Gender ideology may be child abuse

In April this year, a Canadian judge found a father guilty of “family violence” for publicly and privately referring to his 14-year-old daughter, who identifies as a boy, as a girl. He has been further banned from using her birth name, and from attempting to persuade her to abandon treatment (testosterone shots) for gender dysphoria.

Monique Robles points out (LifeSiteNews, April 25, 2019) that the case stems from the fact that when the girl claimed to be transgender at age 13, school authorities sent her and her mother, without the father’s consent, to a transgender activist psychologist, who recommended that she begin hormone therapy.

The father believes that the girl does not have the “mental capacity and emotional maturity” to make the decision to have testosterone treatments, which can have irreversible effects, and is seeking to have the treatments terminated.

In another case, this time in the United Kingdom, (Calvin Freiburger, LifeSiteNews, May 14, 2019) a judge determined that a four-year-old boy was not harmed by a “complete transition into a female occurring at a very young age,” and that there was no evidence this transition was “actively encouraged rather than appropriately supported”.

This case arose when the relevant social services sought to have the boy removed from the care of his foster parents who acted “in a precipitate manner in relation to perceived gender dysphoria”.

It should be noted that the judge’s determination was made against the backdrop of the foster parents’ having “allowed” their biological son to go to school dressed as a girl at age seven, and of a third foster son reportedly experiencing “gender identity issues”.

Should we be concerned about these and similar cases?

The American College of Pediatricians, in a document entitled Gender Ideology Harms Children (updated September 2017), points out that while everyone is born with a sex, no one is born with a gender, which is a sociological and psychological concept.

One’s awareness of oneself as male or female develops over time, and this process may be derailed by the child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy onwards.

Another point they make is that puberty is not a disease, but puberty-blocking hormones induce a state of disease—absence of puberty—and inhibit growth and fertility in previously biologically healthy children.

These children will need to continue taking cross-sex hormones to continue impersonating the opposite sex; hormones associated with dangerous health risks such as cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke, diabetes, and cancer, among others. 

An important point the document makes too is that according to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5^th edition (DSM-5), “as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.”

While it is generally accepted that parents are supposed to guide their children, and we do not allow them to engage in a number of activities because they are too young or immature (neuroscience reveals that the pre-frontal cortex of the brain which is responsible for judgement and risk assessment is not mature until the mid-twenties), in the matter of sexuality and gender, we are expected to follow the lead of children as young as three!

The document concludes that conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.

Are we prepared to stand by and just let it be?

A monthly column by the Emmanuel Community: 46 Rosalino Street, Woodbrook.Tel:628-1064;emmancommtt@gmail.com