Tag Archive for: TransgenderMovement

‘Transsurrection’? Pro-Transgender Protesters Occupy 4 State Capitols

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Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Last week, hundreds or thousands of left-wing protesters entered Capitol buildings in four separate states, disrupting legislative chambers holding session in at least two of them.

In three out of four incidents, the protesters explicitly opposed legislation to defend children, families, and women from the harmful effects of transgender ideology; in the other incident, a protest for gun control lapsed into pro-transgender overtones. The strange, unprecedented nature of these Capitol occupations renders the media’s near-silence on them only more astounding.

Let’s begin by reviewing the facts, as you likely haven’t seen or heard about these incidents anywhere else.

March 27: Austin, Texas

On Monday afternoon, the open-air rotunda of the Texas Capitol extension was “completely full” with pro-transgender protesters who gathered “to oppose HB 1686,” which would prohibit gender transition procedures on minors “for the purpose of transitioning a child’s biological sex.”

A photo shows what appears to be at least hundreds of protesters filling three levels of the rotunda while one account estimated the number at “over a thousand activists.” The extension of the open-air rotunda is available for public events, but the public calendar shows no scheduled events on March 27.

A committee of the Texas legislature heard testimony Monday on numerous bills to protect minors from gender transition procedures and drag shows, among other topics that angered transgender ideologues. Protesters held up paper signs representing 140 bills they opposed.

The activists remained at the open-air rotunda—which appears to be accessed via underground entrances through the Capitol complex—from mid-afternoon until sometime after nightfall, at which point hundreds of activists then entered the Capitol. The activists can be heard chanting, “Shut it down,” as they exited the rotunda, and then echoing through the hallways, “Protect trans kids.”

Apparently more than 2,500 people signed up to testify on HB 1686, but Chairwoman Stephanie Klick, a Republican, ended the testimony at midnight.

In response, the transgender protesters staged a “die-in” in which protesters lie on the ground and pretend to be dead—except for that one girl on her phone. The chant “Protect trans kids” could still be heard as protesters began to lie down on the ground, completely blocking the hallways in violation of the Texas Capitol’s demonstration policy. Legislators and others who testified at the hearing—including detransitioners—were forced to step over the people lying on the ground as they chanted. After the “die-in,” protesters went back to the open-air rotunda and continued their chant for over half an hour.

March 29: Frankfort, Kentucky

Before the Kentucky House and Senate convened at noon to consider a veto override attempt on SB 150, opponents and supporters of the legislation held dueling rallies at the Capitol. SB 150 promotes parental rights in education, guarantees student privacy in bathrooms and locker rooms, and protects minors from gender transition procedures.

Hundreds of pro-transgender activists had gathered early in the morning for a rally on the Capitol steps, including students from more than half a dozen schools.

After the pro-SB 150 rally in the Capitol rotunda concluded, pro-transgender protesters gathered in that space, although some had occupied a second-floor balcony during that rally. A bearded man, grotesquely dressed as either a “clown nun” or a demon, led the mostly teenaged crowd in an ironic chant of “Shame, shame, shame.” They continued to chant for hours outside the Senate chamber as the Senate discussed the veto override.

Around 2 p.m., the Senate voted 29-8 to override the veto. The Senate then sent the bill over to the House chambers, and the House began debate. But before the House could hold an override vote, protesters filled the overhead gallery, carrying signs and chanting loudly. Shortly before 3 p.m., the chanting grew so loud that it drowned out the debate taking place in the chamber below, disrupting the legislature’s proceedings.

Police removed the protesters from the gallery while they chanted, “Trans kids are under attack.” The protesters linked arms in their seats, forcing police to exert considerable force to separate them one by one. The police arrested 19 people in total, charging them with criminal trespassing in the third degree.

All protesters were released from jail by 1 a.m. Thursday.

The House voted 76-23 to override the veto at around 3:30 p.m., after order was restored.

Protesters remained in the Capitol rotunda, chanting, even after both chambers had voted to override the bill—although their chant changed to “Vote them out.”

March 30: Nashville, Tennessee

“Thousands, not hundreds” of protesters, according to one left-wing Twitter account, gathered early Thursday morning at the Tennessee state Capitol “demanding stronger gun laws.” One reporter said the pro-gun control crowd was “flooding into the Tennessee Capitol.”

