TOPICS

For those new to this issue it’s best to know these terms before reading.

13) Why is gender ideology being prioritized in educational settings when scientific validity claims are questionable & it is controversial, even within and between LGB and T populations? 

To fully understand this section and how gender ideology and the trans movement are affecting young people and intra-LGBT relations it is best to read Topic 11.

It is a noble goal and important work to help gender dysphoric people feel more comfortable in society and with their bodies. In her talk in 2015 at a gender conference in Santa Cruz, CA Diane Ehrensaft speaks of a new gender progressive world. She presents ideas about gender in terms of old versus new, death versus life and bad versus good, using the terms “gender ghosts” and gender angels.

And the ghosts tell you (1:53:10-1:53:58)…

Gender nonconforming people are really sick. Or we have to police gender if it doesn’t come in two boxes. Transgender boys and men are not real males. And transgender girls and women are not real females. You can’t just live in the middle or say you are either male or female. It doesn’t work that way. Fill in the blank. Now there is a war of the world between our gender angels and our gender ghosts…We have both…Typically they are in conflict with each other…Our task, let the gender angels drown out the gender ghosts…Why should you bother? Because anything else is going to cause harm. Not just to the children. But to the families and to the institutions those children reside in. Not to mention the entire society. 

In the quote below, Ehrensaft asserts her “children are leading the way” viewpoint and that this is the best and healthiest outcome. Adults should not provide any structure around ideas about gender. We should make no effort to help a child adjust and accept their body without the requirement of life-long dependence on the medically industry. 

Why are we asking a child to conform to something that is not them because society hasn't done its learning yet?” she says. “It's time to teach society.”

The child will teach us, we must learn. Joel Baum emphasizes his view of rights to self-perception and to have others validate that self-perception.

(57:09-57:19):

Each of us has the right to gender self-determination, to personalize our gender and to make gender our own.  

Individuals certainly have a right to personally express themselves. But what of the rights of other people to reject that self-perception because they choose not to believe in multiple gender identities or see problems with biological males identifying as women, excluding a female from a position on a sports team, winning sporting events and scholarships set up for biological females? Does a person have a right to reject gender ideology because they do not believe in placing sexually violent males in female prison? Doesn’t that person have to believe and speak their own truth, in line with material reality, especially when those beliefs are directly impacting them? These real issues are always ignored in gender environments except to paint people who do have concerns about them as unreasonable or even bigots. 

While these trans activists and allies often present themselves as gay friendly and representing the interests of the “LGBT community,” it is important to recognize that many people within the LGB and T populations do not support the medical transition of minors. Many also do not agree with current views of gender in trans activism ( for example “your biological sex is what you say it is”, “gender is spectrum”). This disagreement ranges from concern to vehement disagreement to outright anger about gender nonconforming children being indoctrinated into this worldview and reinforced in disassociating from their body.

One reason why it is important to analyze all of the ramifications of gender ideology and the implementation of trans activist agenda in school systems is that these concepts are being introduced for reasons beyond just protecting trans youths’ mental health (a very important goal the school should be legally and morally obligated to take into consideration). These gender programs put on by organizations such as Gender Spectrum (US), Gendered Intelligence (UK), Egale (Canada) and Rainbow Youth (NZ) are designed to train young people to accept their premises about sex and gender, so they will also accept them as adults. This means that through gender training programs students, and girls, in particular, are being taught that: 

• biological differences should be irrelevant even though biological females are overall at a physical disadvantage against trans identified biological males

• that every societal designation for females should be open to trans identified males (scholarships and other resources)

• that sexual orientation really means gender identity

• that having a society with multiple genders is liberating people

• others should be forced to use preferred pronouns no matter the circumstance

• and that it is good if more youth explore their gender, socially transition and have easy access to hormone blockers facilitated by school counselors and therapists

In this way trans rights activism is not comparable to any other civil rights movement. Unlike other movements, the trans rights movement affects other people, imposing a new worldview on others that they may not agree with and is scientifically questionable. The purpose of the trans rights movement is to normalized trans people being treated as literally the opposite sex in every way and to teach people to accept this in early childhood. This could be viewed as indoctrination, not just a child safeguarding issue, and worthy of a public conversation. This is why the bathrooms, where people are just quickly using private stalls anyway, are not necessarily the main issue. It’s symbolic of all of large-scale social change, which is why it is promoted so strongly by trans activism. 

The reasons why this is being adopted so rapidly is that:

• trans youth, a previously under served population are truly in need of more help

• activists have created a narrative of fear that trans people will die if these viewpoints are not instituted 

• this is viewed as the next natural civil rights movement that will be beneficial to society

• large amounts of top down funding for trans rights to “LGBT” organizations had little to do after same-sex marriage was passed

B. Gender ideology viewpoints and goals of contemporary trans activism are not shared by all within the LGB and T populations, despite being portrayed as having consensus support

When some Canadian parents and other activists protested SOGI, a sex and gender education program (largely because of gender ideology) many pro LGBT people came to counter protest. In situations like this, debate is framed as “LGBT allies” versus conservatives (often with the insinuation the conservatives are bigoted, or motivated by religious beliefs). 

Another often promoted concept is that the only other people challenging concepts of gender ideology outside of right wing religious conservatives are far left radical feminists, often called “trans exclusionary radical feminists” or “TERFS.” The term is now used derisively towards any critics. While some feminists have been raising concerns about aspects of trans activism the longest, there is a very wide range of people who see issues with gender ideology and trans activism that ranges from the far left to the far right and includes everybody in between. Some essays from varying viewpoints are linked on this The Economist article.

No one should be portrayed as if they are representing the entire “LGBT community” when attacking anyone criticizing sex and gender programs in schools or gender ideology being implemented elsewhere as bigots. The harshest critics of gender ideology and aspects of trans activism are coming from within homosexual, bisexual, and trans populations themselves. All the letters represent differing communities with differing needs and viewpoints. No one organization can represent any consensus because there is none. 

Gender ideology policies are being implemented in many places (including government funded places). Some people find this culture not reality based, impractical, over-emphasizing of gender over human biology and values, a hindrance to reasonable and efficient ways of communicating, and resent the time and energy being put into forcing others to comply. If the use of gender neutral pronouns and the view that everyone should be able to self-identify as a myriad of gender identities were merely an individual choice or the choice of a particular community of people in expressing themselves, among themselves, this would not be controversial. But trans/genderqueer/non-binary identified people are insisting their identities be validated by the general public by enforcing a speech code and erasing boundaries based on biology that others may not agree with either through public accusations of bigotry, or by newly minted laws. Misgendering or “engaging in anti 2SLGBTQ+ protests in Canada, for example, is a legally punishable offence that can carry a $25,000 fine. The insistence on gender neutral language such “people who menstruate” and “front hole” are also demeaning to women. Gender neutral language such as birthing parent also erases the word mother, impinging on an important identity for many women. Such language may also have a negative impact on those who have less biological knowledge or those whose first language is not English.

Trans people who are critical of the gender & sexual confusion they see happening around them:

There is a core group of trans people, mostly MtFs, who express major concerns about what they see in parts of trans/gender queer activism. These include:

• a lack of boundaries

• a lack of realistic viewpoints

• an alarming increase in young people transitioning medically

• gender and sexual confusion

• conflicts with free speech

• gender neutral language causing confusion (eg. for those with language barriers)

Some trans individuals believe that transgenderism should only be defined as those who need to medically transition. They often embrace the term “transsexual” to separate themselves from post-modern influenced “queer” activism. They view gender queer identities as trendy at best, and a socially contagious neurosis, risking young people’s healthy bodies. They are called “truscum,” often derisively, in online trans/gender queer communities. 

Some trans people also do not believe in an agenda of insisting trans women are literally female or trans men are literally male, and male and female should refer to chromosomes and biological reproduction. Some also do not believe trans women should insist on being treated as women in all cases, such as for eligibility to compete in women’s sports, women’s scholarships and access to traditionally women’s’ only spaces.

