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Born That Way?
Years ago people would talk about “sexual preference.” Later, LGBT activists realized that in order to present themselves as a civil rights movement, no different from that of Black Americans, they needed to make this something you are born with, just like your race. The change from “preference” to “orientation” was made then for purely political reasons.
That is not to say that for many there aren’t innate factors at work. However, to say everyone living the LGBT lifestyle was “just born that way” is painting with too broad of a brush. It is interesting to notice that if someone who is living as a straight person has a homosexual affair, people will say that they were “living a lie” as a straight person and now have found their true self. When the opposite happens, someone goes from a gay relationship to a straight one, well then that person must be bisexual. The LGBT part of their life can never be called “living a lie.”
As activists achieved most of their goals for gays and lesbians, they then moved on to actively promote Transgenderism (rebranded from the old transvestites and transsexuals). So, what are we seeing now? One study showed that the number of teens identifying as trans went up 4000%. That doesn’t seem to jive with the “born that way” argument. Certainly, with greater acceptance some kids who would have tried to hide it, stay in the closet if you will, are more likely to admit to their feelings. The problem is, we are talking about a 4000% increase. That is one very huge closet that no one ever noticed. I find that hard to be the reason.
Another, more logical, reason is that people have made transgenderism trendy. Today, if a kid says they are trans, there are people ready to praise them. To encourage them to continue in that lifestyle, even if they don’t really know what that child is going through.
This week psychologist Erica Anderson made news by saying, “This has gone too far. It’s going to get worse. I don’t want any part of it.” Anderson’s complaint is significant because Anderson has worked for years counseling transgender teens. And while the activists’ knee-jerk reaction would be to call the doctor a “transphobe,” Anderson is a transgender person, born a male but living as a woman. Anderson mentions a 13-year-old who was given hormones by her pediatrician without ever seeing a psychologist. That sounds awful, but once you buy the “just born that way” argument then you no longer can look at this as a psychological problem. We are at a point now where surgery and hormones aren’t the last resort, they are the very first option for anyone showing even a hint of possible gender confusion.
In an essay about her transition and subsequent detransition, 23-year-old Helena Kerschner explains that being straight and white isn’t cool with the woke crowd.
It’s understandable that any young person exposed to this kind of belief system would grow to deeply resent being white, “cis”, straight, or (biologically) male. The beauty of gender ideology is it provides a way to game this system, so that you can get some of those targets off your back and enjoy the camaraderie of like-minded youths. You can’t change your race, pretending to have a different sexuality would be very uncomfortable in practice, but you can absolutely change your gender, and it’s as easy as putting a “she/they” in your bio.
Kerschner talks about going through several different identities before realizing she really was a straight woman living in the body of a straight woman. Thankfully she came to this conclusion before any irreversible surgical changes. Her story is important and needs to be heard. She wasn’t born trans-anything, but a young impressionable person looking for acceptance can do weird things. That is why adults need to step and act like the grown-ups in the room. There are generations of young people who need you to do the right thing.
Helena Kerschner tells Tucker Carlson about why she detransitioned and is now speaking out against pushing children to transition:
"I'm just really concerned for younger girls and boys being led down this path, and being hurt by it." pic.twitter.com/m5Q5NVBy09
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 16, 2022
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Published in General
Amen.
And I can’t recommend Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage enough.
Bridget Phetasy interviewed Helena in her podcast, Walk-Ins Welcome, Episode 146.
These stories are important because I have heard people claim, “We’re not trying to convert anyone” and “you can’t make someone gay or trans.” But the truth is, young people looking for approval can be very impressionable. It is indeed possible sway their little skulls full of mush.
I had originally skipped over this post, but glad that I changed my mind and read it.
It seems unlikely. Being gay generally hasn’t made life easier for people, compared to being straight. And I think that’s still the case in most places (including my beloved flyover country!). Living a lie implies taking what seems to be the easier road in life, even if it isn’t the most honest one.
That said, I’m appalled at children being prescribed hormone therapy outside of a robust therapeutic process.
You imply it is ok with a robust therapeutic process.
If this is the case. Then terms like monster come into play.
Did you not get the memo? I am not part of the group hug.
I will check that out.
Sad to see Ricochet hasn’t carried it for over a year.
A very, very, very robust therapeutic process.
THere are some interesting questions here, perhaps ones you might be willing to address Zafar? (Seriously, I mean).