“Demonstrators entered the Capitol peacefully—but loudly—and climbed to the second floor, where they deafeningly chanted ‘do something’ as lawmakers arrived at both chambers for the day’s legislative business,” said The Tennessean’s Vivian Jones. “State troopers removed a handful of protesters who disrupted House and Senate proceedings.”

Sometime that afternoon, reporters captured footage of half a dozen police officers holding a doorway against a large, screaming crowd pressing against them. In the video, the officers take hold of one protester, discuss among themselves—presumably whether to arrest him—and then return him to the crowd as they chant, “Give him back.”

The reporter who took the video deleted her original tweet and then reposted it to Twitter, explaining: “I deleted the last tweet because I wasn’t as clear. This was a peaceful protest. Students, parents and their supporters went through Capitol security to lobby for gun control in the Capitol. No one was arrested. This shoving started when THP [Tennessee Highway Patrol] needed to make way for lawmakers.”

Breitbart reporter Spencer Lindquist provided additional context to the controversial footage. “Protesters in the Tennessee Capitol blocked a bathroom doorway, preventing a legislator from exiting,” he explained. “That’s the lead up to this widely circulated video.”

The only quiet moment came when protesters held a moment of silence for the six victims of the Nashville shooting. They held up fingers to indicate the number of victims—but with a twist. “There was a disagreement over how many victims the Nashville shooting had,” Lindquist reported. “Some held up six fingers—others held up seven to commemorate the trans shooter as well.”

In the video, an overwhelming majority of protesters appear to be holding up seven fingers, while others can be seen switching their raised fingers from six to seven.

At around 11:50 a.m., three elected representatives joined in the protest. Democrat Reps. Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Pearson commandeered the House lectern with a sign reading, “Protect kids, not guns.”

Jones began leading the protesters in a chant of “No action, no peace” and “Shame, shame, shame” with a bullhorn. “If we don’t quit, we can’t lose. We will not be quiet. We will not be silent. You are being heard. Thank you for being here,” Pearson told the protesters in the gallery.

“House immediately recessed,” said Vivian Jones (no relation to Justin). “Party leaders look like they’re conferring to figure out what to do.”

The House remained in recess until 11:42 a.m., a 52-minute disruption. During the recess, members retired to meet separately as party caucuses.

Further footage shows Minority Leader Karen Camper, a Democrat, apparently scolding the three lawmakers for disregarding the House rules.

This was not the first irregular outburst by the activist members. On Monday of last week, Pearson continued speaking after his mic was cut off when he criticized as “out of order” a House resolution offered earlier this session to defend the Second Amendment.

“These actions are a blatant disregard for house rules & toward the Sgt. At Arms,” vented Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, adding, “Their actions are and will always be unacceptable, and they break several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor. Their actions and beliefs that they could be arrested on the House floor were an effort, unfortunately, to make themselves the victims.”

The controversy may not be over for the three activist legislators. On April 3, Jones said that he and his comrades had been stripped of committee assignments and that their member ID badges had been shut off. “This is not what democracy looks like,” Jones complained.

Later that day, a resolution was filed to unseat Jones from the Tennessee House, which is scheduled for consideration on April 6. The resolution contends that Jones, Johnson, and Pearson “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions.”

It adds that “such disorderly behavior on the part of Representative Jones reflects adversely upon the integrity and dignity of the House of Representatives of the State of Tennessee, places a cloud upon the action of this Honorable Body, and is inconsistent with the duty of a member of this Body.”

It seems that Jones has found it difficult to leave behind his radical activist past. Before his election to the Tennessee House of Representatives, Jones was repeatedly arrested for his left-wing street activism.

In 2017, he (Justin Bautista-Jones) was arrested for disorderly conduct during a vigil for the Charlottesville victims. Police told him “not to jump in front of moving marked police cars,” said the arrest report, and then he “jumped in front of a moving patrol car.”

In 2018, he was arrested for disrupting a rally for then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s, R-Tenn., Senate campaign.

In 2019, he allegedly threw a beverage on Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and another House member. He had to post a $4,150 bond and was temporarily banned from the Tennessee Capitol as a condition of his release.