The trans umbrella has now become so wide that these individuals feel that they are being lumped in with people who enjoy androgynous or cross-sex fashions or are fetishistic cross-dressers.They feel this delegitimizes and minimizes their life experience and need for medical aid to feel better.

Not all transgender people feel this amalgamation of identities helps their cause:

Many of the trans women who are critical of current activist trends as extreme are older. They feel they have lived peaceably along-side women and the gay/lesbian community for years, and are very worried the current tactics and attitudes will harm them.

Below are some more thoughts from transgender individuals who do not agree with aspects of current gender ideology and trans activism.

Another British trans woman criticizes gender ideology:

Future historians may see this as a clash between postmodernism and facts: the facts of life, namely sex and reproduction, on the one hand, and the idea that sex, or at least gender, is defined by thoughts and feelings rather than bodies. In the meantime, however, for trans people like me the debate is personal and the stakes are enormous. I transitioned six years ago to be freed of the chronic and debilitating effects of gender dysphoria. My goal was to carry on teaching and stay out of the press. That strategy was partly successful: I still work in the same school, and Sir became Miss. But I set aside my desire for privacy to speak out at this crucial time. The rights, protections and identities of trans people are being gambled, not in a court of law but in the court of public opinion.

Another more conservative trans woman from Australia, who believes that gender training in schools is exacerbating gender dysphoria in young people, has this to say:

Like all wild joyrides, this one will end in a car crash. It’s not a matter of if, but when, because this joyride has given rise to the pending car crash known as rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD.) This is why I oppose Safe Schools. This is why I am disturbed by the valourisation and glamorization of trans people, especially trans children, whether in the mainstream or social media.

And yet they say we need Safe Schools, the same indoctrination program that’s inflated the percentage of the general adolescent population who identify as transgender from 1.2 per cent to four percent. The 1.2 per cent figure is questionable, and for Safe Schools to then teach that one in twenty-five children are transgender is laughable. To the best of my knowledge, of all the 200-and-something kids in my grade in high school who turned out to be trans, I’m the only one. Inflating the 1.2 per cent figure is an attempt to justify Safe Schools for grooming school kids to ‘transtrend’, which trivialises gender dysphoria. It is clear that the social engineers behind Safe Schools and similar programs are happy to see my medical condition go contagious — the thought of that is sickening.

Not all trans people believe in raising children under genderqueer ideology. This FtM who decided to get pregnant despite hating a female body feels this way:

The couple explained that despite their own issues with gender growing up, they had chosen to refer to their son using male pronouns.

‘To me for my child to be gender neutral is kind of forcing him to go through [a] “what is my gender” mentality,' Alex explains.

Another trans woman criticizes trans/genderqueer activism (2:50-3:02):

I don’t want to bring up my kids in a world where there are no genders on birth certificates as we have recently seen in British Columbia. 

An essay called On the Science of Changing Sex: Getting Lost in the Crowd is a comprehensive piece on the issues many trans people who have medicalized have with what has happened recently to transgender activism. This is an example of a person not happy with lumping in people who medically transition with other kinds of gender nonconforming people, with blurring the line between androphilic and autogynephilic transsexuals, and blurring the lines between transsexuals and anyone now called “transgender.”

In the early ’90s, Beth Elliott, using her nom de plume Mustang Sally, wrote an essay entitled, “The Incredible Shrinking Identity” in which she decried the social effects of subsuming transsexual people into the larger umbrella of “transgender”, which with each passing year seemed to be growing at its margins to include more and more people who just a few years before, would never have been considered to be in the same grouping.  Of course, she was mostly talking about secretive cross-dressers, “transvestites”, autogynephilic men, who as we know, are in fact in the same etiological taxon as autogynephilic MTF transsexuals.  In the ’90s, it was possible to ignore this complaint as being specious on the social level, given already rampant socially unwanted and scientifically unwarranted lumping of autogynephilic and exclusively androphilic MTF transwomen.

But what started as merely political embarrassement (for AGP transwomen) has now become a serious scientific and civil rights issue as the term “transgender” has now been stretched to the point where it has little meaning as to actual sexual, social, or gendered behavior.  It is no longer enough for scientists to differentiate between autogynephilic/late onset vs. androphilic/early onset MTF transwomen… nor even between autoandrophilic vs. androphilic FtM transmen… now we must differentiate between an ever growing host of self-defined “other” gender categories and underlying behaviors, identities that are lumped under “transgender” to the point of making the term meaningless to sexologists and social scientists alike.

This writer discusses trans identification as trendy:

Thinking back on Lee, I’m fairly certain that she never transitioned and I’m willing to place fairly high odds that she married and had kids, probably now has grandchildren, none of which have any idea that she once hung out in the trans-scene.  At the time, we had no label for her.  Today, on the internet, the FtM transsexual community does have a label that would have applied, “tucute”, as in “Too Cute” to be trans.  If you visit the FtM pages on Tumbler, you are sure to run into a few… and will also note that they in turn, grumble about the negative feedback they get from those they call “Truscum” (“true” masculine gynephilic FtM transsexuals) for not accepting that they too are just as “trans”, even if they are in no sense gender atypical nor gender dysphoric.

There is another couple names for this behavior, “TransTrender” and “TrendsGender”, as in it is now “trendy” to say that one is transgender, in the right circles.    Back in my college years, hanging around Stanford University, I would often hear complaints from actual gynephilic women, real lesbians, about the phenomena of primarily androphilic women taking social positions as “Political Lesbians” and “Lesbians Until Graduation”.  The “transgender” community now has the same phenomena.  It seems to have become “cool” in some comfortably well off, very socially liberal teenaged and young adult circles to be associated with the LGB and now T community, as though being associated with a marginalized group made up for their obvious social privilege.

One could well imagine the growing resentment felt by those of us who have experienced familial rejection, social disapprobation, economic deprivation, and psychic pain from a lifetime of gender atypicality and dysphoria towards those who misappropriate an identity from the protective cocoon of indulgent family, liberal universities, and the anonymity of the internet.

As one young transman put it:

“Dysphoria is the defining factor of a transgender person. It’s why they want to TRANSition. It’s why they’re called TRANS in the first place, fuckwits. It doesn’t have to be crippling “I hate my body ugh I can’t look at myself naked” (And I do know some trans people whose dysphoria is that bad). On a 10 is an “I can’t see myself naked” to 1 is a “I don’t feel right in this body”, I’m probably a 5-7. I can see myself naked but it just doesn’t feel right. Specially with my chest. That’s dysphoria. Not “OMG, I don’t want to be human I want to be a rabbit/sunflower/magical girl” or whatever these tucutes are on I don’t even know.   …

The more I look at it, the more I see tucutes acting like being transgender is a cute little accessory they can put on. You’re comfy with your body but you like girls even if you’re a girl yourself? Congratulations, you could be a lesbian. You like boys but you’re a boy? Good on you, you might be a homosexual man. You like the opposite gender? That makes you a terrible hetero person and that’s bad because all hetero people are transphobic and evil. Be trans instead. That’s cooler.

Except… it’s not.

It’s not cool to be trans. It’s not cool to wake up and see these parts of you that you feel so uncomfortable with having that you would wish cancer on yourself just to have them taken away. It’s not cool to have to struggle with the longing to tell your parents that you’re not the right gender because you want to trust them and want to open up to them but you’re afraid it’ll just add to the laundry list of things you’ve already disappointed them with. It’s not cool to have known you were one thing from birth but everyone else and your own body telling you you’re not and that you were supposed to be a certain way because that’s what you looked like from the outside.

It’s not cool to be trans.

If I had a choice, if being trans WAS a choice I would choose to be cis.

Miranda Yardley discusses controversial trans activist, who is often hates opposing autogynephilia denial, saying that trans women are men, and that denying biology is not a path to liberation for trans people:

(13:42-14:31):

I don’t think it is a very good argument. You are a man…calling someone a man is only an insult, if there is something wrong with being a man. If your ideology means that you find a description of reality, of a morally neutral description of reality, your biological sex is morally neutral. It is not a criticism…If your ideology means that you find dealing with the everyday reality of your own existence to be a problem then you’ve got to change your ideology. It’s not going to last. And it’s not a sustainable ideology. 

