It’s Time to Reconsider Gender Dysphoria in Children
How the spread of trans children is a harmful trend
“One must call this for what it is. It’s ideological. It’s fueled by an unscientific dogma that takes away power from the parents and allows children to be mislead and manipulated.”
Historically speaking, we are living in an era of the utmost progressive change in ways ranging from societal to economic. Despite how much you might hear about the patriarchy and institutional racism, we are living in the most prosperous, humanitarian, and egalitarian society the world has ever seen:
Interracial marriage has become accepted by more than 85% of the population, women are graduating from college at faster rates than men and their wages are increasing, LGBT groups are now over represented in Hollywood, etc etc.
It is often said that society is always moving forward, meaning that ultimately we’re always moving in a direction of progress. But this is is a slippery slope to go down on. Not long ago, physicians thought they were helping mentally ill patients by giving them lobotomies, which ended up leaving them in vegetative states.
The advances in genetics enable ideas such as human cloning and eugenics to be a possibility, even though most people believe that these would be inherently immoral. There are countless other examples of people doing — or having the potential to do — more harm than good, all in the name of progress.
How do we know when we’re going too far? We now look back at humanity's mess-ups and think of them as obvious, but the people that committed these mistakes were probably convinced that they were doing the right thing. It’s hard to come to a conclusion about something like gene cloning since the judgment ultimately comes down to our frameworks on morality.
In the case of psychiatric wards using lobotomies, the situation is more straightforward: clinicians at these places pushed this ‘treatment’ with little to no evidence of its efficacy. They relied on personal biases, not hard science to push these treatments.
This is not to say that all physicians who performed lobotomies were heartless people reenacting the scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. They probably thought they were doing the right thing, but they were misguided.
This brings us to the pressing issue of this article: transgender children. There has been a noticeable rise of children with gender dysphoria in the US, with the rise of gender dysphoria clinics following. In the UK, referrals to these clinics have increased by over 900%.
There has also been an explosion of children identifying themselves as trans. This is mirrored by the generous amount of media attention given to child drag queens such as Desmond Napoles and Nemis Quinn in shows like Good Morning America.
This proliferation of transgender children has forced doctors to begin considering treatment for children who present these issues. If the child exhibits constant gender behavior consistent with their gender identity, these doctors might put them on puberty blockers to delay their normal development.
They might also put them under cross-hormonal therapy, which fundamentally changes the child’s body chemistry and can arguably change them as a person. There have been instances of taxpayer-funded research that attempt to validate transgenderism, such as the one when double mastectomies were performed on healthy thirteen-year-old girls.
The problem with these treatments is that the side effects of these treatments remain largely unknown. Moreover, the side effects that are actually known can be life-changing. Children and any person who undergoes cross-hormone therapy will probably become sterile. Research on adults also shows that hormone therapy can lead to cognitive impairment and adverse health effects such as blot clots, cancer, and heart disease.
It is also widely accepted that the effects of cross-hormone treatments are irreversible. Blocking off puberty or attempting to induce hormonal changes in the body also has the potential to impair a child’s normal development, which can result in weaker bone development, prevention of normal brain maturation, infertility, and many other unknown complications. Nonetheless, journals such as the AMA Journal of Ethics support the use of these treatments, quoting:
“As health care professionals, we have an obligation to alleviate suffering — and for our pediatric patients with GID, who are undoubtedly suffering, suppression of puberty is a safe and easy way to begin to do so”
But is absurd. The suppression of puberty is anything but safe. Even if the potential repercussions weren’t as dangerous, giving this choice to children is still a terrible idea. Prepubescent and adolescent brains are not capable of properly assessing risk, especially one at this scale. These treatments might cause irreversible damage that children just can’t envision.
And given that 75–95% of children grow out of their gender dysphoria, the risks are too high. That said, it’s usually up to the parent’s discretion whether or not their child will undergo such treatments, but how could a parent decide something like that?
The initial diagnosis, though, actually depends almost entirely on the child. As previously said, the guidelines for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria consist of the child exhibiting non-conforming traits consistently. This method often fails to account for outside influences and the situation at home. This is when we should face the uncomfortable truth: most of what influences transgenderism is not nature, it’s overwhelmingly nurtured.
Most children who come out as trans are being influenced by a narrative that paints transgenderism in more than positive light. It’s not just that they’re seeing transgenderism as something positive, many see it as a standard to follow.
Social media has a big part to play in this. Online forums and social media groups have created new, non-heterosexual spaces on the Internet where identity is not determined by an individual’s past. The rise in what is called rapid offset gender dysphoria is being aided by these communities. Recounts from parents such as this one bring to light how harmful this influence can be. These communities convince children that they are transgender, ‘educate’ them on what to say on how to act for a successful diagnosis and manipulate them so much that they might just run away from their parents if they don’t support their new identities. Much like there are go-to guides for cooking or for completing games, there are also how-to guides that teach children how to get their doctor to sign off on their trans treatment.