In 2020, it seems Jones was actively leading Black Lives Matter protests in Nashville. He was charged with “felony aggravated rioting” for walking on a police car during a Black Lives Matter protest, although charges were soon dropped.

Again in 2020, Jones was arrested with 55 other protesters on suspicion of criminal trespassing after “the group physically removed barriers and charged the steps” of the Tennessee Capitol.

The Tennessean reported in 2021 that Jones “faced more than 15 charges ranging from trespassing to assault between June and August 2020,” which were later dropped.

March 31: Tallahassee, Florida

Led by the Student Unity Coalition of South Florida, approximately 200 people (mostly college students) marched from Florida State University over to the state Capitol’s rotunda (within easy walking distance) on Friday. The protesters wore rainbow flags, LGBT pins, and face paint and chanted, “This is what democracy looks like,” and, “Erasers are for blackboards, not for people.”

The Florida House considered a number of bills on Friday, including H.B. 1069, which would expand the Parental Rights in Education Act passed last year, which nationwide left-wingers baselessly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Passed by a vote of 77-35, the bill would clarify provisions on school libraries, adjudication processes, and the biological basis for its definition of sex. When the bill passed the House, the protesters let out a long, collective scream, “No!” and then broke out into a chant, “Whose schools? Our schools!”

Insurrections? Maybe Not.

Predictably, some voices on the Right invoked comparisons to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

“Leftists storm Tennessee capitol,” tweeted Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec.

“A group of insurrectionists occupied the Kentucky State Capitol,” said Libs of TikTok.

“This was the second so-called ‘transsurrection’ since the Monday shooting,” wrote World Net Daily.

Just as predictably, these comparisons provided an easy opening to left-wing refutations.

“Right-wing media attacked the legal and pre-planned protest as ‘another insurrection,’ apparently referring to the Jan 6th GOP Insurrection at the nation’s Capitol building that resulted in five deaths and hundreds jailed,” ran a Newsbreak blurb.

A Newsweek fact-check rated the claim as “False,” arguing that the protesters were peaceful and eventually left the Capitol.

As usual, the truth is more complex and nuanced. The protests were, in fact, mostly peaceful; although the shoving of law enforcement officers in Nashville entered a gray area. No injuries, fires, or even vandalism occurred at any of the demonstrations, to my knowledge. Additionally, the vast majority of protesters seem to have entered state Capitol buildings legally.

At the same time, the protesters did seek to disrupt, obstruct, or intimidate lawmakers by their presence. In Kentucky and Tennessee, protesters drowned out legislative debate, and in Tennessee and Texas, they obstructed the thruways of the state Capitol. State law enforcement did remove protesters in Nashville and arrested them in Frankfort.

In all four instances, protesters were extremely loud and disrespectful in the People’s House and sought to unduly influence the people’s elected representatives by their presence. Even media accounts that insist the protests were peaceful also admit that the disruptions to legislative business were “unprecedented.”

Those on the Right cannot correct the media’s hyperbolic narrative about Jan. 6 by committing the same mistake of irresponsibly slapping the label of “insurrection” on incidents that don’t qualify. That doesn’t mean we can’t point out unacceptable behavior and demand accountability. It does mean that we should be accurate in how we describe and characterize it.

An Emerging Pattern

What happened last week at these four Capitols is part of an emerging pattern in left-wing direct action. Activists strategically plan rallies at state Capitols on days when legislation they oppose is scheduled to receive a hearing or a vote. They then organize, show up in force, stay all day, and make as much noise as possible.

Recently, these protests almost always target legislation that aims to protect minors from the ever-expanding agenda of the transgender ideology. And occasionally, the protesters attempt to disrupt the legislature from conducting business as scheduled—and sometimes, they even succeed.

Unfortunately, this pattern is not new, but it is now occurring more frequently. Last year, pro-abortion activists tried to force their way into legislative chambers in Arizona and Indiana. Left-wing protesters also disrupted legislative proceedings in Texas in 2013 and Wisconsin in 2011. Those are two incidents of actual or attempted disruption during the 2010s decade, two incidents in 2022, and three incidents last week alone.

These aren’t the only “trans-centric” Capitol protests that have occurred this year.