Another “truscum” MtF, Rose of Dawn who feels multiple gender identities and pronouns and non-medical “trans” and “gender queer” identities are harmful to the cause of “transsexual” rights and understanding and acceptance.

(0:37-1:36):

But cut to 2018 and you will find the landscape has changed dramatically with trans people being more prominent in society and then ever before, despite being such a small fraction of the population. And with this the conversation has changed too. We no longer talk about women and men's bodies but instead people can identify as any gender they want. You can identify as a man a woman nothing everything water the moon. The list is limited only by your imagination. Naturally such a jump has caused a lot of confusion about what a trans person actually is. LGBT groups such as Stonewall would have you believe there's no difference between a transsexual and someone who says they don't believe in a gender binary. But they also pretend that there's no discussion to this. And anyone who questions the validity of someone who says that they're trans is called a bigot. This is something that I do not agree with. And its a view shared by many cis people who are confused about the new genders but lots of trans people find the new definitions to be ridiculous as well...

(8:01-8:25)

The gender radical, smash the binary, eff the binary demands also puts a post modern feminist and anti-science lens on the biological facts. They deny biological sex exists and so language polices phrases like “male” and “female.”  This is denying science and reality and makes trans people look deluded.

And gives several examples of some new genders:

There is more criticism of gender ideology in this video here (9:53-10:32):

What does this even mean? Think for a second. How would you even know which one is a parody. Their view of gender fulfills Poe’s Law. If you say you support vocigender, and agender, and fem fluid flux and you consider them to be real genders, we are very clearly talking about entirely different conceptions of gender. This alone is why you shouldn’t and can’t speak for me…and in turn it makes transsexuals into a joke. 

Blaire White, Youtuber, center-right MtF, and critic of “LGBT” culture, is not a fan of gender queer ideology.

(5:00-5:14):

Can we please stop referring to any slight fluctuation in one’s levels of masculinity or femininity as being trans. Can we just go back to the medical definition of transsexuals rather than the Tumblr one.

Debbie Hayton, is an outspoken opponent of self-ID laws and other aspects of trans activism:

Muddled thinking about sex and gender, and what it means to be male or female, also threatens the credibility of transsexual people who transition to escape the chronic and debilitating effects of gender dysphoria. I know that struggle first hand. I can recount the standard trans narrative of discomfort with my sex from a very early age. Throughout childhood I yearned to be female but concrete reality displaced my wishful thinking, and instead I grew into a man who married and had a family.

The transwomen are women mantra is being presented as irrefutable truth. That worries me because ordinary people know what it means to be a woman, and it isn’t a feeling. Crudely, a lot of it can be reduced to our reproductive organs. Laws that are effective need to be grounded in solid foundations: in science and in society; how we relate to nature and how we relate to each other. These are truths that are real and objective.

Science is clear. Our biological sex indicates our role in the reproduction of our species. We are like other mammals. Some of us have male sex organs and others have female sex organs. I have three children and unless there were repeat visits from the Angel Gabriel that neither my partner nor I knew about, I was responsible for the male gametes that produced them. Arguments over labels do not change the underlying facts. I know that I am not biologically female.

Society is also real. Boys and girls are socialized differently. Boys never face the prospect of becoming pregnant, nor are they expected to take on more than their fair share of caring responsibilities or make sacrifices for their future spouse’s career. They are stronger, taller, and are generally given more freedoms, and their bodies are not subject to the same scrutiny that girls’ are.

To say that trans women are the same as women, therefore requires denial of some rather huge concrete truths. I can’t do that with any integrity and, rather than identify as a woman, – a rather meaningless concept – I identify with women.

Critical thinking is not hate; it builds understanding and establishes foundations that are robust and can protect trans people without compromising the rights of women. Transwomen are not the same as women, and it is disingenuous to try and argue that they are. That being said, there is much that we share in our day-to-day lives, and we both face adversity and hardship, including oppression and prejudice. We must, therefore, abandon philosophies based on wishful thinking and return to concrete reality. Only then will we be able to work together with trust and confidence, combat discrimination and build a better society that works for us all.

Another similar article written by an MtF transsexual, Kristina Harrison can be found here:

Transrational is another website run by a group of trans people who feel at odds with what they see as extremism in trans activism and gender ideology.

Bisexuals, Gays, & Lesbians who are critical

Aspects of gender ideology are not supported by many members of the LGB community. Some of the main reasons for this are: 

• It concerns LGB people aware of desistance statistics and how gender ideology and gender affirmation impacts LGB youth, who may experience gender non-conformity and dysphoria at higher rates.

• They believe the culture in the LGB community (and even society at large) in the past supported being GNC without a need for validation for multiple genders and forcing people to use multiple pronouns. They believe this is preferable.

• Denying biology blurs the reality that different categories of people have different needs. They also believe to define gay and lesbian as “homogenderal” based on gender identity and not based on biological sex erases the meaning of homosexuality.

Here a bisexual female, who has struggled with serious gender dysphoria and body issues, responding to Diane Ehrensaft’s view of gender:

Ehrensaft is always contradicting herself. She says it’s all about the gender creative child spinning their own unique gender web without parent or professional interference, then recounts these stories where she’s clearly leading a kid in a certain direction based on her read of whether they’ll benefit from transition or not. She says the gender bedrock of our society is shifting because of gender creative children, but she continues to justify her choice to approve them for transitional treatments in part by describing how boyish or effete she perceives them to be. 

She counsels “gender specialists in training” not to bother asking children why they say they are/want to be a boy or a girl, because they have no answers:

She describes the only reason for a child to have “gender pathology” (i.e. distress about gender if I’m reading her correctly) is transphobia, an attitude which ignores the many, many other factors that can contribute to someone’s distress about their gender- racism, misogyny, ableism, various other social pressures that can trouble someone’s understanding of their place in a very gendered world.“

A bisexual woman presents a whole video here about why she does not agree with current attitudes in trans activism, denying biology:

(12:50-12:59):

Why can’t we just be honest and admit we have differences.

While many bisexuals support the ideas of gender and sexual fluidity, there are bisexuals who don’t believe in concepts of multiple genders and redefining bisexuality to mean “attraction to multiple genders” (pansexual) as is the norm now, particularly with youth. These bisexuals believe in a biology based worldview and do not agree that bisexual youth should be pressured by queer youth culture to have sex with trans people (as lesbians are in the above topic) or that they should be called “transphobic for not identifying as “pansexual.”

Conservative gay male, Chad Felix Greene:

Because trans activists are so determined to dismiss and debunk the notion of people regretting their transition, even going so far as to call it a myth, it becomes difficult to fully understand the scope of the issue. Without hormone therapy or physical surgery, a young person who resolves their gender dysphoria on their own may never be counted. From the LGBT mindset, there is only one answer to this question and that is full and complete acceptance and affirmation of transgender identity. But their own self-regulating dogma has blinded them to the realities of the growing gender fluidity movement. By insisting that transgender therapy rely on medical intervention, the trans movement undermines its own evolution on what gender identity is.

In this, conservatives may also reevaluate our understanding of gender identity and sexuality. The gender movement is often absurd, and the hostility and aggressiveness turn us off to any persuasive arguments on their behalf. We have come to respond exclusively to transgender authoritarianism with, “There are only two genders.” We do not separate gender and sex and recognize the biological reality of binary sex in our species. But in doing so we miss an opportunity to appreciate what the transgender community, at its core, is trying to tell us.

I understand gender dysphoria because I experienced it myself. As a young child and well into my late teens and early 20’s I felt a distinct discomfort in my own body and certainly in my gender. I believed I was female and that transition would be the only way to experience peace in who I was. And while I have aligned my gender to my sex and am comfortable as a male, I cannot easily articulate what “feeling like a boy” means. In truth, I can only imagine what other men must feel like based on social cues, entertainment and observation, but I can never be sure. In the same way, as a child I could only imagine what feeling like a girl was like based on those same criteria.

