Gender ideology is so pernicious, it turns the basic nature of parenting upside down. This week, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a Democrat, said it is a grown-up’s job to “listen” to a child’s self-declared identity and “believe” it.
“When our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them,” Flanagan said. “That’s what it means to be a good parent.”
Flanagan said this after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat, signed an executive order declaring the Land of 10,000 Lakes a “trans refuge state” for transgender people, including children seeking experimental medical interventions.
Minnesota’s lieutenant governor defended as “life-affirming and life-saving health care” medical interventions that set children on a path that will leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile.
This “health care” starts with so-called puberty-blocking drugs such as Lupron—which authorities use to chemically castrate sex offenders and which the U.S. Food and Drug Adinistration hasn’t approved for kids with gender dysphoria—and proceeds to cross-sex hormones that place children at greater risk for cancer and osteoporosis. These hormones also introduce bizarre secondary sex characteristics that are irreversible, such as the lowering of a girl’s voice and the shrinking of male sex organs.
Studies show that kids who identify with the gender opposite their biological sex most likely willl grow to identify with their biological sex without these medical interventions. Yet “social affirmation” of a transgender identity and interventions such as these set kids on a path toward surgeries to remove breasts, Adam’s apples, and gonads.
These surgeries often have complications. But even without complications, they result in sterilization and the replacement of healthy sex organs with facsimiles that are often ugly and ineffective—and which often require the removal of skin from forearms.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that these medical interventions help children over the long term. A recent study claiming to find some positive effects from cross-sex hormones over a two-year period was “fatally flawed” because it didn’t use a control group to compare the results of cross-sex hormones against mere psychological counseling, didn’t follow up with everyone in the study, and took place at hospitals that uncritically championed gender ideology.
That’s not just my opinion—it’s the official stance of the medical organization Do No Harm.
It is nothing short of gaslighting to call these grotesque procedures “life-affirming,” and no parent should willingly subject his or her child to such abuse.
It is a grown-up’s job to set children straight about the truth of the world they live in. It is a parent’s job to protect kids from the dangerous side effects of the delusion that a boy can “really” be a girl or vice versa.
As a father, it is my job to ground my children by teaching them that biological sex is real, and that while some boys may want to play with dolls and some girls may want to play with monster trucks, they remain boys and girls nonetheless.
It is a grown-up’s job to tell the truth, even if it hurts. If my daughter tells me she thinks she’s really a boy, it’s not my job to turn reality upside down to cater to her whims—my job is the exact opposite. My job is to love her and accept her as she is, not as she pretends herself to be.
It is also a grown-up’s job to protect vulnerable girls from males who may claim to identify as female in order to prey on victims in women’s spaces. It is also a grown-up’s job to ensure fair competition in sports when males claim to identify as female to gain a competitive advantage.
Finally, it is a grown-up’s job to tell people like Peggy Flanagan that while we should treat people who identify as transgender with respect, we must remain grounded in reality ourselves, protecting children from false and destructive ideologies and crafting policy around biological reality, not nebulous gender identity.
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Warning: The video below, released by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ team in response to similar comments from President Joe Biden, is graphic.
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