On Feb. 6, 150 “trans lives matter” protesters occupied the Capitol rotunda in Oklahoma City to protest legislation to protect young people from gender transition procedures, forcing legislators to pass through the sea of protesters in order to reach the chamber where Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt was scheduled to give his “State of the State” address.

On March 9, more than 100 activists assembled in the rotunda of the Capitol in Charleston, West Virginia, to protest legislation with the same intent (later severely watered down).

When they can’t assemble inside a state Capitol, these LGBT activists will assemble outside. On March 5 (the day of the domestic terrorism arrests in Atlanta), over 2,000 people assembled outside the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines to protest bills protecting children from gender transition procedures, opposite-sex bathroom intrusions, age-inappropriate sexual instruction, and a school’s hiding gender identity from their parents.

On March 29, hundreds of pro-transgender protesters rallied outside the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City, where lawmakers are also considering a range of bills to protect minors.

Activists for the transgender agenda have the same rights as every other American “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” As long as their demonstrations remain (truly) peaceful, then transgender activists are within their rights and within the law.

But, likely driven by a perverse media narrative, pro-transgender demonstrations seem to turn violent abnormally often. When hundreds or thousands of angry protesters, who constantly hear that powerful interests want to erase them from existence, assemble at the site of that power, there’s always a possibility that violence might erupt. So, when a demonstration day concludes peaceably, it’s worth breathing a sigh of relief.

What isn’t clear is how increasing numbers of activists can assemble for extended periods at state Capitols increasingly often. When social conservatives hold a rally, like the supporters of Kentucky’s SB 150, they might assemble for an hour or two and then disperse because they have jobs, kids, and other responsibilities. But the pro-transgender protesters—hundreds or thousands of them—seem determined to camp out all day.

Is someone paying them to protest? Is someone at least providing a stipend to subsidize their travel, lodging, and food? They are predominantly young people who, presumably, aren’t independently wealthy, so it’s highly likely that someone else’s deep pockets are behind the increasing organization of these protests.

What is clear, to use their phrase, is that this isn’t what democracy looks like. Laws that represent the will of the people should be made by the elected representatives of the people, duly seated in the legislature. They should not be dictated by any gathering of several hundred or thousand people who show up. Such direct action to pressure or intimidate legislatures has far more in common with European revolutionary movements (fascism, communism) than with traditional American democracy.

The First Amendment rights to speech, press, assembly, and petition are a part of America’s constitutional system, but they are designed to protect minority groups from the abuses of the majority—in other words, a check on democratic rule. The contradiction in the claims of these pro-transgender protesters is that they are simultaneously claiming to represent an oppressed minority and to represent the will of the people.

In reality, the pro-transgender protesters represent neither the will of the people—hence the overwhelmingly passed state laws—nor an oppressed minority. While they are a minority, they are widely celebrated, from the White House to Hollywood to the Country Music Awards.

The very same day that a transgender-identifying murderer entered a Christian school and killed three children and three adults, pro-transgender activists pretended they were the victims by staging a die-in in the Texas Capitol. This shameful charade then continued all week, as this group with outsized cultural influence shamelessly chanted “shame” because state legislatures sought to protect children from their predation.

“Whose [elementary] schools?” asked Florida college students. “Our schools.”

Nope, they belong to the people of Florida, as represented by the duly elected members of their legislature.

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This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

Transgenders

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

This topic somehow has become one of the most important subjects in America. It is characterized by some as “the civil rights fight of our time.” A recent column by one of the “sterling” columnists at the New York Times finally made me address this issue.

Jamelle Bouie belongs to the chorus of writers at the New York Times and Washington Post who advocate jumping on the bandwagon of any current trend. While Mr. Bouie’s opinions on this matter might very well be heartfelt, one might also think at least one of these agenda items to radically change our lives would face some resistance.

Bouie’s column is entitled, “There is No Dignity in This Kind of America.” It reveals where he is heading from the start.

One must wonder where Mr. Bouie was on this issue before June 26, 2015, when Gays were granted the right to marry by the U.S. Supreme Court. The transgender issue was nowhere on the agenda and since then has become transcendental. Someone involved in the Gay community informed me that every relevant organization turned immediately to this issue after the ruling. They had won that long fight for gay marriage and now had no issue to drive fundraising. Transgenders went from nowhere on their websites to the most burning issue and fundraising came along with it.