For instance: Being transgender is not the same as being gay or lesbian. Why are we supposed to believe that it is? A gay man is a man. The object of his attraction and affection are other men. Transgenderism says, in effect, that what you as a gay man are ack-shully attracted to is a person who, whatever the anatomy, believes him/herself to be a man.
Surely any homo- or hetero-sexual person can affirm that this is nonsense?
The hormones being given to young people (even if they aren’t actually children) have serious downsides. Estrogen, for example, is a carcinogen so potent that it is no longer given to women (actual women, that is, whose bodies may be said to have at least developed a tolerance for it) as a treatment for menopausal symptoms.
And that isn’t because menopausal symptoms aren’t all that serious. In fact, I’d reckon that some of those symptoms give the miseries of gender dysphoria a run for its money. And yet, a much higher risk of various cancers has been determined to not be worth the risk…but I’ve now got a young friend (with a family history of cancer) who takes a whole lot of estrogen, and plans to keep doing so for the rest of his (un)natural life. How can that possibly be a reasonable way to deal with what is, rather obviously, a neurological/psychological issue?
If a man can be “trapped” in a woman’s body and vice versa, can a mare be trapped in a stallion’s body? Can a rooster be trapped in a hen’s body? Ram/Ewe? Cow/Bull?
Are human beings, whose anatomy and physiology bear strong evidence of biological kinship with other animals, especially other primates, somehow excused from this most basic element in the logos of bios, the study, word, story of life?
Sure.
The thing is, GD, I am not a transgender person so I do not pretend to understand where they’re coming from, and I also don’t presume to make decisions for them, or speak for them.
Has a transgender person ever said that to you? You indicate that you know a trans person – are you close enough to have that conversation with them? I honestly think that would be more fruitful, in terms of gaining understanding, than going over the same talking points with the (non-trans) choir.
Ditto with the health concerns you raise.
(And if you do, may I suggest you ask neutrally rather than injecting your own opinion into the question? Keep it about them.)
But you know me – I think speaking with people (the gays, the transgenders, the Muslims, the Conservatives) is always better than just speaking about them.
GD, people used to (sometimes still) say that about being gay (rather than homosexualist :-) or gay marriage or even gay sex. That is not to say that the trans thing is one thing or the other, but it does make me wary of dismissing other people’s lives and experiences based on my own different life experience and the opinions it’s generated. It seems needlessly arrogant to do that.
Edited to add:
Re speaking with rather than about, I don’t think the refusal to take gay concerns seriously – refusing to speak sincerely with gay people about what these were – served Conservatives well in the culture war. I don’t think the refusal to speak to Black people about what they experience today (as opposed to denial denial denial Diamond and Silk!) is going to serve Conservatives well going forward, and similarly the refusal to engage with trans people as actual people with actual opinions is not going to deliver a social outcome that has Conservative input. How is this good for Conservatives?
Bingo.
I’ve been the jerk in my family who’d made an issue of this “non-issue”. A couple of young second cousins of mine have come out as trans, and one of them was put on hormone therapy. (This was confided to me by her/”his” aunt last year.) Believe it or not, I was more sympathetic to the decision–which isn’t to say I think it’s not terrible–than my family members who’d suggested I was making a big deal out of the whole dilemma.
“It’s the logical conclusion once you’ve decided this must be real,” I said. How do you draw the line at hormone therapy for a twelve-year-old if the matter is simply about letting people be who they really are? If my skepticism was always bigoted cruelty, why should there be a six year limbo period where what I’m identifying as an unfortunate phase isn’t just meanness?
My heart goes out to these kids and their parents, who are put into what looks like an agonizing position. But I’ve concluded that a bit of coldness is inevitable in life, and it goes with the territory of growing up, even if adulthood isn’t.
I really don’t care about the “traditional” transgendered person, the man or woman who passes as the opposite sex, or cross-dresses, or feels uncomfortable in his or her own body. I want them to be well and happy, and to live as they please, but they aren’t the issue today — they aren’t the “T” in LGBT.
The “T” is a bunch of high school and college girls, and a few young men, who are being duped into believing that they are somehow gender non-conforming because they experience the normal insecurity, alienation, and discomfort of youth. This is new, and it’s tragic.
Every teenage girl that insists on using pronouns other than the correct ones — and I know of three of these young ladies at the moment, but there are thousands of them — is a victim of this ridiculous social contagion. And everyone who frets about “misgendering” someone is enabling this destructive nonsense.
If a young woman is uncomfortable being feminine, counsel her. Don’t pretend she’s a boy. Don’t pretend she isn’t a girl. Don’t lie to her about her biology. Be kind, but don’t enable a self-indulgent, self-destructive delusion.
