The Gender Industry

Gender theory and the entire gender industry are based on harmful, regressive stereotypes about what it means to be feminine or masculine, as demonstrated clearly by the Barbie Doll & G.I. Joe action figure in this chart.

Underlying Psychological Factors

In recent years, an unprecedented number(1) of young people have begun to self-identify as “transgender” or “non-binary.” Three years ago only 0.7% (7 in 1000) American high school students identified as transgender. Today that figure has increased three and a half times to more than 2%(2).

What does that mean?

Definitions of both terms deny the reality of two sexes: female and male, each of which have natural variations in personality (behaviors, thoughts, and emotions) determined by biological and environmental factors (nature and nurture).

Preliminary research has identified many underlying social and psychological factors fuel this rise of young people feeling that they do not “identify” with their biological sex(3), including mental health issues(4) (such as preexisting depression and anxiety), ADHD, trauma, and same-sex attraction(5). There is an especially high correlation with autism spectrum disorder, as reported in replicated published research(6) and observed in clinics around the world. In the UK, for example, nearly half of all children(7) seeking gender identity disorder services displayed autistic traits.

In addition, developmentally normal role-playing activities common to preschool and early elementary school age are being mislabeled by "gender experts" and even some parents as so-called “proof” that a child is “transgender.”

Adolescents who are labeled as "non-conforming" relative to sex-based stereotypes are asked if they think they are the opposite sex, rather than being supported by parents, teachers, therapists, and doctors who should recognize those behaviors, clothing, and hair choices for what they are—natural human personality variations.

We are concerned that children who do not "conform" to regressive gender stereotypes of masculinity or femininity are being excluded from their biological sex group. We believe that extreme distress (or dysphoria) is a psychological issue, and should be addressed with skilled, compassionate mental health care, and not by off-label medication and experimental surgeries.

Notice the rapid increase in referrals to gender clinics: Many are alarmed(8) by the medicalization of childhood and puberty, and believe much more research is needed(9)

The Invention of Transgender Children

It's a common misconception that children are given a thorough medical and psychological assessment before drastic medical interventions take place. However, this is untrue. Children are routinely diagnosed as transgender on their first visit to a healthcare provider. The gender industry refers to this as "affirmative care."

Even when assessment is applied--for example that children’s distress must be “insistent, consistent and persistent”-- the assessment is inadequate; we know from basic sociological concepts that behaviors that are positively reinforced are most likely to persist.

When a child is rewarded with new toys, new clothes, and celebrations at school and in social groups for claiming a new "transgender" identity--especially when those rewards were not offered before such a claim--it should come as no surprise that children would take note and behave accordingly. The pre-adult stage of brain development makes children short-sighted, focused only on immediate gratification.

When family members, friends, and/or acquaintances express concerns about the implications of a child's sudden "transgender" claim, these voices are swiftly silenced by "experts," who perpetuate the myth that the child will be unable to cope unless all around him/her parrot the ideology that one can be “born in the wrong body.” For example, parents and other family members may be told that their lack of "affirmation" is toxic to the child; they may even have custody or visitation rights taken away.

This policy of separating children from those outside the transgender belief system further isolates children from society, psychologically disables them even further by preventing the development of healthy coping strategies, and pathologizes their individuality as non-conforming rather than acknowledging it as a natural personality variation of both sexes.

A comprehensive and well-researched book, Inventing Transgender Children and Young People(10), unpacks the ways in which transgender ideology is psychologically and physiologically harming children and suggests ways in which adults can and must intervene.

Keira Bell, on the left, is a young woman who brought a case against the National Health Service in the UK because of the harm caused her by the "affirmation only" standard of care. She deeply regrets the treatment she suffered at the hands of NHS doctors, which includes the loss of her breasts. The gender industry has caused widespread damage, and the largest cohort of victims appear to be teenage girls.

Affirmation-Only, No Questions Asked

That children’s self-proclaimed “gender” identities are often quickly “affirmed” by therapists and clinicians who have not examined underlying issues is disturbing.

The so-called “affirmative care” approach relies on the false assertion that “delaying transition” (i.e., not immediately rushing the child into off-label drugs and surgical removal of healthy organs and tissue) will have serious negative consequences. "Affirmative care" also mandates that healthcare professionals "follow the child’s lead," as if children are better authorities over their healthcare decisions than their parents or doctors could be.

People often think that these treatments are research-based and experts all agree upon them; however most of these policies were created by activists, much as handfuls of lobbyists can and do create broad-reaching, influential laws by writing policy themselves.

