Real Women Are Better Off with Truth

Write what you know, they say. Here’s something I know from experience: being a woman. I can’t say I know what all women experience, but I know the basics, plus my own experience.

And I want to say, to those “woke” people claiming that a man can be a woman—or that a woman can be a man, for that matter—are wrong. Offensively wrong.

What happens when a person goes through a so-called “transition” from male to female? They dress in stereotypical feminine ways—dresses, maybe sexy or maybe frilly. They put on makeup. They may take hormones or undergo surgeries to disguise the original body parts and produce the appearance of feminine ones.

Sometimes it’s a pretty effective disguise. Voice is still an issue, but some women have somewhat deep voices, so they might possibly be in the target range.

But is being a woman just a matter of “presenting” as a woman before the world?

Does it come down to clothes, makeup, and chemical and surgical castration, and that makes someone a woman?

As a real woman, I resent the very assertion.

There are so many things—and such a range of things—that come with being a real woman.

Me, with a couple of awesome real women.
We've been in each other's lives since freshman year of college.

There’s the physiological. There’s understanding what it means when your hormones affect your mood and behavior, and sometimes sabotage your otherwise capable self. There’s the preparation for producing offspring that begins at puberty—changing your shape, your interests, and your sense of calendar timing.

There’s the tremendous change that comes with pregnancy—with the miracle of growing a person inside you. There are the physical effects of that: nausea, tiredness, sinus congestion, discomfort, looser joints leading to difficulty walking near the end. Plus the thrill, fear, and anticipation of this permanent change to your life.

Then comes the actual birth. Women, when they get together, tell and compare their birth stories. I’m not certain I know why. It’s not to one-up one another; it’s to participate in the sisterhood of mothers. We share these life-changing stories.

No matter how unpleasant the pregnancy—and delivery—that new life in your arms is miraculously worth it. And this new little one teaches you something about love that you thought you understood before, but you realize you didn’t. It gives you a glimpse of the love of Heavenly Father for His children—all of us.

And there’s the psychological. No matter what you see about the terrors of having a house full of “littles,” messing things up, doing gross things, and upending your previous order—those little ones teach you how to be a better, more loving, more patient, more service-giving person. Without them, you might never become the person of your potential.

Me with a grandson 5 years ago

A woman understands how this person with a heartbeat that used to be inside her now moves through the world separate from her. And she understands what it is to see this young person grow into an adult, who will leave home and start a new family, hopefully. Which is both painful and beautifully satisfying.

A woman knows what it is to grow older, and focus less on appearance, more on being productive in other ways than producing new humans. She knows the mix of feelings surrounding losing fertility and moving beyond that time, including the new emotional upheaval of menopause, followed by something of a calm beyond that.

Let’s include women who never have children. Is she still a woman? Yes, of course. She might be infertile but will still have gone through all those physiological changes in preparation of the potential, which women’s bodies do.

And we include some women who aren’t loving mothers, or even good people. They’ll still understand things about being a woman that a man does not—cannot—comprehend.

Being a woman is a human thing—a very specific human thing. Different from being a man. That’s regardless of job choice, talents, tendencies toward being outgoing or introverted, logical or emotional, brainy or… not. Women cover the whole range of humanness—except everything that is specifically what a man is.

So, when a tiny fraction of humanity—around 3 per thousand people[i]—decides they want to be something that they simply are not, and closer to just 1 per thousand people who are male but want to claim they are female,[ii]  what does a real woman think about that? In today’s world, are we even allowed to have an opinion about that? In locker rooms and sports all over, real women are told to shut up about it. Suck it up. Suffer in humiliation. Be powerless.

Me with two more awesome real women.
We started a homeschool group together back in 2005.
Julie (left) has a book coming out soon and does a
podcast on grief recovery.

Here’s another thing about being a woman: We’re better off with truth. When speaking up about unfairness at the workplace. When speaking up about unwanted sexual interest anywhere. When speaking up about rape absolutely every time it occurs. When speaking up about males trying to take over women’s sports.

Women are better off with truth.

What about that tiny percentage of about one per thousand people who decides to claim they are a woman even though they were born male? Let’s try treating them with honesty. We can do that while also treating them with dignity. We can offer them sympathy for a mental disorder that isn’t being treated very logically by the medical and psychological communities. We can hope for better treatment for them—even expect that and pressure for it.

We can accept that they want to present themselves as something that they are not, and we can say, “You’re welcome to do that, as long as you do not require me to participate.” We don’t have to pretend that their “transition” is real. We don’t have to treat them to the portions of life that are reserved for women—out of respect for women—such as in locker rooms and in women’s sports.

We don’t have to lie and say they are an exception to the scientific fact that, if you are born male, you can’t be a woman.

We don’t have to use a pronoun that they demand—a part of speech that refers to a person generally in their absence in place of a name, for brevity or when the name may not be known. Why should anyone be allowed to control the way someone refers to them when they are absent or unknown?

We can speak up loudly and repeatedly that we will not allow this fraud to be perpetrated on children, and we can push for laws to protect children from the permanent damage this fraud has been subjecting them to.

We can expect them to respect our differences of belief.

And if they do not, we may have to get louder about how offensive this tiny minority has been toward real women. We have tolerated their offensive lies long enough, pretending they can reduce everything that we women are down to makeup, clothes, and outer appearance.

Women are much more than that. And telling the truth about that is better for us all.

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[i] We’re using the whole population total of .3% transgender. Children are likely lower. See “The Search for the Best Estimate of the Transgender Population,” New York Times, June 9, 2015.

[ii] We’re assuming, for simplicity, that half of transgender individuals are males who present as females. So, of the 3 per thousand, that leaves 1.5, rounded down to the nearest whole person.

This Is Child Abuse

The case of James Younger, the 7-year-old being transitioned into a girl by his mother, against the will of his father, was ruled on earlier today. (I wrote about this case here.)

