-Kennedy means when she says “all these possibilities” is a lie – she only means that she is opening the door to one possibility – unnecessary, life-altering surgery and a life-long commitment to experimental, irreversible cross-sex drugs. No one bothers to present the most likely “possibility” to this girl which is that she will grow up accepting herself for who she is and develop her hair style and clothing choices on her own – which may actually change – unless were all wearing the styles from our 8-year-old selves these days.
So true. Great comment. Thank.you.
Surely the body is the pop tart and the wrapping is the clothes? This doctor is a monster disguised as a human being. I hope she gets free and sues him for everything he owns.
This has probably already been discussed here, but I was reading this article in the SF Chron about these parents that had two trans kids (this is ben and sara kaplan, the other odd thing is that the parents appear to be very unmatched looks-wise).
First it was their 8 year old daughter who became a boy, then it was the younger child (a preschool aged boy) who decided he was a girl after his sister transitioned to male.
I think it’s very bizarre for that to happen with both children.
Now, if this isn’t evidence of child abuse, I don’t know what is. Very scary.
I’m fairly new to all of this, but this is one of my fears. If my daughter doesn’t change her mind, will my son be influenced and be confused about his gender? I hope not.
Hopefully not, if you’re really talking to both kids about this, explaining that it’s not possible for someone to be born into the wrong body, etc., and explaining why. I hope you’re talking with your kids every day about this, in different ways, and teaching them how to dissect the nonsense in trans arguments. This is a great topic for teaching critical thinking skills.
There might be hope for your daughter. Here is a story from my family life: My cousin (female) married a “transman” who had a beard and large breasts. Then my cousin decided that she also wanted to change her gender and made an announcement to everyone requesting to be addressed as “it” while she transitioned. It’s very hard for me to refer to a person as an it, and seems wrong, but I digress as they say.
I also found it very odd that my cousin, who had an extremely liberal upbringing (at least for most of her life, but that is another story for another day…let’s just say her parents once shared beliefs regarding birth control with the duggars, but then did a complete 180 way too far in the other direction), and who was socially surounded by all kinds of trans/gender non conforming people would suddenly decide she was no longer female after having years and years of exposure that anything goes.
Her husband or spouse or whatever, then became very violent and disturbing, so she (my cousin) ended up getting a divorce and no longer wants to be another gender.
Sorry for the horrible word structure of my posts, I have problems articulating sometimes.
I hope this comes to a good end for you and your daughter (and your son). What a hard thing for a parent to go through.
There have been at least several news stories about two trans siblings, along with the stories of a trans child and parent, or trans parent and two trans kids. What’s next, everyone in the family transitioning? Three generations transitioning at once? Everyone in a set of triplets, quads, or quints transitioning? Both parents and all of their kids transitioning?
Indeed. It’s not cool to be one’s sex anymore.
If word tricks are fair game, then this one is just as valid.
No girl comes out of the womb liking dresses, glitter and long hair. These things are societally enforced gender roles. It’s pretty sad how we are regressing as a society on this issue. During the 2nd wave era of feminism gender non-conformity not being a problem was a more mainstream idea than it is today. Hopefully that means we can get back to that and stop indoctrinating kids that they are the other sex just because they like toy cars or Barbies.
This entire piece is so incredibly strongly reminiscent of the therapists and “specialists” who coerced (and yes that is the appropriate verb) children into saying they were victims of abuse back in 1980’s, during the McMartin and other day care abuse cases. If you read the transcripts of those interviews, they are virtually identical. The helping professional, set up at the start as an authority figure who must be pleased, sets forth a narrative or expectations for what the child is going to “disclose.” The professional asks leading questions and uses manipulative techniques to make sure the child “discloses” what the professional wishes to have disclosed. In those cases as in this one, the professional makes it clear what answer is desired, rewards the right answer (literally applauds it here!) and ignores or contradicts the “wrong” one. As a poster above asked, in Olson-Kennedy’s hands, is there ever a child who turns out NOT to be transgender?
Now in the false memory cases as in this one, I don’t actually think that the professional is knowingly and intentionally acting in a way that he/she knows will harm the child, but harm is being done nonetheless. In the false memory cases, people were prosecuted and jailed, and lives were ruined by false allegations and charges. Here, however, the risks are exponentially greater. Is Olson-Kennedy truly unaware of the downside risk to “wrongful transition,” or does she believe there is no such thing?
