Trans Activism

What walks like a teen fad and talks like a teen fad...is probably a teen fad. Celebrating trans is a growing trend and something I’m not okay with. But then again, I’m not a doctor set out to make millions off confused teenagers and desperate parents. I’m not big pharma that stands to make billions off these kids and the services including endocrinologists, sexual health physicians, speech pathologists, nurses, social workers, child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychologists. I feel sorry for the parents that must navigate this with their teenagers. As if raising kids isn’t hard enough. Am I the only one? 

In Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our daughters she alerts us to the newest trend in internet support groups that indoctrinate young girls into believing gender identity as the root of all their problems.  If Shrier is right, a great many people have been complicit in practices that are proving very harmful to adolescent girls. She describes genuine gender dysphoria and distinguishes it from the sudden surge in transgender identification among young women. She interviews doctors, therapists, and school administrators who “fast-track” trans girls’ demands without investigating whether there is any underlying history of psychological distress, and she wonders to what extent politics has trumped science when it comes to gender dysphoria. She looks at how our culture, to protect the feelings of trans people, increasingly describes women using dehumanizing terminology such as “breeders,” “bleeders,” “people who menstruate,” and “individuals with a cervix.” One moment you are just an awkward and confused teenage girl, the next moment you are taking testosterone and denouncing your parents for refusing to use the male pronouns. One parent said her daughter just didn’t seem like “a boy trapped in a girl’s body.” She seemed like a girl who had had a lot of trouble fitting in with peers, who had been introduced to an explanation and latched onto it. 

"Well, I would rather have a living son than a dead daughter", an argument that many activists use focusing on the higher suicide rates and poor mental health of people who suffer from gender dysphoria. Shrier says there are no good long-term studies indicating that gender dysphoria or suicidal thoughts diminish after medical transition. 

Nearly all novel problem teenagers face today traces itself back to 2007 and the introduction of Steve Jobs’ iPhone. If you want a well-adjusted preteen, teenager throw out their cell phone. Demi Lovato, a talented pop music star has changed back to regular pronouns again. She didn’t want to be a they-them anymore because she’s feeling more feminine these days. It probably got too confusing to write songs.