Jeff Younger and his son James
Image from SaveJames.com website

Earlier this week a jury ruled against the father, who was asking for sole conservatorship to prevent the mother’s transitioning their son—ruling that there should be a sole conservator, but it would not be the father. That was devastating news. (I’d like to know what went on in jury deliberations to get them to this decision. I think there was one dissenter, but a unanimous jury was not required.)

But today the judge, Kim Cooks, of the 255 District family court in Dallas, seems to have overruled the jury’s decision. There will be joint conservatorship, and the father, Jeff Younger, will have a say in medical decisions for the boy—which means the mother, Anne Georgulas (a pediatrician I do not recommend to any parents who love their children), cannot go ahead with chemical castration by puberty blockers or surgery without the father’s permission. Also, the father will not be required to pay court costs. 

The judge did, however, put a gag order on the father, so he is not allowed to talk about the case with the press. He has been manning a website, SaveJames.com, to get the word out and keep people apprised of the case, and this means that website will need to be taken down. (I downloaded court documents and some other materials while they were still available.)

After the Tuesday jury verdict but before today’s ruling, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted this: 

FYI the matter of 7 year old James Younger is being looked into by the Texas Attorney General’s office and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

I hope this means we can prevent any future case that puts a child in such peril. No Texas child should be abused in this manner while sane adults can step in and prevent it.

The mother had been asking for total conservatorship, supervised visitation for the father, without allowing him to say anything that did not affirm that the child is a boy—and she was insisting that he pay for the medical procedures to alter the boy’s body—twisting the knife, you might say.

Today’s ruling is at least a partial rescue and is good news.

It’s hard to know all the details of a case, but one detail we know for certain is that this is a very young biological male, in reality, whose mother is pretending (along with him?) and telling him that he is female. We know that she is willing to do away with his future ability to procreate or engage in normal sexual activity, and risk his physical and mental health in order to keep up the pretense.

There is so much that is disturbing in this case. One mitigating factor the judge may have taken into account was that the mother is not the biological mother; the couple used an egg donor. It’s unclear from stories I’ve read whether she carried the child—actually, children; James has a twin brother—or used a surrogate. But Jeff Younger is the biological father. To take all rights away from a biological parent and give them to a non-biological parent is troubling at best. In this circumstance it would be horrifying.

Family courts are messy places. Stories for another day.

James with his mother, presumably from her
physician website, from a tweet found here

Some information came out during the trial that makes me further question the mother’s sanity. She “realized” her son was a boy when he was three. The evidence? He requested a “girl” toy at McDonald’s. I don’t know what the toy was, but sometimes toys are interesting in ways that appeal to both genders. For example, some years ago there were little fairy dolls that you pulled a strap and they spun up into the air and fluttered down. They were pretty cool. It was the same principle as a non-girly version I had as a child, sometimes called a whirligig. It might have been made more intriguing to a girl when the fluttery thing looks like a fairy, but it’s still a pretty cool toy. And, at three, when children are exploring their world, they don’t even know that some distant marketing person decided an item might best attract either girls or boys.

What other evidence did the mother have? The three-year-old boy loved the movie Frozen.

Disney princess movies may always have been more attractive to girls, but that doesn’t mean boys don’t like them. My brothers, at age 4, enjoyed Snow White. It had messy dwarfs, woodland animals, and heroes, and was just visually worth watching. My grandson, at age 3, dressed as the snowman Olaf from Frozen for Halloween. We all sang along to the soundtrack. There was a reindeer and a hero, as well as a scary villain and a snow monster in the movie—not just princesses. Plenty to pull in every young viewer. Disney knows that; they make movies that way on purpose.

What kind of a mother jumps on evidence that thin to decide, for the entire life of her child, that he is not a boy as his biology clearly shows, but is a girl? An insane mother. Maybe one who had a fantasy about having a girl and a boy, and who now (with the dissolution of the marriage, and her apparent inability to bear a child naturally anyway) has no way to achieve that fantasy except by altering one of her existing children.

The father presented evidence that the mother has manipulated the boy. She withdraws affection except when he is behaving as a girl. When he is locked in his room for bad behavior, she tells him there are monsters who eat little boys.

The boy has always been happy to be a boy with the father. Could that be because he is trying to please the father? Yes. Just as much as he acts like a girl for the mother in an attempt to please her. This has been his life since he was three. What else does he know?

A week ago I mentioned the Candace Owens interview with Walt Hyer. He lived as a trans-woman for seven years, in his 40s, before transitioning back (as much as that can be done) into a man. His story began with a grandmother who used to take care of him. She thought it was fun to dress him up as a cute little girl, and she fussed over him, and gave him positive attention. This was their little secret, until he took a dress home with him to show his family, expecting their positive attention as well. He was too young to know different. The parents curtailed contact with the grandmother, but an extended family member used the information as an excuse to sexually abuse the little boy. These childhood issues were never resolved. He was actually seeking resolution to these issues when he began exploring transgenderism. If he had had a doctor who counseled him to resolve the real issues, rather than to transition, it would have saved him his marriage and family, his job, and a great deal of pain.

This little boy, James, whose mother calls him Luna, is being abused by this woman—and a society that allows her to continue. He will have to have therapy to deal with the confusion at some point. But his mother isn’t going to seek it. Will society even allow him to ask for help, once he’s of age to seek it on his own, to resolve the gender confusion?

I don’t know Jeff Younger, but I do know that a caring father would be going crazy dealing with what he has dealt with. When he would see his son on a video chat, the boy would be dressed up as a 6-year-old drag queen, long eyelashes and sparkly gown and all. And his only chance of being able to see his child depended on his remaining calm while witnessing the abuse. I saw a comment to an article suggest fleeing the country with his children, and disappearing. Matt Walsh, of The Daily Wire, said such a move “would be not only morally justified, but heroic.”  Any sane parent would understand the natural protective urge.

What kind of mother dresses a 6-year-old as a drag queen? Who teaches their child—son or daughter—that such a sexual look is appropriate? Who thinks that a person can’t be a girl without a dress on, or without nail polish?

If there is a person who exemplifies being controlled by societal stereotypes, it would be this mother.