Sex is biological, and we have two sexes. But gender is not so easy to define and for some, impossible to understand for themselves. What we are seeing today is a movement of endless possibility and self-customization online that fuels creativity in young people who suffer from insecurity and long for a strong identity.

Unlike lesbians, gay men are able to express very strong disinterest in sex with trans identified females without consequences [update- this is becoming less true]:  

"Sorry, no. The group is for actual homosexual men," he said. "Dysphoric females are not and can never be men, therefore naturally (and quite obviously) excluded."

We reached out again in order to clarify we were a news organization, "I have little care or concern of the opinions of trans activists," Bennett said. "You may quote me.”

Here is a quote from Kathleen Stock pointing to the importance of maintaining categories of people in the interests of empiricism:

The category “female” is also important for understanding the particular challenges its members face, as such. These include a heightened vulnerability to rape, sexual assault, voyeurism and exhibitionism; to sexual harassment; to domestic violence; to certain cancers; to anorexia and self-harm; and so on. If self-declared trans women are included in statistics, understanding will be hampered. A male’s self-identification into the category of “female” or “women” doesn’t automatically bring on susceptibility to these harms; nor does a female’s self-identification out of those categories lessen it. In a sexist world which often disadvantages females, as such, we need good data. We need good data about trans people too, of course, but the two tasks should be separated.

Another lesbian, Ani O’Brien, explains her problems with gender ideology in this Medium post:

Gender identity ideology is constructed like a cult.... The rules shift constantly and if you don’t keep up you risk being cast out. I see these women tripping over their own tongues to say the right things and give power to the right people.

A lesbian identified young woman has this to says:

In the last couple of years I noticed a big push within the community to educate on trans issues, change the culture around checking which pronouns people use, increase trans visibility and promote more respect and understanding around gender identity, which are all good things in my book. Intentional mispronouncing, both in and outside of the LGBT community is a constant micro-aggression. But then something else happened. The same queers who were screaming bloody murder about people not getting their pronouns right, started to use gender neutral pronouns for me without asking. It didn’t feel right. Occasionally someone would ask what pronoun I used, and on hearing me say “she and her” would double take and say “are you sure?”

Why weren’t these queers taking my first answer? They certainly got angry when people questioned using the neutral “they”. It occurred to me that members of the queer community were questioning my right to define as a woman because of my androgynous appearance almost as much as straight homophobes had questioned my validity as a woman for the exact same reason. I felt increasingly pressured to define as something other than “woman”, and that being a woman, particularly without prefixing it with something like “gender queer” or “gender fluid” or “non-binary”, was increasingly difficult to get people to accept. Was I so bad at being a woman that my own community wouldn’t even believe me? Isn’t it ironic that a supposedly radical community seemed to find the concept of a masculine woman so difficult to swallow?

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard or heard of some middle class MA Gender/Sexuality/Sociology Studies twerp shaming and condemning some poor gay seventeen year old for not knowing what a demisexual, panromantic, masc of center gender queer is. There are large numbers of the queer community who need to face up to the fact that they have a huge amount of social, educational and class privilege, and that some people do not get to read books that introduce them to all these terms. Some people grow up in houses where there are no books, or the only thing they ever read with the terms “lesbian” and “gay” are tabloid newspapers spitting bile. Sometimes people make mistakes, or have limitations of language. And some of us think that the obsessive developing of endless terms is an intentional attempt to stretch the definition of our community so much that the community in fact will not exist.

Observations from a lesbian about the fall-out of gender ideology resulting in there being so few lesbian-identified young females now:

One of the problems for young lesbians (in addition to the rise in lesbophobia particularly among the young) is that, when they reach out to ‘their’ community, e.g. join an LGBT group for support, what they get isn’t their community at all but something very hostile…

Young lesbians have nowhere to go:

3) Young lesbians these days are more likely to be identifying as transmen rather than as lesbians.  For the few who do, they lack access to a real lesbian community which could introduce them to an alternative to the current discourse. They have little opportunity to discuss shared issues, learn from others’ experiences and have other lesbian women on their side. Young lesbians who aren’t accepted or feel isolated in their school, family, community etc will seek out an LGBT youth group and this community they reach out to will heavily endorse the transactivist agenda as part and parcel (and absolutely central) to their identity. Where else do they go and how do they know that there is anything else?

Nobody listens to lesbians anyway!

4) The low status of lesbian women within the LGBT community also stops some speaking out.  I don’t think people outside are really aware of how much misogyny and in particular hatred of lesbians there is from some gay men.

There’s a big personal cost to speaking up.

Katie Herzog is a lesbian who writes for The Stranger.

I suspect that "they" is most often lobbed onto people who look like me; that is, butch women. I have short hair, wear clothing from the men's section, and would look like a very awkward drag queen in a dress. When young, queer, online people meet me (or already know me), I am just as often referred to as "they" as I am "she," no questions asked. This looks, in practice, a whole lot like female erasure to me.

Another lesbian is constantly misgendered with they/them pronouns:

…being a woman is integral to my identity, and it hurts when people in my own community assume I am not one because of the way I style and dress myself.

Tumblr comment:

Tucutes

Tucute ideology is even worse, as it draws in straight and LGB youth that aren’t GNC. It’s often bred in communities that preach that “trans gays are better than those dang dirty cishets!” In these communities, straight and non-trans girls are alienated because they feel they don’t fit in. Often times, these girls aren’t GNC. They’re feminine straight girls, with no reason to doubt that or claim otherwise aside from being involved in communities that say they are disgusting murderers because of how they are. I say girls because boys are very rarely drawn into the communities, because these communities take place on websites that straight born men would feel even less welcome on than straight born girls.

But what happens in these communities is gender-conforming straight girls are drawn in, and they start to call themselves “gay trans boys” (hardly ever men, because men are touted as disgusting on these websites as well) or “gay non-binary boys.” They will rarely date others of these “gay boys” because they aren’t interested in girls: they are straight girls, they want to date real boys and can easily recognize that the others wearing these labels are not that.

…However, you may notice the link says something like “gender fluid resources.” That’s because all those genders are meant to be used in combination with each other. It’s meant for girls to take every facet of their personality, every mood swing, every time they don’t like makeup, and label it as a gender they switch between. These often come with special pronouns and sometimes even names for each one. I am planning on writing an article about new age pronouns at some point, because the deeper into non-binary and tucute ideas you get, the more Kafkaesque it becomes.

This article from a lesbian expresses a very similar viewpoint.

This person has not disclosed his/her sexual orientation but appears to be LB or G and is a harsh critic of the gender ideology being pushed by LGBT organization. This is a long section but lays out well the issues many LGB or even T people have with what they see as an intellectually shaky view on gender and sexual orientation, which often confuse children and adolescents.

I decided to look at the HRC’s Transgender FAQ, written by Meghan Stabler for more information. After all, they recommended it. Perhaps that will clear everything up. Meghan was born Mark and was formerly a senior software executive who now works at the HRC. Meghan gives us this definition of ‘transgender’:

“Transgender — or trans — is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity or expression is different from those typically associated with the sex assigned to them at birth (e.g., the sex listed on their birth certificate). Conversely, cisgender — or cis — is the term used to describe people whose gender identity or expression aligns with those typically associated with the sex assigned to them at birth.”

Meghan, in our next quote, finally gives me HRC’s definition of ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’. I’m sure this will clear everything up, make me delete everything I’ve written, and go home, reassured that the transgender movement is fine, dandy, and a legitimate civil rights movement.

“Gender identity refers to a person’s innate, deeply-felt psychological identification as a man, woman or some other gender. Gender expression refers to the external manifestation of a person’s gender identity, which may or may not conform to socially-defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine.”

Wait? So, gender identity is about someone identifying as a man or a woman? But what are men and women then? Can I identify as a woman on Wednesday and a man on Friday? And gender expression is about gender stereotypes? Actually, the whole thing just sounds like gender stereotypes. Maybe, that’s what ‘gender’ is.