Additionally, of course, the mainstream also contributes to this problem. It has not been educating the public on ‘gender issues,’ it has been promoting awareness and acceptance of the transgender theory as uncontested truth. There is little to no skepticism about whether or not these trends are good. Everyone who presents reasonable doubt is branded as ‘transphobic’ and bigoted. This is all driven by the desire to be morally just and inclusive. It might sound harsh, but doctors who give the green light for transgender treatments are essentially using children as guinea pigs to test the transgender theory.
One would like to say that this is just irresponsibility from the medical scene, as it would make dealing with the problem much easier. However, this issue extends to the judiciary. In states such as California and Delaware, gender-identity-based legislation makes it easier for children to receive “gender-affirming health care and gender-affirming behavioral health care”. In fact, there have been cases of courts punishing parents for not indulging their children’s whims. In Ohio, a court ruled to transfer parental rights to the grandparents due to the parents’ failure to transition their child.
One must call this for what it is. It’s ideological. It’s fueled by an unscientific dogma that takes away power from the parents and allows children to be misled and manipulated, albeit for the “right” reasons. As the proverb says, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
Sadly, there are more cases like these every day. Transgenderism is treated as the new anti-racism, with anyone who dares disavow it being silenced and sometimes even punished. Regrettably, this breed of political correctness is spreading in the medical community.
A perfect example of how easily the medical community is bending to ideologues is the firing of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist who specializes in gender dysphoria and encourages children to be content with their gender. Dr. Zucker was the victim of a smear campaign, in which anonymous false accusations were made against his practice to make it seem as if he was abusing transgender children and putting them under “conversion therapy”. No such thing was true.
The cases of doctors disregarding the parent’s wishes and continuing their irresponsible treatments anyway are also not uncommon. The findings of Dr. Kenneth et al. show that physicians must account for other “psychological and psycho-social vulnerabilities” when deciding on a treatment plan. Yet an increasing amount of doctors are overlooking these factors and proceed straight to treatment.
Accounting for people with real issues
The aforementioned by no means attempts to downplay the issues of people suffering from genuine gender dysphoria or transgenders. There are clearly many people who undergo real issues relating to gender and sexuality. Or at least, they believe they do. Some research suggests that transgender people, children included, usually deal with several other mental issues. Taking a look at transgender people’s exorbitantly high suicide statistics paints a clear enough picture.
Transitioning is hailed as one of the ways to alleviate these issues, but even that isn’t so surefire. As expected, unfortunately, from people with a myriad of other mental issues, the suicide rates stay relatively the same after sex reassignment, some research on gender reassignment even finding that attempted suicides go up by a fifth since these patients regret having changed their sex.
As much as our first impulse might be to attribute this to transphobia or discrimination, that’s not a good explanation for this phenomenon. It also doesn’t get us anywhere. Trans and LGBT rights seem to be fought for on every other street corner. Yet as much as these efforts are commendable, an increasing amount of rights and societal acceptance doesn’t seem to be alleviating the pain for trans people. The argument of discrimination also doesn’t explain why children are so drawn to the idea of transitioning.
For whatever reason, ‘gender-bending seems to be a safe haven for many troubled children. Whether it is the comradely, the sense of being different, or whatever other thing draws them in, it’s quite concerning how these trans communities are essentially serving as a scapegoat for all of life’s problems.
The parallels to the Fapstronauts who believe that celibacy will redefine their lives are noticeable, both groups think that if they take the magic pill their problems will go away. Nonetheless, doing NoFap is virtually riskless, whilst undergoing gender reassignment treatments can ruin one’s life. The decisions that children who believe they might have gender dysphoria could impact the rest of their lives.
As quoted from this Research Digest article.
Life can sometimes feel as complicated as the Gordian knot, the legendary challenge that was seemingly impossible to disentangle. It’s understandable to weigh up a radical solution, like Alexander the Great cleaving the knot with a single sword-stroke: to abandon your external environment for a new home, to step outside of the confines of an identity that may be the source of the myriad issues plaguing you.
Situations such as schools asking children as young as four what their gender identity is have only exacerbated this issue. Some schools and libraries also host adult drag queens for “story time” sessions, in which they also talk about their experiences and “educate”. But this is no education, it’s indoctrination. Children don’t have the mental development to realize that just putting on different clothes doesn’t change your sex.
It is time for us to realize that being progressive is not always a good idea. If the boundaries are pushed too far and too quickly, we can end up disregarding science and the well-being of innocent children, all in the name of a progressive ideology. It is time to reconsider where we’re going in regards to gender dysphoria in children.