This is, I believe, an important turning-point story. It exemplifies the corruption of the “woke” viewpoint.

These issues are not about any given person doing what they choose; they are about the demanding tiny minority exerting control over anyone who disagrees. I came across a good discussion of this assertion here. Note that, under Obamacare, all doctors were required to perform any transgender surgery a patient requested—with no conscience or religious exemption. Fortunately, that “transgender mandate” was struck down by a district court judge just this month. 

The data shows that gender dysphoria issues are often resolved through therapy and/or time; transition, claimed to be necessary in order to prevent suicidality, actually increases the likelihood.  It also deprives an otherwise healthy person of the possibility of procreation or normal sexual activity, and encourages surgically removing healthy body parts, against the medical axiom “First, do no harm.”

Image of tweet found at SaveJames.com/blog

Pretending that biological males are females denies real females their rights of privacy, and their accomplishments in sports.  It erases actual femaleness, harming all females.

Pretending that biological females are males also denies the value of being female, asserting that it is better to be a pretend male than an actual female. It isn’t progress for women that leads to this thought.

Sane people need to speak the truth, louder, while we still can.

Modern-day Parable

 Sometimes a story is the best way to convey an idea. So, today, let's try a modern-day parable.

A young teen, age 14, goes to her parents and says, “I never want to have children. I need to get a hysterectomy to make sure I never can.”

image from here

The parents are heartsick. Why would their beloved daughter have this strange view? Where had they gone wrong as parents? And will this mean they never even experience the joy of grandchildren? 

And they feel tremendous concern for the daughter’s wellbeing. Are the long-term consequences of such a surgery even known for a woman so young?

They say to her, “Let’s wait on this for a while. You might change your mind. This isn’t something you should decide now, when you’re not even old enough to be ready to have a baby. And there will be other effects, hormonal and physiological, that will affect your overall health.”

“I want it. I want it. I want it! And you can’t stop me. And you have to pay for it!” says their little darling.

Unfortunately, the family lives in a world that doesn’t recognize the right of parents to see to the care and upbringing of their child. Plus, this surrounding milieu has a knee-jerk reaction favoring a philosophy that is pro-sex without consequence. Getting rid of the possibility of procreation suits that agenda.

The girl goes to a counselor at school, who puts her in touch with a doctor willing to do the surgery. When the parents object, this connection of authorities intervenes and takes the girl from the home—for her protection.

The parents are powerless to protect their child. Their insurance refuses to pay, since the surgery is elective, as well as controversial. But the parents nevertheless are forced to pay; the sizable sum is automatically deducted from their bank account.

After the surgery and convalescence, plus a few months, the girl decides she’d rather be at home in her own room than dealing with foster parents. Her heartsick but still loving parents welcome her back home.

She finishes high school. Struggles through college. And then works a series of jobs. She gets close to marriage, but her purposeful choice to never have children gets in the way, multiple times, when she would have liked a more permanent relationship. Temporary relationships with men who want sex without responsibility are plentiful—but strangely unsatisfying.

In her 30s, while friends are marrying and having children, or sharing their angst over the ticking clock of their chance to have a family, she has frequent regrets. She doesn’t feel the same way about things that she did at age 14—although she never admits these regrets to her parents.

She spends the rest of her erstwhile childbearing years taking hormones to make up for the organs that were removed. She ages more quickly than she would have liked. Eventually, she needs additional surgery to handle the displacement caused by the hysterectomy. These are health problems she would not be having, if she hadn’t acted rashly—and if society hadn’t facilitated her rashness—several decades earlier.

To my knowledge, such a scenario hasn’t actually taken place. But our world is showing signs of being that warped. On another issue it is that warped.

If a child, who cannot take a prescription without a parent’s consent, or get ears pierced, or get a tattoo even with consent, decides to be the opposite gender from reality, what sane parent wouldn’t be concerned? 

A sex change means mutilation, disfigurement, and permanent sterility. And sex change does not mean overcoming the gender dysphoria. It doesn’t decrease tendency to suicide. It does nothing real. But it pretends to change the world to go along with a delusion—a delusion that can be treated and often resolves on its own without physiological intervention.

It seems to me that a thoughtful parent would want to get mental healthcare for the child. But the world has made it practically illegal for a therapist to deal with the underlying issues; only positive, enthusiastic affirmation of the erroneous belief is allowed. So the parent can’t turn there.

And authorities are stepping in.

There’s a story from the UK, showing that government has begun taking kids away from parents who don’t want to go along with gender “transitions.” 

Commenting on this situation, blogger Jonathon Van Maren says: 

As the numbers of children identifying as transgender soar, parents have often been left at a loss as children have been swept away by what some experts are referring to as a social contagion. Numbers in the United Kingdom have now risen by over 4,000 percent, prompting a government investigation and urgent warnings from health experts, while the number of young people being referred to the National Health Service for gender reassignment has risen by 1,000 percent. Many parents feel that their child’s struggles may have nothing to do with gender dysphoria, but feel powerless to object as transgenderism is trendy and anything but full-hearted support for hormone treatments and life-altering surgeries is condemned by activists as hateful bigotry.

My guess is that this “trend” will look strange indeed as we look back half a century ahead. Van Maren notes that officials claim the issue is complex, and children aren’t removed simply because they are transgender. But…

You’ll notice that the wording here carefully says that a child being transgender doesn’t get them pulled from the home—but preventing transition could very well do so, especially now that LGBT activists are claiming that anything but vociferous affirmation of the desire to transition is harm.

Another story from the UK tells of parents of a 14-year-old, who temporarily lost custody of their son because they hesitated to support his taking irreversible hormone blockers. They believed his gender dysphoria was related to his Aspergers, and that therapy should be tried first, before irreversible damage could be done.

It is a sign of the craziness of our world that government officials step in—not to protect a child from irreversible damage that deranged parents want to impose, but to overrule caring, protective parents in order to impose the irreversible damage.