Meghan finally tells us the difference between sex and gender:

“Sex refers to the designation of a person at birth as either “male” or “female” based on their anatomy (e.g. reproductive organs) and/or their biology (e.g. hormones).

Gender refers to the traditional or stereotypical roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society consider appropriate for men and women.”

Okay, a butch lesbian has a ‘gender expression’ that is different from those typically associated with the sex assigned to them at birth — does that make a butch lesbian transgender? Are women who do non-stereotypical jobs transgender? So, remember, drawing from Meghan’s own definitions, being transgender is about identifying with the traditional or stereotypical roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society consider appropriate for the other sex. Are you not especially identified with gender stereotypes? Under Meghan’s definition, the Human Rights Campaign’s definition, you are transgender.

Meghan tells us that to live as the other gender, one must transition:

“Transitioning is the process some transgender people go through to begin living as the gender with which they identify, rather than the sex assigned to them at birth. This may or may not include hormone therapy, sex reassignment surgery and other medical procedures.”

Only some transgender people go through transition? What are the other transgender people doing then? What makes them the other gender? How are they the opposite sex, outside of saying they are? It doesn’t make sense. The Human Rights Campaign, if this is what they think is cutting edge activism for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities, must have been replaced by Family Research Council lackeys, because that’s incredibly regressive.

With this definition of gender, all the drag queens on RuPaul are transgender. Last I checked, almost all of them were happy gay men. Is K.D. Lang transgender? Ellen DeGeneres? Is a man transgender if he binge-watched Sex And The City on Netflix? That’s contrary to stereotypes, after all. The LGB have a long history of playing with gender stereotypes. Are all those gender rebels transgender? I found similar definitions of transgender on Wikipedia and on other LGBTIQ+ websites.

Liberals & moderates who are critical of gender ideology

There is a general impression among school educators, media, and in “LGBT” organizations that gender ideology, and the promotion of an intense focus on gender and pronouns, is disliked mainly by right-wing, traditional religious people. They believe that it has widespread support among liberals, moderates, secular, LGB, and trans people. This is simply not the case. Schools, the media, and public and private entities should not assume these issues relating to trans activism and gender ideology are not controversial and are considered socially progressive by all, even in the most left-wing, open-minded T and LGB circles. 

Not only do people have some disagreement with the views on gender presented in the previous section. Many people find it absurd. One example of this can be found in a parody video, where foreign students are forced to conjugate multiple newfangled pronouns in English class. In another example, one student demanded to be called “his Majesty” at his college trying to implement a pronoun enforcement policy. The public controversy over Bill C16 in Canada and criticism of the New York pronoun law are other examples. This criticism isn’t all coming from the far-right.

Donna Reynolds is skeptical that children can really “leading the way” in creating a society where there are factually real “multiple genders.”

Dr. Ehrensaft is wrong. Children aren’t leading the charge in this field, and limitless gender fluidity isn’t an idea that springs unbidden from the minds of adolescents. These are post-modern gender concepts developed by academics and released into the infosphere where they can be absorbed by kids who are bored, troubled, or seeking new and creative ways to freak out their parents.

This is a quote from a liberal, gay supportive heterosexual female: 

What an utterly tragic and unnecessary situation; it never used to be like this. Transwomen and women were once each other’s strongest friends and allies. We respected and supported each other’s rights and safety. We fought side by side on the same team against the common enemy – toxic masculinity. Transwomen never made any claims on womanhood. Both sides knew that our lives, challenges, experiences and biology were different. But that didn’t matter; transwomen were welcomed into the club as honorary members and we all rubbed along together in harmony.

Here is a college student who does not believe the current culture around gender and the large increases of people transitioning is healthy:

By one month into my freshman year, the number of trans people I knew personally or by association was growing steadily. The school is small enough that even if you don’t know someone by name, you’ve probably seen them around. There were many boys wearing eyeliner but those were boys. There were girls wearing eyeliner that were also boys. Boys with small beards that were actually girls. And everything in between. One of my roommates started dating a “cis-passing” trans boy. Someone I met at the beginning of the year whose name was Tim would now like me to relearn that name as Rebecca. Someone else who started school with hair to her waist cut it all off and became Andrew. If you can’t determine gender by someone’s appearance, why have gender at all? Why not just call each other by our biology, whether we are happy with it or not, if only for consistency and clarity’s sake? I was trying to be empathetic but it was not easy, and confusing at best. No one said anything skeptical, and neither did I.

Terri Murray sees anti-gay sentiment in the trans movement, as some anti-gay religions are embracing it.

The seemingly compassionate progressive medical and clinical ‘recognition’ of the transgender ‘patient’ may in reality be reinforcing the heteronormative binary that long caused suffering and alienation both for homosexual and gender non-conforming heterosexual persons.

Transgender rights activists emphasize that they belong to a minority defined by gender identity. The ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’ of their minds is treated as an anatomical ‘thing’ akin to hair color, genital sex, or skin pigmentation. However, adopting this biological account of their gendered ‘psyche’ requires that we first accept religiously conservative premises about gender. This might explain why so many ultra-conservative religious bodies in the world (from the Iranian Parliament and Pakistan’s Supreme Court, to the Church of England), has thrown its weight behind transgender rights while remaining steadfastly homophobic. One thing that has always been built into gender is the heterosexuality of ‘men’ and ‘women’. Social ‘dis-ease’ (uneasiness) with gender non-conformism (including homosexuality) is today being re-conceptualized as a psychosexual abnormality within the constitution of the ‘patient’. Transgender as a conceptual model poses a greater danger to homosexuals (especially homosexual children) than any previous homophobic policy in history. Acknowledging this does not require the exclusion or stigmatization of people who feel uncomfortable with their gender identity. It only requires us to reassess the ways in which some people’s discomfort with their bodies has been framed by clinicians and academics, some of whom have vested interests in providing treatment for this new medical condition.

This quote speaks to a culture of unhealthy rumination on pronouns:

Ask yourself whether the right course of action for preventing teenage suicides related to gender distress is to further push aside the embracing of gender role nonconformity, to feed into unhealthy fixations of gender dysphoric youth, and to support the idea that the only acceptable way to be trans is to reject all material reality associated with oneself.

Many very open minded and LGBT-rights-supportive liberals do not feel an environment constantly ruminating on gender identity and fluidity is healthy. This is a quote from a life-long liberal and Democratic Party official:

The rot is even worse than you think. You have no idea how highly this has infected the low and middle levels of the Democratic Party. The mistake people make is on focusing on what the high elites in parties think, rather than what you could call the middle management. Elites are close to retirement, really, and while they do exert pull on the rest of the people, they can’t pull too much.

Middle management, however, controls _everything_.

Not long ago, when my wife was pregnant, a coworker asked if we knew what we were having. I told this friend, and we were all excited.

Another coworker immediately started lecturing me in front of everyone about how this was grossly cis-heteronormative and that rather than forcing an identity on my child because of genitals, I should cultivate an environment in which the child would be able to flourish and explore the play of gender.

The room for reasonable people on sex/gender issues is vastly closing in this party. What I mean by reasonable is:

1. Believing that gender dysphoria is real, people should be able to get a diagnosis, transition easily, have their transitions respected and live without fear,

2. Believing that same sex relationships are morally neutral and not socially destructive,

3. Believing that strong gender roles can do real damage to both men and women, in that for women, it can teach them to be passive and helpless, and for men, that they have to go it alone, etc.

A leftist female’s viewpoint on social media:

Another feminist on her blog post expresses:

How can gender dysphoria be so profound as to require everybody else on earth to accommodate your pronouns and politely pretend they don’t see your sex, yet capacious and elastic enough to include giving birth?..

The smug self-designation ‘non-binary’ reminds me of Kanye and Kim Kardashian hiring private fire fighters to save their own home while all around them, California burns. Gender is the climate disaster that brings catastrophe (often in the form of frustrated male violence from suppressed emotion and taught entitlement) on us all. To leave everyone else behind in the conflagration is just selfish. We need to all escape it together, by tackling the actual problem. There’s no point in individual people building their own magic castle in which they can pretend ‘it’s different for me.’