Bouie starts his column with the bold statement, “Over the past year, we have seen a sweeping and ferocious attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country.” He does not state how these new laws will discriminate against transgenders; you must simply accept his premise.

He loses credibility when he proceeds to cast the entire argument as not just going after transgenders, but the entire LGBTQ community. It just ain’t so, Jamelle, and that is where so many people are antagonized.

I have a long history of support for the Gay community as I will once again state the best man at my wedding was and is gay. I will say I wasn’t the first to accept Gay marriage, but I did before the Supreme Court ruled and I believe it is a settled issue as virtually no one is arguing for change.

The issue of transgenders is different for me as it is for a lot of people and a lot more than Jamelle might think. People don’t like being bullied into making this such an important cause. I believe many people have a lot of concerns, as I do. Many believe that just because our medical science has reached a point where we can alter males to appear like females and females to appear like males that may just not be the right thing to do. We are also concerned about the long-term medical effects of the procedures taken to make the transition. And many certainly believe if someone chooses that path, it is nobody’s business. But it should not be on our collective dime.

The single most disconcerting aspect of this matter concerns minors – as in educating or sharing information with them. It is clear scientifically people do not achieve full mental development until they are roughly 25 years old. Not only is this issue being addressed to young adults, but also to adolescents. It never fails to amaze me how focused or preoccupied some get on issues like this that they cannot accept reasonable boundaries. And then they call the opposition zealots.

Yet schools and public authorities are encouraging minor children to pursue transgender activity while not informing parents. Connecticut has legislation proposed that would protect teacher-student conversations from parental access. How misguided is that? Many suggest children get in their heads that they are not a boy or a girl, but a member of the other sex. It is as if they are little Einsteins generating original thought and they just happened to land in the same spot.

Bouie ties the supposed attacks on transgenders to the fight over abortion. In my mind, the only tie is that supporters like Bouie feel their cause is so just that parental authority needs to be discarded. Those nasty parents just don’t understand the issue or what their children are experiencing. Abort that child of the fifteen-year-old; cut off those breasts of the developing fourteen-year-old; we just know better.

To me, the transgender movement is a bridge too far. I believe many just don’t see them in the “alphabet soup” the movement has created. I wish them no harm. I encourage adults to make prudent decisions about their experience because a gender change is a major, major decision. I will harbor nothing but glad tidings for anyone who makes that decision and Godspeed.

But I won’t encourage it. I will also not be bullied by the Jamelle Bouies of this world into thinking this is the most serious human rights issue in the country. That means if you are involved, please keep it to yourself.

*****

This article was published by FlashReport and is reproduced with permission from the author.

Busting Five Myths of Gender Ideology

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Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Scrutinizing the claims of gender ideology, it soon becomes apparent how incoherent they are. On the one hand, we’re told that men and women are the same — that the differences we observe in professional outcomes and sexual behavior are the result of sexist stereotyping. And yet, they are different; and men can really be women and women can really be men, by appropriating opposite-sex stereotypes.

For years, editors and journalists at the New York Times have been uninterested in skeptical views of transgenderism, dismissing them as bigotry. That’s beginning to change, as I write about in the forthcoming issue of the magazine. But whatever took them so long?

In 2018, when the Times was uncritically circulating transgender myths, we at National Review were battling the disinformation. And this is just one of many areas where NR has fought to be a voice of truth and reason. This week, and for this reason, we’re asking for our readers’ support — donations, of any amount — to help us continue this mission. Your contributions to these webathons, and of course your NRPlus subscriptions, help us do what we do.

Here are just some of the myths that we’ve busted so far.

MYTH 1: We All Have a ‘Gender Identity’

Gender-identity theory originated with clinical experiments in psychiatry and surgery in the latter half of the 20th century. Later, in the 1990s, this theory evolved into gender ideology under the influence of academic leftists. It entered the mainstream via the internet in the 2010s and, with the help of political activists and lobbyists, morphed into the modern transgender movement. In its current manifestation, gender-identity ideology holds that everyone has a “gender identity” — an inner sense of being male, female, or something else — which is distinct from sex and capable of overriding it.

