Looking back at Safe Schools

Courtney, to convince me that there’s any truth in what you are saying (because each of your talking points are out of trans activist rhetoric), please provide references to high quality research demonstrating your points.

At this point, gender/ queer theory is indeed a postmodern structuralist supposition. Because I don’t follow your religion, I can’t follow the logic of the articles of faith you expect me to hold. If you think that sterilising children and consigning them to likely infertiity, fragile bones, anorgasmia, heart problems and a lifetime of being a medical patient is ok, then keep going and don’t even look into what you are saying. Otherwise, get researching, not blindly parrotting someone else’s words.

To be clear: I want all people to have the same rights; I know that gender dysphoria is real and needs proper treatment in the form, at least at first, of exploratory therapy, not blind affirmation. No, intact males should not have access to women’s spaces, because #women’ssexbased rights, and #childsafegaurding.

This movement is not ahistorial, and it is instructive to read ‘Trans’ by Helen Joyce, where she lays out the history of transsexual medicine, and how gender ideology – with no scientific basis – has captured institutions in the West, leading to confusion about even basic biology (the facts of which pose no threat to trans people). In the face of such extreme body modification, it is proper to have some curiousity about how something that was extremely marginal has become a defining issue of the time.

Why has the number of young people (70% girls, in distinction to previous eras) identifying as trans exploded by over 4,000% in the last 5 years? And if it’s because of social acceptance, why is it only teenagers? Shouldn’t there be a bunch of middle aged and old people coming out too?

Very important to round out your understanding of why trans people need the best care possible, and why the current gender affirmation model is destroying more lives than it helps is to look at de-transitioner’s stories (Chloe Cole; Isaac, Christopher Ostrowski, Oliver Davies, Helena, Ritchie Herron, Michelle Alleva, Keira Bell, Sinead, https://pitt.substack.com/p/my-letter-to-the-surgeon-who-performed https://thepostmillennial.com/phalloplasty-ruined-my-life-biological-female-reveals-horrifying-complications-of-gender-affirming-surgery?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://www.detransvoices.org https://quillette.com/2020/01/02/the-ranks-of-gender-detransitioners-are-growing-we-need-to-understand-why/ https://www.newsweek.com/what-wish-id-known-undergoing-transgender-surgery-470386 https://rtd.rt.com/stories/transgender-regret/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/community-family/we-are-just-guinea-pigs-women-describe-trauma-of-transitioning-as-teenagers https://nypost.com/2022/04/15/transitions-have-gone-too-far-trans-psychologist/ https://www.detransvoices.org), and to note that the detransitioners reddit thread now has over 40,000 members. None of this is meant to say that being trans is wrong, only that it’s very important to understand more about who makes the mistake of thinking they are, so that high quality trans health care can be reserved for those who will benefit (just like in every other area of medicine).

Excellent, high quality information (with no transphobia in sight) can be found in these podcasts: Transparency (hosts are two transmen), Gender A Wider Lens (two therapists), and You Must be Some Kind of Therapist (a therapist). I want all people to live fulfilling lives, but children cannot consent to permanent physical alterations, and the harm that is being done through the affirmative model must stop.

Why do I care? Because I was a gender non-conforming teen in the 70s and the idea that I could have cut off my breasts and removed my uterus once I turned 18 is devastating. If I had been a teenager under the affirmation model this would have been my fate. Research shows 2 things clearly: Social transition almost inevitably leads to medical transition, and around 90% of all gender dysphoric children resolve it by early adulthood (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0092623X.2019.1698481?journalCode=usmt20 Helen Joyce also cites this research in her book).

Also, puberty blockers (an asinine name for a drug that is used in chemical castration of sex offenders) mean that the sexual organs (and likely every body system including the brain) are retarded at at time when they are intended to be at their most active in the lifespan. If the endocrine system is impeded, growth is impeded. Stopping blockers does not mysteriously resolve this problem. That important growth stage is merely skipped, and there is often not enough tissue to make neo genitals surgically (eg, Jazz Jennings). I understand, you’re likely just angry that I said all this, but that was not my intention. I really care about us – as a society – getting this right.