 This is a quote from another liberal leaning female run website:

Women’s voices are being ignored and our rights eroded in the name of ‘transgender equality’. Current policy recommendations regarding transgender rights have a potentially adverse effect on women in a number of ways:  

-The threat to current sex-based rights, which keep males and females segregated in public places where women and girls might be physically vulnerable. These include toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centers, refuges, hospital wards and prisons.

-The inclusion of male-bodied, male-socialized people, into areas of success and achievement where women currently have their own space in order to make competition fair or to level the playing field. These include sports, prizes and awards, shortlists and quotas.

-The negative affect on the lesbian community of the pressure on young women to identify as trans rather than as lesbian. There is also pressure to accept male-bodied self-identified ‘lesbians’ as sexual partners.

-The skewing of national statistics regarding crime, due to the higher rate of offending by male transitioners as opposed to women, with possible knock-on effects on funding for women’s services.

-The changing of language pertinent to women and girls in order to make it more trans-inclusive, thereby making ‘women’s issues’ impossible to talk about. This includes the use of such terms as ‘pregnant people’ by health providers.

In “Just call me “ze”.’ The trouble with gender-neutral identities” an expert in languages discusses the practicality of 3rd gender pronouns and whether dependence on their use is mentally healthy. 

But the gender-neutral identity is quite different. It is not an indifference to categories, just being yourself, ignoring demands to fit in with models or roles. Instead, there is an obsession with categories (gender neutral, gender queer, gender fluid, gender questioning, agender, bigender, or many many others). The quest for the right category is the quest to establish a basis for the self. 

This means that the formation of the self plays out not in an interior world, nor in relation to close others, but in relation to redefined categories that a person has invented or found on the internet. People go in search of an identity box that ‘fits’, in the way that in the past they might have sought a religion or vocation…

The gender-neutral pronoun is a violation of language and the meaning of words. To ask other people to use ‘they’ or ‘it’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’ is to make them twist their tongues into unnatural shapes, and use words in ways that violate their actual meaning. A person is called either a plural, or an object. It is worse with invented pronouns, such as xe/xem, zie/hir, e/em, fae/faer, and co/cos, because people do not understand what they mean. People are asked to use words that don’t mean anything...

The gender-neutral person has no point of independence, no point apart from the world on which to stand. They are their identity box; they are their pronoun. And the content of this identity box is nothing but the violation of the commonly accepted category. It is an identity founded on the negation of the categories of social life, declaring them ‘binary’ and null and void…

And to my fellow pro-science, biological realists: stop trying to tie “gender” to sex, let them have as much non-binary fluidity as they want: human sexual phenotypes do constitute a wide spectrum. However, don’t give an inch when the anti-science social constructionists try to use “gender” in a way to surreptitiously implicate sex within their sublime valorization of “gender” subjectivity. This whole social constructionist agenda is premised on exploiting the broader public’s confusion about the meaning of the word “gender.” It’s there we need to draw the line. Standing up against the ideological agenda of this pronoun colonialism of the social constructionists is a pretty good place to start.

Michael McConkey writes another critique of transgender activism manipulation of language in “Why We Should Stop Using the Term ‘Gender.”

To state my thesis plainly: gender is a grammatical concept that has been co-opted as a means of confusing the uneducated about the biological facts of sexual dimorphism for distinctly ideological purposes. The strategy has widely worked. All those committed to scientific truth and biological reality should stop using the term in that way. Continuing to do so is playing into the hands of openly anti-science social constructionists. To claim there are only two genders is a confused response. It grants their core premise while ostensibly disputing their arguments. To clarify what I mean, let’s take a closer look at how we got here.

 Lionel Shriver also sees the gender queer movement as regressive:

We have entered instead an oppressively gendered world, in which identity is more bound up in one’s sex than ever before. (Note: dictionary definitions regard gender and sex as interchangeable, and I will, too.) As Jemima Lewis wrote in the Daily Telegraph in March: “You can be agender, bi-gender, cisgender, demigender, graygender, intergender, genderless, gender queer or third gender—but by God, you will accept a label.” The gay and lesbian world having gone so mainstream as to become a big bore, western media has moved on to an enthrallment with trans-genderism bizarrely out of proportion to the statistical rarity of true gender dysphoria—though children and people generally being so suggestible, the condition will doubtless grow more common. Facebook has extended its gender options beyond the 71 it reached a year ago (thrillingly, two options in this dizzying smorgasbord of self-definition are “Man” and “Woman”). Users are now allowed to infinitely customize their profiles. As the Facebook Diversity Team published, “Now, if you do not identify with the pre-populated list of gender identities, you are able to add your own. As before, you can add up to ten gender terms…

Another critique of normalizing the concept of a gender spectrum by someone who would be defined as a liberal in the classical sense on Trueliberalnexus.com:

Just enforcing existing, or passing new, anti-discrimination laws is not enough, we are forewarned. “Cultural protections” for transgendered people, commonly known as trans*, will be erected, and society will be re-educated about how it conceives of sexual identity. “[I]t will need to reevaluate just how necessary it really is to define people according to what’s between their legs. This would clearly help the transgender community, but it might be healthy for the rest of us, too.” 

The so-called “gender binary”, where the world is viewed as male and female, is evil and wrong, we are instructed. We must all now embrace the “Gender Spectrum” (“GS”), which better reflects nature and most importantly, is “inclusive.”…

 It is indeed possible to find scattered examples of cultures tolerant of intersex and transgendered people. (Sadly, they seem the exceptions to the rule.)  One might well cite these examples to encourage greater tolerance in our own society. But they simply do not hold up as evidence of a gender spectrum. Just because these pre-modern societies — ignorant of chromosomes, pre-natal development, or orbital frontal cortices — invented third, fourth or fifth “sexes” to explain certain phenomena, doesn’t mean extra sexes exist for real.

Further, for this to serve as proof that our “simplistic” binary model actively suppresses expressions of gender non-conformity, SJWs would need to produce data showing a significantly higher prevalence of gender-queer individuals in these cultures. They haven’t bothered, and likely can’t.

Finally, hirja of the Indian subcontinent traditionally had, and often still have, their penis and testicles chopped off as boys, then are forced into a life of prostitution. This is not a cultural practice we should seek to emulate.

Spectrum proponents say our gender roles are ‘just a social construct.’But societies and cultures do not appear out of thin air. The origin of human societal culture can be traced back through the group behaviors of our hominid  & earlier social animal ancestors, all the way to the mating instincts of the first sexually-reproducing creatures. Our cultural gender constructs are the direct product of, and are designed to facilitate, sexual reproduction. Far from being arbitrary or capricious, our ‘binary’ gender roles and expressions precisely replicate the function of fixed sex displays like plumage or instinctual behaviors. Baby, It’s Cold Outside is a mating dance.

The Insane Charade

We have shown that:

1. Trans* individuals are extremely rare (~ 0.3%);

2. Same-sex attraction is rare (~ 3%);

3. Our species is by design a sexual binary of male and female;

4. The vast majority of people — cis and trans*, straight and gay — self-identify as either male or female;

5. Normative cultural gender roles and expressions, albeit sometimes taken to extremes by certain cultures, are consistent with that sexual binary and naturally emanate from it;

6. A large majority of people are comfortable with standard gender roles and forms of expression. That almost no one conforms to clichéd, exaggerated stereotypes is unremarkable; that a few people deviate widely from standard gender expressions does not equate to a smooth variance across the entire population, much less is proof of the existence of extra sexes.

One former official member of PFLAG, who for years saw no major incidences of serious gender dysphoria, feels the introduction on concepts of gender and sexual fluidity has led to poor boundaries at her support group at her location.

I began to look for more balanced discussion of the facts regarding transgender issues, and was horrified to learn (for instance) that transitioned children, whom I had blithely assumed would go on to lead happy and fulfilled lives, would actually wind up permanently sterilized.  To put it mildly, PFLAG does not advertise this detail; nor are most leaders, in my experience, even aware of it.  I also could no longer deny that some of the folks I had encountered via PFLAG were, in the vernacular, “creepy.”  There had been discussion of fetishes and other “alternative” behavior that would, in any other context, have sent me right out the door.  In retrospect, in the name of tolerance, I permitted my own boundaries to become fuzzier than I should have.