Because that is what the “T” in LGBT is all about, not the hairy-legged cross-dresser who hangs out at the gay bar every Friday night looking simultaneously sad and ridiculous. Those fellows have always been with us.
The duped high school girls are something new.
Probably because she’s not a “true” conservative. The funny thing is she got married a couple of years ago, and she is expecting – at age 43:
https://bridgetphetasy.substack.com/p/geriatric-mommy?s=r
Did she actually marry a man, then? Or was something else going on?
“Got married and is expecting” isn’t necessarily what it used to be, any more.
One day in my old reproductive endocrinology practice a 16 year old girl came in requesting testosterone treatments. Just like that.
I refused, of course and had several half hour chat sessions with her and with her Dad about gender and adolescence and growing into sexuality. Like most kids who have “gender dysphoria”, this one was being a little self-loathing, a little self-doubting, a little-rub-it-in my-parents’-faces. I spoke to her pediatrician who promised to get her in with a child psychiatrist. I only saw her 3 times and hope she is well.
Assenting to her request would have been grossly wrong. My colleagues who cooperate in the chemical and physical mutilation of children should be flogged and imprisoned.
Not that I feel strongly about it.
Because it isn’t real at age 12. What in the name of all that is holy does a 12 year old know about sexuality? Just that he or she feels confused. That’s not an excuse to mutilate a child with knives and drugs.
If the child grows out of it, as most do, all the harm cannot be undone.
If the child grows into an adult who remains “trans”, then he or she can transition when he or she is competent to make his or her own decisions.
I still maintain that nobody of either sex/gender can actually feel like they should be the other, because they really have no idea what that other sex/gender feels like. All they can really know is that they don’t feel “right” how they currently are, which certainly requires psychological help not surgery etc, at least for a long time, perhaps forever.
So Diamond and Silk aren’t black.
This has also always baffled me – there is no way for a person to have a baseline for “I feel like a [what I’m not].”
Most preteens and teens are confused about aspects of human sexuality, yet as they grow and mature, much or all of that confusion gets resolved. So it’s really idiotic to do anything permanent during a time of known and almost certainly temporary doubt and uncertainty.
Of course. I don’t think it’s real at any age. The entire trend (with the exception of someone who admits they just like dressing and acting like members of the opposite sex) is definitionally insane. My point is just that if it’s bigotry to reject the validity of it for someone who’s 30, why wouldn’t it be for someone under 18? (I agree that it’s way more irresponsible and immoral to go with it in the latter case.)
I haven’t gone down any of these rabbit holes; which is why I end up in arguments (like the one I mentioned) with people who will go down one but–thankfully!–not the other.
The point is that for adults it is not bigotry to reject it, just as it is not graciousness to accept it. If an adult wants to turn herself into a cat, or himself into a demon, it’s her or his business. They’re crazy, but so long as they can take care of themselves, it’s not my place to tell them what they can or can’t do. Live and let live.
But when children believe and want things and want to be different than they are, they are not physically or mentally or psychologically mature to know what reality truly is. And they are also not responsible, not independent, uneducated, and inexperienced and often insecure. And it’s the parents’ business to keep them alive until they are adults and out of the house — and in some ways it’s the greater society’s as well.
I don’t condone other people’s neuroses no matter how old they are, but there is a point after which people can live their own lives without anyone telling them what to do (nowadays it seems to be age 26). But when they are young they are still forming, and most people don’t grow up still wanting to be firemen or train engineers (though I know some who did and are quite happy about it) [and their desires and world view expand and change].
I doubt that is the reason. Maybe @blueyeti can answer. It is probably that she just got a better deal financially elsewhere. I, too, wish her podcast were still here.
She married a man.
I went to the Helena Kerschner link. It took a long time to read, but it was worth it. I was a therapist for 23 years, and have seen how clients who go inpatient start imitating symptoms of other inpatients—not just gender dysphoria but dissociative identity disorder, which is actually an extremely rare diagnosis. What I learned from Kerschner’s piece was how much of ROGD is related to online social media. So sad.
As far as “born that way,” how on earth would natural selection allow the increase of a genetic trait that largely eliminates one’s chances of reproducing?
This is not a good argument. There are babies born with a variety of disabilities. Being born blind does not serve natural selection, but it happens.
Yep. She has a husband now . . .
Drawn and quartered isn’t good enough?
That’s why I subscribe separately . . .