In activist lingo, a person who accepts their anatomical sex is “cisgender” while a person who rejects their anatomical sex is “transgender.” Really, though, a person who rejects their anatomical sex (i.e., reality) is mentally disturbed — deserving of compassionate help — while a person who accepts their anatomical sex is not.

This is what Ray Blanchard, a sexologist, explained in 2019, during an interview with National Review. Blanchard considers “gender identity” to be an unhelpful concept for “normal people” since “cross-gender identity is a constant preoccupation with, and unhappiness about, the individual’s gender” and not, as activists claim, “a normal gender identity which has found itself lodged in the wrong body.”

MYTH 2: Puberty Blockers Are Safe and Fully Reversible

The website of Britain’s National Health Service, whose main gender youth clinic was closed earlier this year after an independent investigation confirmed concerns over patient safety, formerly read: “The effects of treatment with GnRH analogues [puberty blockers] are considered to be fully reversible, so treatment can usually be stopped at any time.”…..

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Continue reading this article at National Review.

The Morning Briefing: Shockingly, the Trans Cult Keeps Finding Ways to Get Weirder

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Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

The escalation in trans (-gender and -vestite) news in recent years has been truly mind-boggling. A fringe (don’t believe the new numbers) segment of the American public has been dominating the leftist news organizations. While it’s true that the MSM is just making it up as they go along, I would have guessed they’d go for something more leftist mainstream, like paying for everything that illegal aliens do once they arrive here.

Instead, they have decided that the woke agenda was best forced on American society via the “T” portion of the LGBTQ alphabet soup community.

The woke trans agenda is everywhere now. We’re even seeing corporations get in on the messaging.

Here’s the thing, though: the more that the Democrats try to convince us that this is all normal and well, the more outlandish the trans crowd becomes.

Last month, I wrote a VIP column about trans dudes who are freezing tomato juice to help them mimic period symptoms. I won’t go into detail about exactly what the boys are doing with the juice, but I referred to them as “poopsicles” in the column. There are online forums discussing how best for a biological male who wants to pretend that he’s a woman to fake a period.

I guess it’s a rite of passage that the trans guys go through before they can “get pregnant.”….

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Continue reading this article at PJ Media.

Identity Crisis

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Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

In the early Spring I began working on a documentary series for Independent Women’s Forum called “Identity Crisis.” The project tells the stories of four mothers whose daughters fell victim to gender ideology, two detransitioners who now warn of the harms this movement is causing, and one mental health professional who rails against her profession for prioritizing political correctness over public health.

This series was inspired by the censorship and media blackout these individuals have faced. The number of transgender-identifying youth has nearly doubled in recent years, which has left politicians, educators, medical professionals, and the public at odds over what policies are best suited to protect the health and well-being of children. Despite the high stakes, the media is only telling one side of the story. We’re here to change that, and I’m here to shed light on some of the personal devastation that these individuals and families have faced.

The most recent story published in our series features Vera Lindner, an immigrant mother from California who says gender ideology drove her autistic, gender-confused daughter into a “catastrophic” mental breakdown. Her daughter faced a slew of mental health issues that needed to be addressed: she was diagnosed with autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder. But all the therapist who was supposed to be treating her wanted to do was “affirm” her new male identity. From the moment her daughter declared her transgender identity, the therapist started referring to her daughter as a boy. No questions asked.

This mother’s story explores a huge aspect of the transgender movement that politicians, medical professionals, media, and activists don’t want to acknowledge, let alone explore—the connection between autism and transgenderism. It’s malpractice.

The first story featured in our series involved Jeannette Cooper, a Chicago mother who lost custody of her 12-year-old daughter for insisting that she is a girl. After a regular custodial visit to her father’s house, Jeannette’s daughter decided she was trans and felt “unsafe” around her mom. In the last 3 years, Jeannette has seen her daughter for a total of 8 and a half hours. It’s been so long that Jeannette doesn’t even know how tall her daughter is anymore. She’s only allowed to communicate with her by postal mail. As Jeannette said, “People who are in prison have more communication with their child than I do. It’s wrong.”