The final straw, for me, was the parent-assisted mastectomy of a troubled young woman in my community.  I was just done. I actually continued to run our chapter for another excruciating summer, loathe to simply shut it down after so many years involved with PFLAG, but finally did.  I do not expect that my concerns (which I circulated in a lengthy letter) will have any impact on PFLAG at all.

She also questions Diane Ehrensaft’s philosophy of let the children lead.

The mantra was “the children are leading the way, and isn’t it exciting!” 

Gay and lesbian were boring old vanilla, and I was seriously out of my league. Conferences and gay pride panels became an exercise in “can you top this?”  The mantra was “the children are leading the way, and isn’t it exciting!”  Having several children of my own, I was pretty skeptical, given that these children leading the way could not reliably load a dishwasher or return a library book.

C. Scientists who see harm in current gender ideology

Gender ideology within trans and gender queer activism has become so nebulous that transgender research experts are having difficulty keeping up with the changing identities and language of gender queer and non-binary identified people. This calls into question it’s empirical and scientific validity and if what is actually going on is healthy.

While documentation of non-binary identities has increased in recent years 107 researchers continue to struggle to account for the diversity among non-binary individuals or respond to the rapid shifts in acceptable and preferred language within this community.108

Some people with mental health backgrounds are arguing that gender fluidity concepts are not necessarily adaptive for young people. James Caspian is both a therapist and a gay man concerned about the seemingly increasing regret rates among those who have medically transitioned.

(16:05-16:58):

People talk about non-binary, and actually you could make an argument that everyone in non-binary, everybody. And indeed, Carl young said that all males had an anima and that all females had an anime, a contra sexual component and that that was perfectly normal. The degree to which they had that, expressed that would change throughout life. It would move around. It was kind of fluid if you like…So there is nothing really new in that However, what is new is the kind of politicization and polarization that has become part of that whole conversation, where some people are in and some people are out. And you are not allowed to say certain things. 

Lisa Marchiano is a Jungian analyst who has consulted with many parents of trans identified young people questions the need to obsess over others supporting one’s pronoun or feeling a need to be “literally” the opposite biological sex.

We can’t control how others see us. Positioning ourselves so that we only feel okay when others perceive and validate us as we want to be perceived, rather than focusing on developing self-acceptance and resilience in the face of slights or rejections, is a decision that may promote worse mental health. 

Furthermore, if identifying as transgender means that we understand ourselves to be literally male when our bodies are female, we may experience cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance refers to the inner tension that we feel when important beliefs are contradicted by evidence. It can be quite uncomfortable. Psychologists have studied those whose strong beliefs are challenged by material evidence. (The theory of cognitive dissonance was developed by a psychologist studying a doomsday cult, and what happened to cult members’ beliefs when the world did not in fact end as their leader had predicted.) They note that we have a tendency to “double down” on our false beliefs in order to resolve the internal tension. Our beliefs become more extreme, and we work even harder internally to justify or reconcile with the challenged belief. (This isn’t just true of cult members. It’s true of every one of us.)

Those who identify as transgender can suffer from pangs of cognitive dissonance. This can often make the dysphoria worse. I have heard many stories from desisters and detransitioners that identifying as transgender made them feel worse, because they then had to deal with a constant tension around the fact that their body looked and acted differently than how they thought it should. This can invite obsessive, perseverance thinking, which can be draining and cause increased distress and anxiety. Adopting a belief that contradicts material reality can be a recipe for unhappiness, as we will likely feel the need to strive to become the thing we are not. This is part of the reason many wisdom traditions and psychotherapy schools direct us to cultivate acceptance of those things we cannot change.

Dr. Debra Soh is critical of gender viewpoints being taught to school children and views it as more ideological, than scientific.

I, too, was once a vocal supporter of the updated sex-ed curriculum, but watching how its unscientific claims about gender identity have spread so prevalently has dampened my enthusiasm. The curriculum promotes the idea that there are more than two genders and that gender identity is socially constructed.

The fact that few people have pointed out how these teachings aren’t based in science should raise a red flag in parents’ minds.

According to one survey, less than 1 percent of people in the United States identify as transgender. That means for over 99 percent of us, our biological sex is our gender. 

A curriculum that teaches gender fluidity is misleading and will impair a child’s ability to have an accurate understanding of the world.

Another comment here (link not available):

So, I spent eleven years in academia as a sex researcher and I still have absolutely no idea why anyone thinks there are 71 different genders. Let me get one thing out of the way. Gender is binary and it is not a social construct…We are drowning in misinformation on this subject. Biological sex is either male or female based on our reproductive functions. Gender on the other is how we feel, weather we feel masculine of feminine in relation to our biological sex. For over 99% our biological sex is our gender identity. So, if we want to talk about things from a scientific perspective, there are only 2 sexes and there are only 2 genders. To suggest otherwise is not scientifically accurate. I first started writing about the issues of gender because the mainstream media’s coverage of it frankly terrified me. From my time in academia I can tell you there’s a long list of areas of research that are forbidden. This is effecting what the public is and isn’t allowed to know.-

This is a quote from social media from mathematician who sees science denialism arising from trans activism and gender ideology as a threat to scientific inquiry.

Scientist and academic Michel Biggs, discusses issues he sees with the influences of trans activism and gender ideology in “How Queer Theory Became University Policy.”

The establishment of an official doctrine on gender identity is an unprecedented threat to academic freedom. Sex and gender should be subjects for debate…

Like other variants of postmodernism, queer theory has been ensconced for decades in academic disciplines studying culture. Now, however, the theory is being established as official doctrine by universities. Policy goes far beyond what is required by the Equality Act, which rightly forbids discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment. Indeed, the doctrine clearly contravenes the law in one respect. The Act also protects sexual orientation, but if gender identity supersedes sex, then heterosexuality and homosexuality disappear. Any male can declare himself to be a lesbian, like a bad joke from the 1970s updated for our ultrawoke era. The Edinburgh University Student Association’s LGBT+ Convenor, Ada Wells, demanded that the University expel any lesbian who refused males identifying as ‘gender neutral’ (such as Wells) as potential sexual partners.

Gendered Intelligence plays a key role in training academic staff and administrators. Its course on ‘Trans Awareness’ has been repeated in dozens of universities…

Students who question their own identity are directed to Gendered Intelligence, which also trains university counsellors. When an undergraduate—previously diagnosed with depression—at the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama decided that she was a man, the School paid for mentoring by Gendered Intelligence. (A professor at the School is a trustee of the company and Stewart’s partner.) The mentor researched surgeons who offered elective mastectomy. ‘Surgery will affect sex in many ways’, advises Gendered Intelligence, ‘but the most noticeable effect is a boost in body confidence.’ If gender identity is uncorrelated with sex and is fluid and changing, how then can that identity require irreversible bodily transformations? Logical contradiction is no embarrassment to postmodernism. When a lesbian takes testosterone and amputates her breasts in order to play the part of a man, this is celebrated by queer theory for deconstructing compulsory heterosexuality.

This is a video from two scientists, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, both victims of identity politics witch hunts in academia. They emphasise that human behavior is strongly based in biological reproduction and that while trans people should live in ways that support their mental health, sex is binary. 

D. Why gender ideology beyond anti-bullying policy in its current form should not be taught in schools

There is consensus that no child should be shunned or bullied and that adults are morally obligated to protect children. However, given the conflicting viewpoints and vehement disagreements about issues listed above around these subjects,  and the lack of a clear scientific consensus around medically treating minors, it is worth asking why gender ideology is being privileged over other viewpoints around gender identity. These other viewpoints exist among in other cultural, academic, and philosophical circles. This includes:

• LGB and T people who think gender ideology is a regressive, stereotype reinforcing, body dysmorphia glorifying ideology

• Scientists who do not believe in deemphasizing the distinction of reproductive biological sex

• Mental and medical health professionals who believe the affirmative model endangers some children.