What astounds me is that the “day care abuse” cases, and their many flaws, are so well known. Today, law enforcement and other professionals who work with children in the criminal context are well aware of the risks of leading a child, implanting false memories or ideas, and of how easy it is to coerce a child. I am shocked that Olson-Kennedy is unaware, or at least purports to be, that her interviewing techniques with this girl follow the “day care script” down to the letter. It appears as an example of grossly ignorant medical practice, to say the least. And the cavalier way in which she addresses it with her audience (golly gee, do ya really think I might have made this girl a boy?) probably won’t play too terribly well in front of a jury, should that day ever come to pass.
Yes, I see the exact same parallels between what’s being done to these kids and the daycare cases of the 1980s. (Some of these daycares were also purported to be satanic cults. People seriously believed this stuff was real back then.) Any adult who has been trained in what to do if a child discloses abuse– and I HAVE been trained in this area– knows not to ask the child leading questions. But these gender docs apparently never received this training. Or on a more sinister front, maybe they DID receive this kind of training and they use it in reverse to manipulate children into giving certain answers. The pop tart analogy is a perfect example of this.
Please see the “Update” just added to the bottom of the post. An interesting response, discussing the concept of children’s suggestibility, was just sent in to us via email.
I also see strong parallels between the young women making accusations of witchcraft in Salem, and the young women today pretending Gardasil left them horribly injured. They all seem to fit a certain profile (e.g., reasonably photogenic, from at least middle-class homes, popular, rather conformist in their interests). They seem(ed) bored and starving for some kind of attention and excitement, and copying all these other young women’s stories helps/helped to feed that craving. We never seem to see stories in any of these social contagion, mass panic movements coming from families from the “wrong” side of the tracks, the poor and working-class, people who aren’t reasonably photogenic, nonconformist, unpopular, etc. They’re the “pretty” people, the ones deemed socially acceptable and sympathetic, who feature in these stories.
I see transitioning children (ten and under) and transitioning tweens/teens to be two related, but different issues.
The child transitioners are all usually very gender non-conforming. The parents frequently seem to be coercing them into doing it. The parents also seem more likely to be a little…off. I see this as partly homophobia, but also partly parents who are attention seeking. I suspect there’s some Munchausen’s by Proxy going on. And there’s been a number of male serial killers whose mothers dressed them as girls, which would make me think disturbed women have been doing this to their sons before trans was a thing.
Tween/teen transitioners, not so much. Historically most trans people were gender non-conforming and same-sex attracted, but this has changed. Obviously that’s still an element, but this is where Carrie-Anne’s theory comes in. There’s definitely social contagion going on. The need to be special. Not that homophobia and gender roles aren’t involved, but they don’t give the whole story. And there’s less parental coercion and more parental shock.
You guys know about the Transgender AMA (Ask me anything) series on Reddit this week? Today’s AMA featured a Josh Safer, medical director for transgender medicine at Boston University.
https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6p7uhb/transgender_health_ama_series_im_joshua_safer/
They will have Cecilia Dhenje this week as well. She’s lead author of this paper, on “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden”. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885
Lots of people asking very critical questions, we can add more questions?
Today, Olson-Kennedy herself will be featured. In fact, it’s “transgender week” at AMA. Also, there are special rules for this week of AMAs — anything deemed transphobic, like acknowledging that there are two, distinct physical sexes, gets a commenter banned. Full stop.
Yesterday, it didn’t go so well. The guest seemed to disappear for hours and didn’t answer all that many questions. And, there was documentation of the blocking and shadow banning that had been threatened, even for good faith questions. It was VERY reminiscent of the Q&A at the Washington Post a while back.
Yikes. By limiting the questions, it paints a false picture of people’s opinions and concerns, and doesn’t provide answers to the tough questions. He lacks integrity, that he would participate in such a program.
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As a Christian Catholic, I can tell you that I wish my daughter would be a lesbian instead of transitioning into a shell of the person she used to be. I can see long term what will become of her. She has family history of stroke, blood clots, diabetes and uterine cancer. And her trans biological woman girl friend claims to be her boy friend. To me, they are both lesbians who don’t anyone to know. They can’t even love themselves and their bodies – they need to be destroyed to look like boys? It makes no sense. They describe themselves as gay men??? I am so confused.