Small groups of activists within professional organizations, such as the 37-member task force that wrote the American Academy of Pediatrics' controversial and unsupported(11) guidance(12) on transgender children (whose two lead authors have financial relationships with gender clinics), have tied the hands of well-meaning therapists who wish to address the extreme distress of these children. So-called “conversion therapy” bans(13) that were meant to protect the LGB community from homophobic psychological manipulation, now, prevent trained therapists and social workers from providing basic, commonsense psychological support to children who claim a “transgender” or “non-binary” identity, lest they step afoul of the rules governing their licensure.

A growing number of therapists and social workers feel that they cannot continue in the profession because prohibitions against addressing the roots of transgender identity claims put their vulnerable clients at risk of increased mental illness. These ethical professionals often leave the profession after being coerced to provide letters of approval for medical “gender affirmation” treatments, despite their professional opinion that medical treatments for psychological challenges would not improve their clients' well-being.

Because the psychological work environment has now become oppressive for therapists and clinicians, children in distress are unlikely to receive appropriate and time-tested counseling techniques.

"I should have been challenged on the proposals or the claims that I was making for myself," she said. "And I think that would have made a big difference as well. If I was just challenged on the things I was saying." Keira Bell

affirm a child according to his or her sex and s/he will align with that sex.

Affirm a child according to a delusion and s/he will become ever-further deluded.

Social Transition Leads Almost Inevitably to Medical Transition

The best available research indicates that 73-94% of children(14) who display gender non-conforming tendencies accept and align with their physical sex if allowed to pass through puberty naturally, without interventions to affirm the delusion that they are a different sex. This is true even when children are “persistent, consistent, and insistent.” Even WPATH(15) (the World Professional Association on Transgender Health) recognizes this and does not recommend the social or medical transition of pre-pubescent children.

When children are socially transitioned, the picture changes dramatically. Children believe what they are told about themselves. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously described, “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” With children who suffer gender confusion, we would put it like this: “Affirm a child according to his or her sex and s/he will align with that sex. Affirm a child according to a delusion and s/he will become ever-further deluded.”

Nearly all children(16) who are socially transitioned and brought to gender clinics are given puberty blockers, followed by wrong sex hormones, and very often, subsequent surgery. Therefore, social transition is anything but harmless.

Children as young as two years old(17) are being socially transitioned at increasing numbers. This includes a new name, pronouns, hairstyles, clothing, and being officially recognized as the preferred sex at school. This practice has been documented in several recent television documentaries, such as “Butterfly” and HBO's recent documentary, “Transhood”. Some parents are choosing to introduce their newborn children to the world as “theybies(18),” concealing the child's physical sex from everyone, including close family members. The child is then expected to decide his or her gender at some point in the future.

Young children are not developmentally prepared or able to understand the concept of gender, neither are they capable of giving consent to choices, which in the vast majority of the time will result in sterility, a lifetime of hormonal disregulation, and sexual dysfunction. Therefore we maintain that social transition of children is abusive.

We believe children are capable of coping,

if given ethical treatment, but they are being disabled and abused by the gender industry.

Medical Treatment for Psychological Distress

The practice of introducing powerful puberty-blocking drugs, hormones, and irreversible surgeries is growing rapidly(19).

In the past, such serious medical interventions were offered only to adults with a lifelong history of unremitting and severe distress, and only after extensive medical and psychological screening. Today, however, life-threatening treatments and irreversible surgeries that pose serious health risks while adversely impacting sexual function and future fertility are routinely offered to children based on subjective feelings that are likely to change with time and non-invasive therapy.

We know that the adolescent stage of development (and childhood in general) is replete with periods of distress, due to everything from an unhealthy social environment (at school or in the household), traumatic events, or even simply the everyday struggles with which we all must learn to cope.

We believe that children are capable of developing healthy coping mechanisms to deal with their psychological distress, and that it is abuse and malpractice to teach them that they are incapable of dealing with distress unless they undergo experimental medical interventions for which robust, empirical data is nearly non-existent(20). Children are being psychologically and physically disabled by the gender industry for monetary gain(21).

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Diane Ehrensaft

This "gender expert" says that when a preverbal child pulls a barrette out of her hair, she is communicating that she is transgender.

One wonders if Ehrensaft has ever met a preverbal child, and what she might say of a toddler who repeatedly removes his shoes, jacket, or diaper.

How Young Is Too Young for Transition?

Because schools, counselors and therapists, pediatricians, hospitals, and gender clinics pathologize and prescribe medical intervention for normal personality variations, more and more parents proudly proclaim in online “support groups” that they have transitioned young children age six(22), five(23), four(24), three(25), and even 2 years old or younger(26) to the opposite sex and are pursuing medical transition as soon as possible. These medical interventions are now offered at increasingly younger ages despite the lack of a testable theory or falsifiable diagnosis, let alone even one long-term study supporting their efficacy or safety.

