In a recent article, Used Book Store owner John B. Kuhner critiques the irony of “Banned Books Week,” noting that many featured books are not banned but heavily promoted and required reading.
He argues that the event has become a marketing ploy and a tool for ideological gatekeeping rather than a defense of free expression. Hypocrisy arises as the same entities that decry “banned books” often support the suppression of titles like Irreversible Damage, by Abigail Shrier and author Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.
“Banned Books Week” ends up protecting mainstream opinions while ignoring genuine censorship issues.
You can read more about this hypocrisy at: First Things.
Dr. Randi Ettner, the chief psychologist at the Chicago Gender Center, describes the standard of care treatment plan promoted by transgender activists, otherwise known as the “Affirmative Care Model“:
• Changes in gender expression and role, consistent with one’s gender identity (also referred to as social role transition).
• Psychotherapy for purposes such as addressing the negative impact of stigma, alleviating internalized transphobia, enhancing social and peer support, improving body image, promoting resiliency, etc.
• Hormone therapy to feminize or masculinize the body.
• Surgery to alter primary and/or secondary sex characteristics.1“Declaration of Randi Ettner, Ph.D., U.S. District Court, Middle District of North Carolina, Case 1:16-cv-236-TDS-JEP, p. 5.”
This plan is often called “transitioning” but some transgender activists regard that term as stigmatizing and inaccurate. From the perspective of the transgender person they are simply engaged in a process of “settling in to themselves” or “coming home” to what they always were inside.2“PFLAG, Our Trans Loved Ones: Questions and Answers for Parents, Families, and Friends of People Who Are Transgender and Gender Expansive (2008, 2015), p. 9, https://www.pflag.org/ourtranslovedones.”
A similar linguistic jujitsu is at work when activists prefer to speak of gender-affirming therapies instead of sex reassignment therapies. (Since when did it become the primary job of doctors to affirm?). For women these affirming therapies mean life-long testosterone, double mastectomies and the creation of a penis (phalloplasty). For men, life-long estrogen, gonadectomy, penectomy, and the creation of a vagina (vaginoplasty). Here are some affirming treatment details:
“Sex reassignment surgeries available to the MTF3male to female transsexual persons consist of gonadectomy, penectomy, and creation of a vagina. The skin of the penis is often inverted to form the wall of the vagina. The scrotum becomes the labia majora. Cosmetic surgery is used to fashion the clitoris and its hood, preserving the neurovascular bundle at the tip of the penis as the neurosensory supply to the clitoris. Most recently, plastic surgeons have developed techniques to fashion labia minora. Endocrinologists should encourage the transsexual person to use their tampon dilators to maintain the depth and width of the vagina throughout the postoperative period until the neovagina is being used frequently in intercourse. Genital sexual responsivity and other aspects of sexual function should be preserved after genital sex reassignment surgery…. Another major effort is the removal of facial and masculine-appearing body hair using either electrolysis or laser treatments. Other feminizing surgery, such as that to feminize the face, is now becoming more popular.
Sex reassignment surgeries available to the FTM4female to male transsexual persons have been less satisfactory. The cosmetic appearance of a neopenis is now very good, but the surgery is multistage and very expensive. Neopenile erection can be achieved only if some mechanical device is imbedded in the penis, e.g. a rod or some inflatable apparatus. Many choose a metaidoioplasty that exteriorizes or brings forward the clitoris and allows for voiding while standing. The scrotum is created from the labia majora with a good cosmetic effect, and testicular prostheses can be implanted. These procedures, as well as oophorectomy, vaginectomy, and complete hysterectomy, are undertaken after a few years of androgen therapy and can be safely performed vaginally with laparoscopy.
The ancillary surgery for the FTM transition that is extremely important is the mastectomy. Breast size only partially regresses with androgen therapy. In adults, discussion about mastectomy usually takes place after androgen therapy is begun. Because some FTM transsexual adolescents present after significant breast development has occurred, mastectomy may be considered before age 18.”5“Hembree et al., “Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons,” 3149.”
Again, like I did in a previous post I must ask, who is engaged in conversion therapy here?
Is it the one who is trying to help a person align their thoughts and feelings with the body they were given at birth or the professional who disregards the body and proposes irreversible radical surgeries combined with life-long hormone treatments in hopes of aligning the outer body with a patient’s inner desires?
Who is the conversion therapist?Gender Identity Ideologues pin that label on those clinicians and pastors who try to help an individual become more comfortable with their immutable biological sex. These concerned professionals and pastors counsel them not to transition away from their birth sex. It’s called Talk Therapy. And it is very effective, especially for children with gender dysphoria. Trans Activists and Gender Identity Ideologues regard these efforts as immoral and professional clinicians are forbidden in some states and other countries from steering individuals toward accepting their birth sex.
Leveling the charge of “conversion therapist” packs quite a rhetorical punch because these therapeutic techniques are said to be just like some of the therapies used in the past to “convert” homosexuals. That’s not true. It’s Talk Therapy! And also, as I’ve said before homosexuals don’t deny their biological sex. This is different. Helping someone align their thoughts and desires with the indisputable facts of their body is not converting them into someone different. Leveling the charge of “conversion therapist” on those professionals or pastors who don’t “affirm” is Orwellian doublespeak. Don’t believe it. And push back. Firmly. Even if you are called a bigot. Do it anyway.
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I’m a Classic Christian and regard Gender Ideology as anti-creational to the core. This blog is about “God’s Good Creation.” That’s why I’m writing about Gender Ideology. And “speaking up” as I’m confident Jesus would.
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]
If you would like more detail on how my Christian worldview informs my understanding of Sex and today’s Gender Ideology please read the following posts.