What a nightmare! Sorry you are going through this. Your daughter and her friend sound like 2 very lost souls.
Here’s an article– with a video– about intersex children. There are some similarities here, particularly in the way the doctors scare the kids’ parents into early interventions rather than a wait-and-see approach. But these kids are getting actual surgery, often while they’re still babies and toddlers. Thankfully, no one is doing this with trans toddlers yet, although under the current trajectory I can see that happening.
Intersex activists are now taking an approach that’s very different from what we’re seeing from trans activities– they want doctors to leave these kids alone and let them grow up and decide for themselves what (if anything) needs to be “fixed”. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/25/interview-intersex-babies-dont-need-fixing
This article was very thought provoking! Just one comment. In the article they state that up to 2% of persons are intersex. 1.7% is the figure that Blackless et al., (2000; chief researcher Anne Fausto-Sterling) determined and published in the American Journal of Human Biology. However Dr Carrie Hull refuted this figure in the same journal in 2003, and put it at 0.25%. Dr Anne Fausto-Sterling, in the same journal in 2003, conceded that she and her colleagues had made mistakes in their calculations.
Thanks, Mark for your sympathy. They have each other so I am not needed for much these days. I try not to judge and am glad for the small relationship we have left. And am gently acting like Columbo in my approach. We have indirectly agreed to disagree. I believe this is a journey that is wildly accepted at colleges. And the kids who are “cisgenders” are going along to get along. If I were in college in this cesspool, I would be a non conforming agender (that means I don’t want to talk about it). I always hated labels.
I just got stuck reading an article about de-transitioners and how they are really getting beat up for not wanting to inject hormones or after years of injecting suffer from some serious physical problems so they decided to stop. The name calling by the activists just amazes me. Doesn’t this make perfect sense? These activists are so mean. Their egos are HUGE. To believe that one cannot be EVER mistaken is not human. It’s just makes me sad.
So, if these researchers can admit mistakes in their calculations, isn’t it possible to have a mistaken diagnosis? I almost feel like I could walk into a clinic and get diagnosed myself because I know all the right things to say. It happens all the time in other situations. A friend of mine for years told me of a personal mental diagnosis and after sharing it with my husband (a doctor himself) he stated “There’s no way he has that”. But he is taking medication to control it and doing great – maybe that’s because he really doesn’t have that. Yet, the doctor a life long medical patient – yay! Actually he seems quite glad about this.
I hoping we get some action soon to slow this down for these kids and get some policies in place. That video is so leading and it’s sad that she’s laughing like it’s some joke to her while she destroys another life. In fact it’ pretty unprofessional. It does with “Here’s a puppy but you can only take it home if you’re boy”. Wouldn’t it be prudent if these so called “doctors” would think to ask parents: “Hey what is their medical history of mental illness or depression, anxiety, bullying, trauma, etc. ie, did you notice any non conforming behavior as a child?” When they were babies, they sure were interested in medical histories at those one year physicals but this has just dropped at the waist side. I have a son too and observed both my kids in play. Our daughter played with dolls, hated leggos and trucks and had plenty opportunity to play her brother but she wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, she had NO INTEREST in any boy stuff and wore dresses without complaint until high school. That’s when she learned about all this crap from certain internet activists when she did not socially fit in and was GULLIBLE. Her so called friends who supporter her have all moved forward in their lives while she’s stuck in a different dimension. I was never given any opportunity to comment on my then 18 year old seeking secret treatments. No, they encourage teenagers to throw their parents and family away for not going along and for asking some pretty darn good questions.
I agree with Jens on letting them grow up – I believe AFTER 25 is a good age. I think I was 26 when I felt “grown up” enough to get married, 30 when I felt capable of having kids, get a dog and take care of something other than a plant. Oh and btw, my daughter had a crush on a boy in 8th grade and dated another young man who crushed her spirit so, frankly I think this aspect of social stress really needs to be looked at. And if a trans person likes both sexes why not wait? This really takes the cake when the person is not associating with either sex but still encouraged to take hormones? I have seen this too in biological women who claim to be transmen. This should really put a red flag up for doctors especially when a teenage girl is not sure and is clearly having a self esteem problem. All the girls who were encouraging my daughter to “be herself” are now living normal cisgender lives. Girls can be mean and extremely manipulative especially when they are jealous of a beautiful, smart and kind classmate.