Puberty-blocking drugs and wrong-sex hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen, are currently prescribed to children as young as eight years old. “Gender-confirming” surgeries, including mastectomies, radical hysterectomies, vaginoplasties, and orchiectomies (removal of the testicles), are now performed on teenagers(27).

Parents who consent to these treatments are typically misled(28) to believe that their child will be at greater risk of suicide if they do not. Certainly, obtaining "informed consent" of the minor child is impossible(29), given that a minor child cannot comprehend the ramifications of the treatments he has been subjected to by his ill-informed parents and unethical healthcare providers.

At 3 years old, children imitate adults and other children.

At 5 years old, children want to please their friends.

Concerned Parents Are Dismissed

Schools, counselors, therapists, hospitals, transgender advocacy groups, et. al., consistently dismiss parents' questions and concerns about the impact of these medical treatments on children. Parents are misled from every quarter; the "experts" they consult claim that social and medical transition is the best and only way to alleviate their children’s psychological distress.

In fact, transition is a one-way street with no exits and few rest stops.

Children need trusted adults to guide their psychological development and to help them assign meaning to experience. However, irresponsible adults are labeling children with identities that ultimately obstruct and impair the child’s social, emotional, and psychological development. These so-called “supportive” people are only supporting the gender industry as unpaid volunteers, influencers, and marketers. They propagate the gender industy money-making machine(30) while perpetrating long-term physical, social, and psychological damage on children.

Parents, whose intuition to keep their children’s bodies safe from harm, are labeled “unsupportive,” "toxic," and "transphobic," and are bullied into suppressing their feelings, concerns, and doubts.

People who question the gender industry's demands for "affirmation only" have:

Parents who do not consent to social or medical "gender transition" share the trauma(37) they have suffered by being labeled as the cause of their children's distress because they do not affirm their children's new "identity," even as they seek psychological care for their children's depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia.

From Stopping Puberty to Sterilization

SIDE effects of

puberty blockers &

wrong-sex hormones:

Increased thoughts of suicide/self-harm
Bone Density Loss
coronary disease
cardiovascular disease
tumors
infertility
arrested brain development
joint pain
elevated blood pressure

Puberty Blockers

By the time a child is brought to a gender clinic, s/he may have already begun a process of social transition that could include a name change, pronoun change, differently hairstyle, and different clothing style. The child almost certainly has at least one adult championing the transition.

Medical transition with puberty blockers typically begins once the child reaches a medically determined stage of physical development called Tanner Stage II(38), i.e., early adolescence (which on average happens between the ages of 9 and 11).

The effects of puberty blockers, either injected or implanted, have not been proven reversible. Because nearly all children(39) who receive puberty blockers go on to take wrong-sex hormones, sufficient data does not exist to support unethical practitioners' claim that these drugs are "putting a pause on puberty.”

There is no proof that halting puberty is harmless, and in many cases there are known harms. Serious, long-term and even permanent side effects include(40), but are not limited to, tumors, bone density loss, organ damage, infertility, and brain damage.

In the rare case the puberty blockers are halted, children who have received these blockers will be further socially and emotionally separated from their peers and will have missed the opportunity to have a shared experience and develop coping mechanisms through peer-to-peer learning during the universal biological experience of puberty.

Wrong-Sex Hormones

Opposite-sex hormone injections are not approved by the FDA for the treatment of gender dysphoria.

As with puberty blockers, no substantial evidence exists to support the claim that administration of wrong-sex hormones reduces children's feelings of gender dysphoria, nor that such drugs alleviate depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation.

Rather, wrong-sex hormones have serious, long-term consequences that are permanent and irreversible.

Girls who take testosterone (or “T”) for as little as two months develop a deep, masculine voice, squaring of the jawline, and widening of the shoulders, and an enlargement of the clitoris giving the appearance of a micro-penis, all of which are not reversible.

A receding hairline is common, with significant head-hair loss which is accompanied by facial and body hair growth that does not go away even if testosterone injections are halted.

Boys who inject puberty blockers and/or wrong-sex hormones experience stunted growth in height (if they have not yet achieved their adult height), and bone structure.

The growth of the penis is halted at the introduction of puberty blockers, leaving little tissue to be used later to construct what will be a non- or poorly-functioning “neovagina.” To make up for the lack of penile tissue necessary for the neovagina, colon tissue is removed from inside the body and used generating a host of unintended, dangerous consequences via infection.