• Feminists who want gender deemphasized, not over emphasized to children and believe gender ideology is harmful to women and girls

• Christian, Muslim, Jewish viewpoints of gender, or an evolutionary psychology view of gender 

The problems with trans activism and gender ideology being heavily promoted in school systems across the globe are summarized below.

1) Studies on desistance (under a watchful waiting model) consistently show that the large majority of dysphoric children outgrow gender dysphoria and accept their biological sex. With the introduction of the affirmation model, they are now at risk, in unknown numbers, of being medically altered for life and even sterilized. Schools have no evidence or properly obtained data to illustrate the safety of teaching “gender-fluid” ideology to all children, that social transitions doesn’t increase persistence, that Lupron’s use doesn’t increase persistence, and that screening processes for medical transitions of minors are foolproof. 

2) There is no data on the phenomenon of the new multitude of non-binary gender identities on whether in the long run this is adaptive and mentally healthy, nor is there data on long-term satisfaction rates with double mastectomies and alterations through hormone use in regards to these identities that schools are now promoting (see here and here and here).

3)  There is no data to demonstrate why concepts of gender fluidity, complete with the demand for a recognition of special pronouns, is superior to strongly encouraging full acceptance and celebration of gender atypical boys and girls and men and women to express themselves in ways that suit them, while still accepting biological reality.

4) Many bisexuals/gays/lesbians (whose youth are most susceptible to influences of gender queer culture due to not being old enough to understand sexuality) feel teaching young people they aren’t really a boy or a girl but a third gender if they are GNC, and that they need a multitude of third gender pronouns, is akin to anti-gay activism. They feel it is offensive and contrary to the way gay and lesbian people have always played with gender expression without obsessive identity rumination and making societal demands for special recognition.

5) Many gay and lesbian people feel teaching that the definition of “homosexual” means “gender presentation attraction” or “attraction to the same gender” is offensive and is contrary to biological reality contrary and makes it more difficult to identify the specific needs of trans people versus homosexual/bisexual people (see here and here). Gender ideology is creating a lot strife within the LGB and trans communities with its logical conclusion for some individuals apparently leading to a sense of sexual and emotional entitlement or else bigotry accusations. 

6) Many women object to having their identities redefined by males with gender dysphoria who now forbid them to use language related to their bodies without an angry backlash (aka being forced to use “uterus bearer”, “chest feeder” and being banned from talking about periods or vaginas in relation to womanhood, or even using the word mother, which many women see an central to their identity).

7) Many women object to having their identities redefined by males with gender dysphoria who are now dominating them in sports, displacing female team members and rankings (see here and here). 

8) Many people do not want girls to be socialized to not have boundaries which is inherent in gender ideology. They want to ensure that girls and women maintain equal treatment and that they should not be expected to subsume their own interests to emotionally support others. Given that females by nature are already often over accommodating at their own expense (again, see here and here), this is a real concern.

9) Some school science teachers object to eradicating the importance of biological sex in lesson plans (see here and here). 

10) Some of the large increases of young females identifying as trans may be doing so for unhealthy reasons fueled by social contagion as there is already evidence youth transitions are risking same-sex attracted females, and females with autism and mental health issues. 

11) Gender ideology appears to be creating neurotic levels of rumination and may be glorifying gender dysphoria, thus increasing its prevalence and persistance.

12) The fact that people (women, LGB, teachers, school administrators, students, trans people, and parents) who feel gender ideology may have aspects that are harmful, cannot speak openly about it because they will likely be subjected to verbal threats and threats of violence and attempts to destroy their careers, is a threat to our social democracy.

13) There are trans people who believe a culture has been created that glorifies gender dysphoria and mental illness and includes people with cross-dressing fetishes and those influenced by a fad. This new culture trivializes their condition and risks them not being taken seriously. There are also trans people who do not agree with medicalizing gender nonconforming minors (see here and here). 

14) There is a free speech conflicts in schools adopting policies to force others - teachers, administrators and students to acknowledge third gender pronouns they may not agree with.

Schools are implementing policies based on current trans activist gender ideology to address high rates of depression and suicidal idealization in trans-idenitying youth. While addressing ways to help this at-risk population should be a priority, public skepticism is warranted about gender training in schools that are implementing policies beyond social support and acceptance. They are designed to control the culture, thoughts, and police language of young people and school employees, in an environment that has been created with threats of angry backlash as a form of social control if people do not agree with the trans activist worldview. 

Additionally, school officials have not considered possible negative ramifications of what they are now promoting. Given the seriousness of medical transition of minors, it should be the schools’ responsibility to: 

1) provide evidence they are not increasing the prevalence of and persistence of gender dysphoria in vulnerable youth who may be at risk.

2) provide evidence that promoting a body acceptance model has no value or positive impact on youth with gender dysphoria in helping them avoid a medicalized lifetime.

3) because social transition can start a cascade to a medicalized pathway, provide evidence that medical transition is in the long run the best approach for the treatment of GD in students, particularly autistic students who have been shown to be over represented in those presenting at gender clinics  (see here and here and here).

4) provide evidence medical transition of non-binary identities has positive long-term outcomes

5) provide evidence that the “infinite numbers of genders” approach is more progressive and psychologically healthier than normalizing gender nonconforming boys and girls and promoting body acceptance.

6) justify why biological females, who make up 50% of the population, should be displaced from winning positions in sports by gender dysphoric males who retain male physical advantages, even post medical transition. 

7) provide evidence that no male student who wants to enter female spaces ever has a sexual motive given that there isn’t clear criteria to determine who is trans and why this does not impact girls negatively, especially since the trans-activist mantra is to “believe the transperson”.

For more discussion of Gender Health Queery’s position on this subject matter see mission statement.

No one should dispute that dysphoric young people should be made to feel supported and included in society. Shunning people who are different from others but are not harming other people is psychologically abusive and unjust. But whether or not gender ideology is good for everyone exposed to it, or society in general, is debatable, particularly in relation to borderline dysphoric minors and young adults at risk for permanent medical disfigurement. Discussing all of the above issues and conflicts are not to paint trans acceptance as inherently problematic. It is more to examine the ways it is presenting itself as a movement currently in this time and place, in this culture and it’s consequences on children, young people and females, particularly. Everyone needs to take an honest look at all of the ramifications and ripple-down effects of the current agenda that is being promoted. To demand everyone believe trans people are literally the opposite sex and that there are actually dozens of genders, goes far beyond being inclusive and nice. It impacts other people, and in some cases negatively.

© Gender Health Query, 6/1/2019

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REFERENCES FOR TOPIC 13

CONTINUE TO TOPIC 14:

People discussing dysphoria not in alignment with activist demands are threatened & censored

Contents

13) Why is gender ideology being prioritized in educational settings?

A. The bigger picture: introduction of postmodern style gender ideology in schools is not just about inclusion, it is about training young students to accept gender ideology

B. Gender ideology viewpoints & goals of contemporary trans activism are not shared by others within the LGB & T populations

-Trans-IDed who are critical of the gender & sexual confusion they see happening

-Bisexuals, Gays, & Lesbians who are critical

-Liberals and moderates who are critical of gender ideology

C. Scientists who see harm in current gender ideology

D. Why gender ideology beyond anti-bullying policy in its current form should not be taught in schools

BACK TO OUTLINE

More

1. Do Children Outgrow Gender Dysphoria?

2. Permanent side effects

3. Are children & teens old enough to give consent?

4. Comments safety / desistance unknown

5. Gender dysphoria affirmative model

6. Minors transitioned without any psychological assessments

7. Conversion therapy laws

8. Regret rates & long term mental health

9. New World Order

10. Nature versus nurture

11. Why are so many females coming out as trans / nonbinary?

12. Cultural ripple effects

13. Why is gender ideology being prioritized in educational settings?

14. Problems with a politicized climate (censorship, etc)

15. Suicide risk reviewed

16. Trans rights / risks of false positives on minors

17. Moral Dilemmas