I also think parents are just desperate to help their kids and are listening to doctors thinking that they are doing the right thing because they are not offered any alternatives because that would go against their ideology. For us, it’s easy to see the manipulation but when you are swimming it, it’s really hard to tell where the sharks and minnows are. Meanwhile, your child is crying for help. It’s really sad. We hoped that forbidding this until after college would work, but it didn’t. The activist swirled in and provided a path. Now, we are chasing the train wreck and hoping she survives.
Wishing you all the best with your relationship with your daughter and her girlfriend. It must be very difficult for you. I hope that they both decide to desist one day. It sounds terribly convoluted and unnecessarily traumatic to both be transmen and then fall in love with each other. Why not just be gender non-conforming lesbians? When I was young it was done to be non-conforming. Now it seems trendy to be conforming to stereotypes. I mean ultra-feminine women or transmen are such stereotypes. Why not a gender non-conforming woman. It is far more empowering. They can love their bodies and do and wear what they like.
Having said that, if someone over the age of at least 25 is desperate to transform their bodies, for whatever reason, then it is quite understandable. But I don’t believe anyone whose frontal lobes of their brain is still not completely formed should take that step. And they are only completely formed at 25. I do believe that society’s pressure on men not to wear dresses and makeup etc, and snide comments made by some people about very gender nonconforming women, is a big cause of this whole problem. But maybe that is what we should all be campaigning for, and not the use of cross-hormones and surgery. I just hate it when activists say that in order to affirm your gender identity you have to take cross-hormones and have surgery. I would be very happy if there could be some campaigning to completely debunk that.
I get that some people hate parts of their bodies, for whatever reason, and that they can become suicidal about it, but I feel that we need to address that hatred far more seriously. Not just resort to hormones and surgery so quickly.
I am sick of hearing that no-one would decide they are transgender without giving it a lot of agonising thought. I think that might have been true 10 years ago. But not anymore. I think some people have given it a lot of thought, and have not been influenced by the media etc, but now days I would say that the overwhelming majority of transgender children and teens and young people have been influenced.
Terrible to hear that people who try and detransition are treated so badly. That is very cult-ish!
Sharon, I think you are absolutely right that there has been something of a “sea change” in the way that people perceive gender and transgender issues. I think that before a few years ago, people were much more focused on the medical procedures and their potential risks; now, not so much. It’s especially true when many transgender activists claim that a person can be the opposite sex, while doing nothing whatsoever medically, or appearance-wise, but that their “gender identity” must still be respected.
As to the specifics of the medical procedures, though, one thing I also think happens a lot is that descriptions of the down sides of transition are actively censored by the activist community. I’m not necessarily talking about regret per se, but about people who find that the drugs and surgeries cause loads of unpleasant side effects, or create disabilities (in terms of activities the person can no longer do), or just don’t “work out” the way the person expected. There seems to be a lot of censorship in the transgender community, where people feel pressured to minimize the bad sides and to maximize the good ones. This is incredibly misleading for people who might be doing research to figure out whether transition is for them… I’m not saying that only horror stories should be heard, there do seem to be plenty of transgender adults whose transitions have worked out fine and they are completely satisfied, but it’s also very unhelpful for people who haven’t embarked on this yet, to only present the positive side.
In the pediatric context, of course, the biggest issue is that in 2017, nobody really knows what will be in store for the children, 10-20-30 years out. What scarce information we do have, for instance in the context of Lupron administered for precocious puberty, is not at all hopeful. People in this field should at least be honest and admit that it’s entirely conjectural and that anybody purporting to “guarantee” a good outcome is either deluded or a liar.
A strawberry tart packaged as a cinnamon tart.
It’s clear that Johanna Olsen-Kennedy believes self and body are two different things, that the body can misrepresent the self, and that the self must be freed from the body’s deceptions.
In a word, what she’s teaching children like this eight-year-old is somatophobia — hostility to the body.
Check this out! Looks like the trans community doesn’t want detransitioners at their own conference! Very sad and telling. I guess they don’t think they make mistakes or even care about people they are hurting for life.
https://thirdwaytrans.com/
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