Injections with estrogen also cause fatty tissues to develop on the chest, necessitating surgical removal if the child later decides to live as his birth sex (desists).

Loss of the ability to experience orgasm, as well as sterilization for both sexes are common results. The consequences of administering wrong-sex hormones are well documented, but are ignored and/or concealed by unethical gender clinics, pediatricians, and endocrinologists.

WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGES BELOW

Double Mastectomies for Teen Girls Starting at 13

Euphemistically called “top surgery,” a double mastectomy is the complete amputation of a girl's breasts.

Currently, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care(41) do not require a therapist’s “letter of clearance” for the breasts of girls to be removed, whether that is done at a children’s hospital or at a cosmetic surgery clinic.

In the United States, this surgery is being performed on girls starting at 13 years old.

As many breast cancer survivors can tell you, a double mastectomy is an irreversible procedure. Even if breast reconstruction is performed, the nipple tissue that is affixed to the skin does not provide a woman the ability to breastfeed, and the tissue is not connected to the original nerve network.

How do young teens even find out about these types of life-altering procedures, and how are they encouraged to subject themselves to these painful surgeries to remove their breasts? They are targeted by gender industry influencers on YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Discord, Reddit, DeviantArt, and other social media platforms. Doctors advertise directly to kids on TikTok.

If your child is on social media, s/he has likely encountered gender industry influencers.

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Genital Surgeries: Sterilization, Infection, and Loss of Ability to Orgasm

“Bottom surgery” is the euphemism used for attempting to surgically alter a person's genitals to match their preferred sex.

Wrong-sex hormones cause reproductive organs to atrophy after only a few years. These organs must then be removed causing permanent sterilization, if the hormone treatment alone hadn't already rendered the child infertile.

Transgender-identified children as young as 15 years old have been subjected to hysterectomies with parental consent. But once the child reaches the age of “legal medical majority” (as young as 15 in some states), surgery can be performed without parental consent or even a consultation from a mental health professional.

Women who identify as transgender can also have cosmetic surgery to construct inoperable genitalia out of salmon-sized swaths of tissue harvested from the forearm or thigh in order to create a faux phallus. This simulated organ has neither similar nerve sensation as a man’s penis has, nor can it become erect without being inflated by a hand pump.

Men who identify as transgender can have their penises inverted, creating a hole that does not retain nerve sensation or function as a vagina does for a woman. Hair typically continues to grow, now inside the artificially created opening, so irritation and infection is very common. The faux vagina will attempt to close itself for the rest of the patient's life, since the body considers it not an organ, but a wound that needs to be healed. The patient must maintain the opening by inserting a dilator into the faux vagina for some hours every day (or a few times a week) for the rest of his life.

Following all of these surgeries, the ability to experience orgasm is no longer possible.

We have elected not to show any pictures of these procedures, as the simulated organs are disturbing, to say the least, and look nothing like natural genitalia.

After "Transition"

"I allowed this to happen to my child, and it was a mistake."

Of course parents want their children to be happy, well-adjusted, and healthy. But the outcomes described above are often just the opposite of what attempting to transition sexes accomplishes.

One cannot change one's sex, and attempting to do so is an exercise in pain, futility, and very often regret.

Detransitioners tell us so.

Growing numbers of young adults who medically transitioned are beginning to speak publicly about their experiences.

They report that they did not receive proper counseling and were not encouraged to consider non-invasive alternatives to irreversible surgeries and hormonal interventions that impact physical and mental health, fertility, and sexual function.

Their stories are heartbreaking(42).

But the gender industry continues to destroy lives and families. The gender industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying efforts to institutionalize and normalize a life filled with life-long medical appointments and injections, starting children as early as possible in order to maximize profits.

Young people should never be encouraged into life-altering hormonal and surgical interventions that are unsupported by any rigorous studies establishing long-term efficacy and safety.

The risks of irreparable harm and regret are too great.

Join us in telling the gender industry that their experimental abuse of our children is over.

Citations

1 https://www.kelseycoalition.org/pubs/The-Rapidly-Growing-Medicalization-of-Children-and-Young-People

2 https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/03/08/how-many-transgender-children-are-there.

3 htmlhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/268879198_Young_people_with_features_of_gender_dysphoria_Demographics_and_associated_difficulties

4 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396787/

5 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332925.2017.1350804

6 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27872002

7 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273639503_Brief_Report_Autistic_Features_in_Children_and_Adolescents_with_Gender_Dysphoria

8 https://www.genderhq.org/

9 https://www.segm.org/