Lest you think we’re safe here in America, further in the story, they mention the Texas dad, Jeffrey Younger, of a 6-year-old whose ex-wife is transitioning the son into a girl, against the will of the dad, against the will of the son as expressed to the dad when the mother is absent, and the dad is being threatened with loss of his child if he doesn’t go along. Regardless will be forced to pay for it. 

Younger says,

I want you to imagine having electronic communication with your son on FaceTime, and imagine that your ex-wife has dressed him as a drag queen to talk to you. He has false eyelashes and makeup. His hair has got glitter in it. He’s wearing a dress.

Now imagine how you would feel seeing what I believe is actual sexual abuse—I believe this is not just emotional abuse but is the very, most fundamental form of sexual abuse, tampering with the sexual identity of a vulnerable boy.

Jeffrey Younger at TX State Capitol
screenshot from video
posted on Facebook by Norma Jeter for
Concerned Women for America of Texas

I shouldn’t have to point out this obvious fact, but six-year-old girls do not wear false eyelashes and makeup unless it’s Halloween, or maybe a misguided princess pageant. And these days girls seldom wear dresses, except for church or special occasions. In a typical first grade classroom you might not see any dresses worn as regular daywear. If someone were helping this boy “be” a girl, shouldn’t that be a normal girl in normal girl attire?

I think the father is right; his ex-wife is abusing this child. Getting him away from her, and getting him some therapy to recover from the confusing abuse, would likely lead him to a normal life—most likely as the boy he was born to be.[i]

This dad spoke recently at the Texas State Capitol. His story is heart-wrenching. We’re fighting multiple attacks from SOGI (sexual identity and gender identity)[ii] laws in the current legislative session.

Meanwhile, right here in Houston, the public library recently admitted they had hired a convicted sex offender to read to children—because somebody had an agenda to push transgenderism by having drag queens read to small children. And that agenda was so overridingly important that they failed to do a background check on the multiple drag queens they hired. 

Is there a way to fight the craziness? I’m not sure. But standing up to it is a start.

screenshot from here

In Pennsylvania, a female HS student has filed a lawsuit claiming her rights were violated when she had to suffer a male (transgender) watching her change clothes in the school locker room.

Her attorney, Andrea Shaw, makes this argument:

Opening up restrooms and locker rooms to members of the opposite sex is sexual harassment. Like most forms of sexual harassment, the girls in this school have little power over their situation. The school's only solution for my client was for her to wait outside the locker room until the individual of the opposite sex was finished changing, and then she went in and was late for gym class and also late for her second period class.

The school made the young girl out to be the problem. Shaw adds,

Women have fought long and hard for privacy rights under Title IX, for equality, for equal access in education. And now we are telling these girls that they no longer have a voice. The privacy rights of these girls don’t change based on what a male believes about their gender; their privacy rights belong to them. And it is the school’s duty to protect those girls’ privacy rights.

It seems to be a clash between world views. But only one view is in touch with reality. That’s the one that’s likely to prevail. Truth has an inexorable weight that enforced pretense can’t overcome for long.

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[i]  There's a Save James website, here: https://savejames.com/all-about-james/   

[i] A good piece to understand SOGI laws is “Ten Years of International Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Laws: Lessons Learned” by Daniel Moody: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/03/18897/.

Which Is It?

Is it really a matter of what is is? Some things are factual and obvious—and yet denied with defiance.

graphic from here

I’m talking about gender—or rather, sex. Gender is mainly “the formal classification by which nouns and pronouns (and often accompanying modifiers) are grouped and inflected, or changed in form, so as to control certain syntactic relationships,” as my vintage Webster explains. English doesn’t bother with gender so much, but it’s common in Spanish, French, and other languages. The two options are masculine and feminine, unless a word is neutral. These terms don’t necessarily relate to sex. For example, la mesa doesn’t imply that a table relates to women, nor does el cuarto imply that a room relates to men.

If you keep reading, Webster explains that gender also can be used as a transitive verb (a verb with an object)—really a shortened version of engender—used in genetics, to refer to “units occurring at specific points on the chromosomes, by which hereditary characters are transmitted and determined.” It doesn’t even necessarily relate to whether it’s on an X or Y chromosome.

Hidden at the end of the main noun entry, Webster mentions that gender is a colloquial term for sex.

So I looked up sex: “either of the two divisions, male or female, into which persons, animals, or plants are divided, with reference to their reproductive functions.” Plus, of course, the obvious other meanings of the word sex.

Controllers of language have a lot of power. Someone invented the relatively new meaning of gender to be something completely apart from language gender, and also different from human biology, related to something internal in the mind.

The phrase “It’s all in your head” used to mean something different and rather condescending. Now it’s considered something of so much overarching importance that it requires the world to bow to it as a new reality.

That’s a problem for people who value truth. (For people who value family and a number of other things as well, but we have to limit a blog post to some reasonable length.)

There’s a contradiction going on. There’s a claim that a person can be born biologically one kind of human and not actually be that kind of human—but that understanding is an inborn, immutable characteristic that the person discovers about him/herself. And therefore we need to be open to a person’s choice about which kind of human to be. But if it’s a choice, it’s not an inborn immutable characteristic. Right?

Earlier this month Jordan Peterson—who came to fame by refusing to use invented unnatural pronouns being imposed by the Canadian government in the first instance of compelled speech since the invention of British Common Law—was asked to deal with this contradiction in a Q&A in The Netherlands.

Jordan Peterson, left
screen shot from here

He starts out giving Canada’s Bill C 16 as an example of needing to look deeper when deciding your stance on an issue. The host, in The Netherlands, used this as a springboard for further discussion, not on compelled speech, but on transgender rights (at around 14-21 minutes):

Host: I don’t know if you know, but in The Netherlands, three weeks ago the first official non-gender passport was given to a Dutch citizen. At the same time, in the US, of course, the new Trump bill, which considers to narrowly define gender as something that’s immutable and that’s totally based on genitalia at birth, is now the potential law. So, if you had to choose between these two laws, which one would you pick?