Then came Jennifer, a mother from a Seattle suburb who in 2019 received an email from her daughter’s 5th-grade teacher. The teacher, a male, was using a different name for her then-10-year-old daughter. Jennifer thought it was a mistake—the teacher must have accidentally emailed the wrong parent. But Jennifer later found out that for six months, her daughter was meeting with a school therapist once a week who was treating her as a boy, using male pronouns and a made-up male name.

In February 2020, right before COVID-19 hit, that therapist emailed Jennifer to schedule a meeting where the therapist would assist her daughter in officially “coming out” to her parents as a boy, and to obtain parental permission to allow her daughter to stay overnight in the boy’s cabin for an upcoming school trip. At this point, Jennifer’s daughter was only 11 years old, so the school had to obtain permission. But had she been 13, Jennifer wouldn’t even have had a right to know because she lives in Washington state, where children as young as 13 years old can access their own medical and mental health services without parental knowledge or consent.

Parents in these cases are billed by insurance companies with no explanation of benefits, meaning they’re stuck with the tab but have no ability to know what services or treatments their child received. California is trying to take it one step further, making itself a “sanctuary state” for children to receive hormones, puberty blockers, and irreversible “gender surgery” without parental consent.

Next came Susie, a mom from Alaska who came face-to-face with the growing phenomenon of adolescent girls identifying as the opposite sex due to a social desire to appear transgender. Critics call the social contagion theory “unfounded” and “absurd,” but after returning in 2020 to the U.S. from a four-year assignment abroad, Susie’s family settled into a house on a street where two out of the eight girls identified as boys. At the local high school where their daughter would soon attend, at least another 10 girls identified as the opposite sex. Shortly after moving there, Susie’s oldest daughter, who had just turned 15, also said she felt like a boy. Susie’s daughter had previously never expressed any discomfort about her gender, but the Left considers this a complete coincidence.

Susie disclosed to her new school counselor in Alaska that her daughter was struggling with mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and gender confusion. Susie thought the school was on the same page with how she and her husband wanted to handle their daughter’s sudden transgender identification—by giving their daughter time to experience and explore her feelings, without changing her name or pronouns. But in fall 2021, at the start of the next school year, Susie found her daughter’s student ID, which featured her new, made-up name.

The fact that the school was socially transitioning Susie’s daughter behind her back came as a surprise to Susie, since the entire year, the school was communicating with Susie using female pronouns and her daughter’s real name. When she eventually decided to confront the school and ask how her daughter’s name would appear in the yearbook, school officials told Susie that she has no say over anything her daughter wants to go by or what’s in her record, erroneously citing federal Title IX requirements.

Every one of these mothers’ stories are different. They’re all horrifying in their own way. But all of them have a common theme: A deep and painful sense of betrayal.

The Serpent’s Sting

Mothers, many of them former Democrats, are sickened and betrayed by Democrat politicians whom they spent a lifetime supporting. Democrats who’ve chosen to affirm a toxic ideology that exploits vulnerable children instead of protecting them.

They’re sickened and betrayed by public school educators and administrators lying to them and changing their children’s names and pronouns in-secret, behind their backs. They’re sickened and betrayed by a legal system that was designed to protect children, but is instead using gender ideology as a weapon to sever one of the most fundamental bonds in life—the bond between a mother and her child.

They’re sickened and betrayed by health professionals who took an oath to protect patients from harm and injustice, yet perpetuate just that. They’re sickened and betrayed by a media echo chamber convincing the public that lying to children about their gender is the “kind” and “compassionate” thing to do, when doing so leads children down a path of lifelong doctor’s appointments and medical complications.

They’re sickened and betrayed by seemingly every adult with an ounce of authority, from so-called “support groups” to the President of the United States, sending this message: “We know better than the parents do what’s best for this child,” as if anyone in the world could know and love a child more than that child’s own parents.

I started working on this project when I returned from maternity leave with my second child. To be honest, I wasn’t ready at all to get back to work when I did—even with the privilege of being able to work from home. But I believe God purposefully put this project in my lap, giving me, a fellow mom, the opportunity to give these parents a voice. With a 4-month-old baby sleeping on my chest, I spent hours on the phone listening to these moms and wondering, “How did we let this go so far?” Then with my 2-year-old daughter knocking at my office door asking, “Mommy, are you done with work?” I looked at her through tears wondering, “What if this happened to her?”