Several years ago many of our Elementary school students were introduced to “The Genderbread Person (playing off the old-timey “Gingerbread Man.”). (Click on image for bigger view.)
Let me highlight a few things. And as I do this remember the video at the end of the post “My Truth, Your Truth” where most students in the video were prepared to accept the self-identity of a 5’9″ white guy who declared that he really was a 6’5″ Chinese woman. Most students were unwilling to say he was wrong to make such a claim. (video is at end of this post too.)
You may be puzzled as to why those students would be so irrational. Answer: they were taught to think this way. Especially about sex and gender.
Okay, top left, we read: “Gender isn’t binary. It’s not either/or. In many cases it’s both/and. A bit of this. A dash of that.” Gender is on a spectrum.
Most of us would be willing to say that unlike sex, gender roles shift depending on social norms and needs. There is definitely a social component to gender roles and how sexual differences are presented. But we are not willing to say gender itself is untethered from biology, unaligned with biological sex. If your “internal sense” of gender does not match your physical sex at all then that is a disorder to be lovingly addressed, not an identity to be accepted. The inclusion of biological sex in the genderbread breakdown is tacit acknowledgement of this connection.
But if you read the text at the top right just above the 4 blue rectangles in the “Gender Identity” section you notice some cognitive dissonance creeping in and find the following:
“4 (of infinite) possible plot and label combos.” The 4 listed are “woman” “man” “two-spirit” & “gender-queer.”
If all this sounds confusing to you, imagine your kindergartner.
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The Gender Activists eventually agreed that including biological sex in the genderbread breakdown was no longer appropriate. Also, they thought the Genderbread Person looked too much like a guy. So now our grade school students have been introduced to the more gender neutral Gender Unicorn (although the phallic symbol on the top of the head seems problematic, so who knows how long the Unicorn will last.) (Click on image for bigger view.)
No mention now of biological sex. Instead we get “sex assigned at birth.” Biology has been cancelled.
A strategic linguistic move is under way here. If sex is assigned, then it can be reassigned via hormones and surgery. Most of us don’t believe sex is assigned at birth. Most believe sex is recognized at birth or often before when the ultrasound pictures reveal the happy news, boy or girl.
Actually to be technically precise boy gamete meets girl gamete after the penis deposits sperm (boy gamete) which the egg (girl gamete) receives, sex is determined at that ‘magic’ moment. Contrary to the ancient belief that the mother bore responsibility for whether the child became male or female, it is actually the male sperm which determines the biological sex of the zygote, the new human organism. Sex is not assigned at birth. And the standard embryology textbooks in our medical schools agree. Here are three of them.
According to Langman’s Medical Embryology, the sex of a new organism is determined at fertilization: “An X-carrying sperm produces a female (XX) embryo, and a Y-carrying sperm produces a male (XY) embryo. Hence, the chromosomal sex of the embryo is determined at fertilization.“1T. W. Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2004), 40.. The sex of the new organism is created at that moment. Not at birth.
William J. Larsen’s Human Embryology is equally straightforward in its definition of “sex determination” in the glossary: “The male sex is determined by presence of a Y sex chromosome (XY), and female sex is determined by absence of a Y chromosome (XX).”2William J. Larsen, Human Embryology (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 2001), 519.
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology gives more detail here: “The embryo’s chromosomal sex is determined at fertilization by the kind of sperm (X or Y) that fertilizes the oocyte; hence, it is the father rather than the mother whose gamete determines the sex of the embryo. Fertilization by an X-bearing sperm produces a 46, XX zygote, which normally develops into a female, whereas fertilization by a Y-bearing sperm produces a 46, XY zygote, which normally develops into a male.”3Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (Philadelphia: Saunders/Elsevier, 2003), 35.
It’s a very binary process.
Notice the word “normally” in the preceding graph. An XX embryo normally develops into a female. An XY embryo normally develops into a male. But in very rare instances, pathologies can disrupt normal development. These abnormalities have been transformed into “differences” by Gender Ideologues, ostensibly for the purpose of not stigmatizing those who have these disorders. But the Activists also have a larger ideological purpose. These recategorized “differences” provide “evidence” for dismantling the male-female sex binary as an ol fashioned and downright bigoted understanding of human difference.
The end result is the normalization of disorder. My next post will take a closer look at Biological Sex and Disorders of Sexual Development.
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There are many ways to be a boy and many ways to be a girl. But these different ways don’t make you less than a boy or girl. We can attack bullying (often the stated goal of gender sensitivity training) without succumbing to the notion that biological facts are irrelevant. But that is what we are being asked to do. And that is what our children are being taught. Revisit this video and see the result of detaching gender identity from biology:
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There is a Culture of Androgyny and gender confusion sweeping through the Western World. Is this the world we want to live in?
Even if you disagree with the Christian understanding of the created order, that God made us male and female, certainly you must agree that Christian parents (and other parents) should be allowed to teach their kids on this subject in a manner that they deem most appropriate. Schools should not be allowed to wrest this authority away from parents. Historically that has never been the school’s charter. But increasingly that is what they think they are there for. Schools have become “life coaches.” And parents are beginning to notice this is not working out so well.
Think of Julie in the last post. No matter how much she desires to be a man and perform like a man, she is never going to be a man. Her most basic molecular truth, a truth that structured her physical reality, reveals XX chromosomes. That will never change. And she will continue to drop ballerinas. Until an adult stops the madness. Or she runs out of ballerinas to drop. Manhood will never happen for her. You can restructure ballet routines all you want. You can decide to do away with uplifted motions because you don’t want to discriminate against Trans-men who can’t perform at that level. But the beauty of ballet’s male/female dance will be diminished. To go along with this affirming charade and develop public policies on the basis of a delusion is lunacy. Previous generations would know this. Why don’t we?
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