We’ll forgive someone from another country for not knowing how our laws work. President Trump does not put forth bills; the legislative branch does that. What he’s referring to is a definition to be used by the executive branch pertaining to already existing laws. The Department of Health and Human Services sent out a memo, which was passed on to news outlets, directing that government agencies adopt a definition of gender that is determined "on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable." 

OK, back to the discussion:

JP: Well, if you’re transgendered, is it immutable?

Host: (long pause) I don’t know.

JP: Right. Neither does anyone else. And so there’s tremendous incoherencies in the theory. So, at the moment, for example, it’s perfectly reasonable to formulate the proposition—and this is very characteristic of, let’s say, the ideological types who drove Bill C 16—to say you can be a man born in a woman’s body, which is a biologically determinist argument, and to say that gender is socially constructed, and to say that it’s a personal choice. It’s like, sorry, all three of those things cannot simultaneously be true. So, there’s going to be a variety of legislative responses to that, but mostly it’s just incoherent.

And I also think that it’s driven by something deeper. It’s driven at least in part by the desire to destabilize traditional perceptual and cognitive categories. And I see that as part of an assault on the idea of categorization itself. It’s been undertaken with a fair bit of success in the universities since the 1970s. And so, generally speaking, I’m opposed to such things. I don’t believe that introducing confusion about gender identity into the lives of young people at an early age is going to have a net positive consequence. We’ll see. But I doubt it.

He sidesteps the proposed choice between the two bills—the question designed to put him on record as either opposing or supporting Trump.

Host: But wouldn’t you also be against the Trump bill, because, as you said, it’s also a way in which the law compels a certain identity upon you, which is the reason you opposed Bill C 16? So, how would you go about—what is your position on this?

JP: I opposed Bill C 16 because it compelled my speech in a particular manner.

Host: Yeah.

JP: It wasn’t that it compelled an identity on me. It was very specific, in that, in the entire history of English common law, there has never been legislation that required people to utter particular phrases.

And he simply goes on with the explanation about compelled speech that he has been making for a solid couple of years.

The contradiction he points out interests me. He divides it into three possibilities:

·         A man being born into a woman’s body, for example, is biologically determined.

·         Gender is socially constructed.

·         Gender is a choice.

They are mutually exclusive. If it’s biologically determined, there’s no choice about it; there is simply discovering whatever evidence overwhelms the obvious reproductive biology. If it’s socially constructed, there’s no choice about it—unless you invent some way to deconstruct whatever social construct there was. (And do you do that individually or societally as a whole?) So we’re supposed to let a person choose that choice that they don’t really have, and then respect their choice?

And if you don’t do exactly that, you can be prosecuted in Canada, bounced from Twitter, silenced on Facebook or YouTube, fired from your job, and blacklisted from future employment.

Or lose custody of your child.

James
image from here

For example, there’s a father whose six-year-old son, James, insists he is a boy when he is with his father, but allows himself to be dressed and presented as a girl, Luna, when with his mother. She is trying to both take away visitation from the father and force him to pay for the transgender-affirming doctor she has chosen. So the boy does not consistently express gender dysphoria symptoms, nor consistently assert that he is the opposite gender from his biology; rather, he displays symptoms of tragically sad attempts to try and please a misguided mother. And if the mother isn’t stopped, within two years the boy could be started on hormonal therapy that will alter his life forever. (Another story on this case here.)

Matt Walsh responded to Twitter’s banning of anything transgenders disagree with by asking a question—in violation of Twitter’s rules, but so far without getting banned:

Rather than simply arguing my case, as I’ve argued a million times, that men are men and women are women—which is, again, a banned statement on Twitter—I figured that, rather than simply do that, I figured that I’d give the other side of this debate a chance to explain themselves….

So, this is the tweet that I sent last night. I said, “I invite anyone on Twitter to explain in clear and specific detail how precisely a biological male can come to know that he is really a woman? How does he arrive at this conclusion? On what basis? With what evidence to support it? Again, I invite anyone to explain. Thank you.”

Now, this really is the fundamental question, isn’t it? You have biological men who have at some point come to realize, or know, or understand or whatever, that they are really women. OK? So, how does that work exactly? I would think that this question should be really easy to answer, if you believe that transgenderism is an actual thing, like it’s really possible for a man to, in some sense, be a woman and to come to that realization. Then I would think it would be really easy to explain. Shouldn’t it?

And if, in fact, this point of view is not anti-science, then, again, you should be able to explain it scientifically.

And I posed this question. It’s a fair question, not a trick question. And hours went by without anyone even trying to answer it. Instead you had liberals just telling me that I was a bigot for even asking the question to begin with.

That’s the biology question, really. Is there evidence? Can you produce it? There is overwhelming evidence the other way, which Jordan Peterson provides:

So, here’s the argument: biological sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual preference are independent. OK. They’re not. The definition of dependent is there’s a strong statistical relationship between them. Could be correlational. Could be causal. It is in fact causal. It’s also correlational. There’s an unbelievably tight linkage, so that the overwhelming majority of people who are a particular biological sex identify with that sex. It’s 99.97%. OK.

The overwhelming majority of people who are of a given biological sex and an isomorphic gender identity express their gender in accordance with those two fundamental elements of their identity. And that would be more, something in the range of 95%, assuming that one in twenty is playing with fashion in self-presentation in a gender bending manner—which is not uncommon; that’s been going on for a very long time.

And then, of the people who are of a given biological sex, the isomorphic gender identity, and who present themselves that way, the overwhelming majority are heterosexual. That is not independent. It’s the very opposite of independent, even though that’s not now the law.

As he sums it up,

The idea that biology doesn’t play a strong role in influencing phenomena at every one of those levels of analysis is absolutely preposterous. And that’s pushed very hard by the social constructionists. And I think that’s reprehensible. It flies in the face of anything reasonably defined as fact. And it does no one any favors—not least because you can’t say, “Well, you’re a man born in a woman’s body.” It’s like, well, is that a biologically determinist argument? Yes or no? So what are we saying? “You can be a man born in a woman’s body, and that’s biological, but if you’re a woman born in a woman’s body, that’s socially constructed?” Really? That’s supposed to be an argument? It’s beyond preposterous.