I believe what we’re talking about today is a generation of young girls being manipulated and mutilated in a way not much different from female genital mutilation. Which is ironic, because my inspiration for entering this field of work in college was learning about exactly that. But when I was studying them in college, these abuses were always taking place in some far-off country. Never did I imagine reporting on them here at home.

As part of our series, I chose to also tell the stories of two young women who went down the path of a medical transition, only to regret it a few years later. One of them, Daisy Strongin, went so far as to chop off her healthy breasts only to realize shortly after that objectively, she could never actually be a boy. Just a few weeks ago, Daisy gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy. It was the fear of never being able to conceive a child due to medical mutilation that ultimately drove her to give it all up.

During our interview, Daisy told me, “If you told me two years ago that in 2022 you would be married and pregnant, I wouldn’t believe you. My parents told me that I would change a lot, but I just could not conceptualize it.”

Daisy’s now happily married and a new mom. But she’ll never be able to breastfeed, she still grows facial hair, and her voice has been permanently deepened. She doesn’t know in what other ways the years of testosterone may have damaged her body, but she knows she’ll do everything in her power to stop her own child from going down this path.

Another detransitioner who I interviewed, Cat Cattison, told me this:

My parents didn’t affirm me, and at the time it did make me very angry. But looking back, I’m very thankful for that. I think that if I would have been able to transition as a child and gone onto puberty blockers, gone onto cross sex hormones at a young age and cut off body parts, I think I would be looking back and I would be thinking, how could you enable this? How could you have gone along with this when I was too young to consent? I do think that, in the future, we’re going to see a lot of children who have detransitioned being angry with their parents and feeling betrayed by them.

Making Up for Lost Time

Here, then, we come full circle. Not only are parents being betrayed, but children are, too. Thousands of parents are suffering at the hands of the gender ideology movement. But it’s their children who are the greatest victims in it.

As the mom of a young girl, I can sleep at night knowing I’m on the right side of this fight, despite the nasty attacks we face. But what makes it hard to sleep is knowing how as a movement, conservatives were too late. We have already failed thousands of vulnerable young girls, who’ve already started puberty blockers and sterilized themselves. We have already failed thousands of young girls who’ve already cut off their breasts or worse, cut off their own skin from their arms or their legs to make a fake penis.

Families have been ripped apart; parents, children, and siblings have been pitted against each other. Doctors, teachers, media, politicians, and activists have normalized young, healthy children mutilating themselves under the guise of tolerance and compassion. It’s literally normal for doctors today to prescribe gender confused children drugs, surgery, and medical treatments—as if it would ever be normal for doctors to prescribe anorexic girls gastric bypass surgery.

How did we get here? As a movement, we were too late. And even today, we’re not doing enough. But these parents and detransitioners aren’t giving up. They’re refusing to be silenced. They’re using their voices to fight for their children, and we’re doing everything in our power to support them. In some cases, like that of Jeannette Cooper, the Chicago mother who lost custody of her daughter simply for insisting that her daughter is a girl, they’ve made the ultimate sacrifice. They’ve lost the basic ability to even see their own child. Why? What makes these unimaginable costs worth it? Here’s Jeannette explaining, in her own words:

I see that my child is at sea in a boat. She is struggling. She is in tumultuous seas. I know that. I have seen that. And what I have been told is to follow her lead, to follow her in this journey.

I am not willing to do that. I don’t think that is good parenting. It is my responsibility not to hook my boat to hers. It is my responsibility to be a lighthouse, to be something stable that she can see, some guide that she has, that will always be there, that is consistent.

That is my responsibility. I still do that today even though I have no custody of her. I have no medical decision making. No educational decision making. And no way to communicate with her other than by mail. I don’t have her phone number. I know where she lives, but I’m not allowed to go there. I know where she goes to school and I’m not allowed there either. But this is parenting. What I’m doing, even though I have no real contact with her, I am still her parent. I am still her mother. And I am still parenting now.

I’ll close my remarks with this. As conservatives, we give a lot of attention to the idea of leftist policies teaching Americans to hate their own country—as we rightly should. But with gender ideology, the reality is far worse than that: leftist policies are teaching children to hate their own parents and to hate their own bodies. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. It’s perverse, destructive, and needs to be stopped.

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This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.