What do people who look these facts in the face and lie about them have to gain? I have my suspicions. Especially when they align, as Dr. Peterson has pointed out, with cultural Marxists. Those people are about gaining power over others. We must resist them, even as we find ways to both coexist with and be kind to the tiny cohort of people who have gender dysphoria. Neither they nor those using them should we allow to control our thoughts, our speech, or our recognition of truth.

Normalizing, Part III: Change Is Possible

There’s so much more to cover about the lines that have already been crossed toward normalizing sexual perversion, I’m sure we’ll leave out plenty. But this third post is probably enough for now. (See Part I and Part II.)

For the sake of sanity, let’s start with this clip from Monty Python’s Life of Brian:

So, in 1979 the movie depicted the absurdity of a man suddenly deciding he was a woman, when it was clear to all those around him (who were supposed to be open-minded people of the first century AD) that, of course Stan can’t just “be” a woman; he doesn’t have a womb. He can’t have babies—and that isn’t even the fault of Roman oppression. It’s just a fact of life.

I’d say this basic fact was obvious common sense until about 2 minutes ago, historically speaking. A decade ago, during discussions about same-sex “marriage,” when activists were asked what would be the line that would not be crossed, the line that would be too far, pedophilia and transgenderism were both supposedly beyond the line. No one would ever accept those perversions. It was that recent that the term “transvestite” became politically incorrect and became “transgender,” about the same time T was added to LGB. (The term LGBT was used in the 90s, but not widely. By the way, the terms transgenerderism and transphobic are so new, automatic spell checks still highlight them to alert you that you don't have a word.) Many Ls and Gs still aren’t comfortable with that, since the point of their argument is that it matters to them which sex/gender they’re attracted to. Which sex you are, or which you’re attracted to, is not arbitrary or without meaning.

So now, when we have transgenderism being forced upon our school children, and we’re denigrated as vilely transphobic for stating the obvious, maybe we would be wise to step back and refuse a few already crossed lines before things get worse.

In June, the country’s biggest, and possibly most powerful, teachers’ union, the NEA, met and passed New Business Item 11, requiring that “all state and local affiliates encourage K-12 teachers to view a series of films called Creating Gender Inclusive Schools.” I viewed a two-minute sample. They talk mostly about colors and activity choices, which may be associated with gender, but which are totally cultural and often arbitrary, and have nothing to do with actually being male or female.  And then they slip in the idea that you don’t have to have gender imposed on you; you can just choose your gender.

Just as in the children’s music video I mentioned in Thursday’s post, this is a lie. Liking blue or black or pink or purple does not change whether you are male or female. Liking sports and physical activities when you’re a girl doesn’t mean you’re really a boy in the wrong body; it means you’re a girl who likes sports and physical activities. Liking arts, dance, music, literature, or other pursuits that require a certain aesthetic sensitivity when you’re a boy does not mean you’re really a girl in the wrong body; it means you’re a boy with an aesthetic sense.

These films are not designed, as claimed, to make all children “safe” in schools; they are designed to indoctrinate a radical ideology through lies told over and over, to impressionable children in a setting where they are expected to trust their authority figures.

Michelle Cretella
screen shot from this video

This does not make all children “safe.” This makes no children safe. The 99.97% who are not confused about whether they are male or female are told to reconsider, making them uncertain and confused. And the .03% who are confused about their sex are not given the help that will treat and help them overcome the confusion; they’re encouraged in it. And, against the advice of the American College of Pediatrics, which calls it child abuse, they may be surgically and medically altered in ways that will sterilize them and prevent them from ever living a normal life.

In a piece earlier this year, Ryan T. Anderson reminded us of the negative outcomes of this lie:

The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.

You don't lower the risk of suicide by sex-reassignment "therapy"; you increase the risk of suicide.

The concern about preventing suicide is also used as an argument for accepting homosexuality as normal. But we know now, because of several European countries that have long accepted and normalized homosexual behavior, societal acceptance doesn’t improve the long list[i] of mental and physical issues related to having LGBT issues.

If the underlying, and possibly causal, mental issues were addressed and treated, not only would the suicidal tendencies be addressed, but freedom to choose a normal lifestyle might also become more likely.

In Monday’s post, I pointed out that, while there are important differences in degree of evil between pedophilia and homosexuality, I remember—unlike Roaming Millennial and most of her generation—when it was commonly understood that homosexuality was a deviant perversion. Did the behavior change? No. The message that was inculcated through media and academia changed, with the purpose of changing people’s beliefs. That inculcation has been so successful that people of the millennial generation and younger aren’t even aware that they’ve been the target of activist indoctrination. They think their current understanding is simply the decent and compassionate response to scientific “fact.”

Let me be clear that I am in favor of both decency and compassion. I might, however, have a different idea of what that consists of.

I believe some things needed to change. People who mean no harm and do no harm to others should be respected, even if their choices are not what we might call moral. (A person who knowingly spreads HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease is guilty of doing harm, as is a person who gives in to a sexual attraction to children.) A person with same-sex attraction should not be hated for being different. They should be treated with kindness and respect—not because of their sexual orientation, but because of their being human. But tolerance does not require approval.

I approve of my church’s position toward same-sex attraction—which isn’t new or changed; this has always been the case, but has been made clearer and more accessible. A person with same-sex attraction is required to live according to the same moral commandments as everyone else, because God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34, Doctrine & Covenants 1:35, 2 Nephi 26:33).

Behavior matters. Thoughts lead to behavior, but in a civilized world we don’t prosecute or persecute thoughts we disagree with; we communicate—both ways. And persuade when we can.

One reason I approve of my church’s approach regarding behavior, not orientation, is because orientation can change. I’m sympathetic with those who don’t want same-sex attraction. They want to be rid of it. And they struggle, sometimes for years, sometimes not very successfully. They don’t get much help in today’s world, which includes even therapists who think the solution is to accept their condition and try to change the world to accommodate them, rather than help them find ways to change or avoid the unwholesome lifestyle and associated mental and physical illnesses.

I’m disturbed by parents who respond in extreme ways to a child’s announcement of same-sex attraction. Being angry at the child, punishing or ostracizing that young person—that is not the right approach. Even if the young person goes through a long period of appallingly unwholesome lifestyle choices, forcing them to change when the world is telling them they can’t is only going to make them feel unloved. They may already feel unloved.

One young person I know, feeling sympathy for gays—convinced that those she knows are all legally married to their monogamous exclusive partner (see heteromorphism in the last post)—believes the church ought to accept them, because she can’t accept the idea that they should go through life without ever experiencing love.

I understand the care and concern. And I don’t deny that some gay couples love each other. But there’s a huge difference between love and sex. Sex doesn’t express love outside marriage; the commitment must come first. This is just as true for heterosexuals. Have you ever known a gay person who waited until after marriage before having sex? Even since the change in the definition of marriage was forced upon us nationally by the Supreme Court?

If you’re going to encourage acceptance of same-sex “marriage” in order to allow a certain group of people to experience love, you’re saying they have no chance of change, and no chance of self-control. And you’re also putting them above others who never marry—or experience that type of love—for various reasons—a disability that interferes with a love life, a lack of opportunity, or some other life tragedy. Why change the world for homosexuals but not all other individuals?

If you’re being practical (and parents, family, and friends should be), a committed same-sex “marriage” relationship is a better situation than a non-exclusive relationship, or the more typical promiscuous gay lifestyle. But it still doesn’t give them as likely a chance of a healthy, happy life as leaving the lifestyle and possibly changing orientation to the point that a real marriage becomes a possibility—with God’s blessing.

I’m also disturbed by parents who reject church teachings in order to support a child’s homosexuality. That means you’ve bought into the lie that your child was born that way and has no ability to change—or even to refrain from engaging in illicit sexual acts with multiple sex partners. Why would that be moral for your homosexual child but not for your heterosexual child? Why are you suddenly so sure you are right and God—the definer of good—is wrong?

For help as a parent, or as someone with unwanted same-sex attraction, you might try Positive Approaches To Human Sexuality (https://www.pathinfo.org).

I believe we’re all better off with actual truth, rather than gut reactions—many of which are planted in us by a long-term indoctrination program that we haven’t been aware of or had control over.

Yes, be kind to everyone. But civility does not require agreeing with everyone or approving of everyone’s behavior.

Keep pedophiles far away from our children. But also keep indoctrinators of the entire LGBTIQ+ alphabet of treatable mental illnesses away from our children. Because their normalization indoctrination has already done harm to many and brought us dangerously close to allowing pedophiles access to our children.

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[i] Homosexual conduct has consequences for mental health. There is a well-documented correlation between homosexuality and suicide and mental illness. See, e.g., Theo B. M. Sandfort, De Graaqf, Bilj, and Schable, “Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders:  Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study,” 85 (Archives of General Psychiatry 85 (January 2001) (“The findings support the assumption that people with same-sex behavior are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders”); Richard Herrell, et al., “Sexual Orientation and Suicidality,” Archives of General Psychiatry 867 (October 1999) (“Same-gender sexual orientation is significantly associated with each of the suicidality measures” and “is unlikely to be due solely to substance abuse or other psychiatric co-morbidity”); David M. Fergusson, et al., “Is Sexual Orientation Related to Mental Health Problems and Suicidality in Young People?” Archives of General Psychiatry 876 (October 1999) (“Findings support recent evidence suggesting that gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people are at increased risk of mental health problems, with these associates being particularly evident for measures of suicidal behavior and multiple disorder.”)  While some may argue that these findings are “caused by society oppression” (J Michael Bailey, “Homosexuality and Mental Illness,” Archives of General Psychiatry 883 and 884 October 1999), this is not the only possible explanation. The survey of findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study found a significant greater risk for psychiatric disorders among homosexuals, even though “the Dutch social climate toward homosexuality has long been and remains considerably more tolerant” than most of the world. Sandfort, et al, above, at 89. Other possible explanations include hypotheses that “homosexuality represents a deviation from normal development and is associated with other such deviations that may lead to mental illness,” and that “increased psychopathology among homosexual people is a consequence of lifestyle differences associated with sexual orientation.”  J. Michael Bailey, above, at 884. Also, Sandfort et al., above, at 85-91.  (Youth are four times more likely to suffer major depression, also three times as likely to suffer generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, four times as likely to commit suicide, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer multiple disorders, and over six times as likely to have attempted suicide. Additionally, this research originates in the Netherlands where homosexuality is much more mainstream and accepted.)  Substance abuse is an additional health concern of those in the homosexual lifestyle:  Timothy J. Dailey, “The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality” and associated notes, Family Research Council “The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychologists reports that lesbian women consume alcohol more frequently, and I larger amounts, than heterosexual women. Lesbians were at significantly greater risk than heterosexual women for both binge drinking (19.4 percent compared to 11.7 percent), and for heavy drinking (7 percent compared to 2.7 percent)….Among men, by far the most important risk group consisted of homosexual and bisexual men, who were more than nine times as likely as heterosexual men to have a history of problem drinking.”

Telling the Truth

Among the relatively few rules necessary for civilization is honoring truth. That means respecting the truth, telling the truth as clearly and accurately as we can perceive it. Truth is good; truth is moral.

There’s another moral imperative that we treat other human beings with dignity and respect. I think we can agree with that. We honor God, life, family, property, and truth. So that comes under life specifically, but also under God, our creator, and family, which gives life and passes along morals such as respecting one another.

A social argument these days is about what is required of respect. We make sure no human beings are considered less than human, subject to the whims of some superior class. We are all equal before the law. That is a founding principle of this nation—perhaps the first nation on earth founded on such an idea.

But the argument is that, if you don’t go along with everything a particular minority group insists on, you are denigrating them. This includes when you refuse to lie for them.

So the dilemma for moral people is: honor truth, or honor individuals by going along with their lie?

Transgender activists protest near the White House in
Washington, D.C., February 22, 2017. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
image found at National Review

I’m talking specifically here about the transgender debate, although the social war is larger than that. But this is instructive about the larger social war as well.

There’s been a debate going on recently at National Review. J. J. McCullough recommends a compromise: He “requires sacrifice on the part of progressives, who are currently overplaying their hand in an effort to strong-arm sweeping social change as a flex of their power.” Note that is what progressives must do, formerly called liberals or leftists—which on the Spherical Model is pro-savagery, poverty, and tyranny.

Of conservatives (the pro-civilization, prosperity, and freedom crowd), he requires “broad tolerance for the reality that transgender men and women exist, and are entitled to basic human dignity, just like everyone else.”

Michael Brendan Dougherty responds to McCullough’s suggested compromise:

The demand to acknowledge someone’s “existence” is a slippery bit of a double-talk. I would be an idiot to deny McCullough’s existence. But if he said that he were a Camaroonian, rather than a Canadian, would it be his existence that I denied by contradicting him?

Dougherty adds the question, “But are we allowed to tell the truth?”

David French adds further commentary concerning that question about whether we’re allowed to tell the truth:

Increasingly, the answer is no. J.J. compares the modern dispute over transgenderism to current and recent fights over homosexuality. The comparison is instructive, but not in the way that he hopes. There has been no “compromise” over homosexuality. Instead, we’re locked in brutal legal fights over whether Christian bakers and florists can be compelled to use their artistic talents to celebrate gay weddings. Christian colleges have had to fend off challenges to their accreditation and funding (and the Obama administration raised the possibility of challenging their tax exemptions) for simply upholding basic standards of Christian sexual morality. And in California, the new sexual orthodoxy now threatens even the sale of books that deliver a disfavored message not just on sexual orientation but also on sexual conduct.

Along that tangent, I just saw a new video with Barronelle Stutzman, the Washington florist, telling the story of her persecution—not for refusing service to anyone, including the homosexual man at the heart of the case, who had been a long-time customer and friend—but for declining to use her artistic skills for an event that celebrated something against her faith. She couldn’t use her skills—which God gave her—in service of something against God’s will. Worth watching.

Back to that compromise discussion. David French concludes with this:

Treating every single human being with dignity and respect means not just defending their constitutional liberties and showing them basic human kindness, it also means telling the truth—even when the truth is hard. Any compromise that requires conservatives to grant the other side’s false and harmful premise is no compromise at all.

The uncompromising Dr. Jordan Peterson, who has been embroiled in this debate, for standing up and stating truth, has a full chapter on truth in his book 12Rules for Life. Rule 8 is “Tell the Truth, or at Least Don’t Lie.” In it he says,

image from Amazon

Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.

When confronted with the choice to use the pronouns the government requires--which are lies, and are linguistically unnatural--or suffer the consequences, he chose to suffer the consequences. Because it's a way of life to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

For him, this is a free speech issue. It just happens to pertain to the transgender issue. As he points out, we don’t use a particular pronoun to imbue a person with respect; we use a pronoun to identify a person we may not know anything about beyond the visible details. “He did it,” does not imply, “That-person-I-know-so-well-that-I-have-ascertained-that-person’s-chosen-gender-identity did it.” It, rather, implies, “That-male-appearing-person-whose-name-I-might-not-even-know did it.”

What a transgender person who requires a different gender pronoun—or an entirely new made-up but unhelpful-for-identification-purposes pronoun—is requiring is mind-reading. You, the person who may have never interacted with them before, are supposed to use a pronoun in reference to them that you have no way of knowing is their preference. Dr. Peterson has found that the vast majority of transgender persons who have responded in comments support him and do not prefer the weird made-up pronouns.

So what the offended persons are requiring is special consideration, far above and beyond what any of us have the ability to offer one another. They’ve got a lot of nerve. In their interactions with me and with you, what have they done to deserve our submission to the loss of useful pronouns, just because they say they are offended by standard usage? What about how offensive it is to call us offensive for simply using language that has a purpose and works? Should we be pilloried while they are not? We use pronouns when we don't know someone; these people are demanding a special pronoun even when we don't know them. What have they done to earn that special treatment from people with whom they don't even have a relationship?

So, Dr. Peterson tells the truth. He gets attacked for that, quite a lot. But he also gets the respectful attention that allows him to share a great many truths. Probably a good outcome. Telling the truth wins.

Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatrics, put out a short video in December 2017 (full video below) talking about what happens when you deal with the truth and when you don’t.  She offers one case from a number of years ago:

I had one little boy, a patient we’ll call Andy. Between the ages of 3and 5 he increasingly played with girls and stereotypical girl toys, and started saying he was a girl. I referred the parents and Andy to a therapist. Sometimes mental illness of a parent or abuse of the child are factors. But more commonly, the child has misperceived family dynamics and internalized a false belief. In the middle of one session, Andy put down the toy truck, and held onto the Barbie, and said, “Mommy and Daddy, you don’t love me when I’m a boy.” What the therapist learned is that when Andy was 3, his sister with special needs was born. She required significantly more of his parents’ care and attention. Andy misperceived this as, “Mommy and Daddy love girls. If I want them to love me again, I have to be a girl.” With family therapy, Andy got better.

Today, doctors would insist that the parents alter the world to support Andy in his delusion, and give him puberty blockers—which, when used in adults for prostate or gynecological problems, are known to lead to memory loss, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancers, and emotional problems such as the one the experts claim to be preventing.

Additionally, doctors might offer surgical interventions such as a double mastectomy or penis removal.

While gender dysphoria is a treatable mental illness, and in many cases disappears by puberty or adulthood even without therapy, the current “treatment” is to permanently disfigure and sterilize—not so that a woman can become a man, or that a man can become a woman, but so that they can impersonate what they are not.

Asking the world to lie for them, and to them, is not going to change reality. Telling them the truth, while also being respectful of their worth as human beings, might actually help far more.