This Is All Very Confusing

On Sunday, Hot Air reported that Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania swim team, recently lost the 100-meter freestyle race to another transgender swimmer. Okay, fair is fair. That seems logical. However the story gets a little weird after that.

The article quotes an Outkick article:

Penn transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who had been crushing her competition since joining the women’s swim team after three years swimming as a biological male, met her match Saturday in the 100-meter freestyle during a tri-meet with Yale and Dartmouth.

Thomas won the 200-meter and 500-meter races at Penn’s final home meet of the season, but she finished sixth in the 100-meter where Yale’s Iszac Henig, a transgender swimmer who is in the process of transitioning from female to male, crushed Thomas. Henig finished the 100 in 49.57 while Thomas touched the wall in 52.84.

“I wasn’t prepared for that. Everything is messed up. I can’t wrap my head around this. The NCAA needs to do something about this. They need to put science into the decision and discussion,” a Penn swim parent told The Daily Mail.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

Not all of the irony has been removed from the story, however. What this really means is that trans swimmer Thomas was beaten by an actual woman, so how well would Thomas do against the guys? This is a subject we touched on when the story first emerged last month. Thomas may be setting records for the University of Pennsylvania and for these specific meets, but all of the times posted thus far are still slower than the current NCAA women’s division records for those events. And they are laughably far behind the men’s division records. And now, even with the distinct biological advantage that Thomas enjoys, the swimmer has been defeated in multiple events by an actual female.

That doesn’t remove all of the injustice from the situation, of course. There are still plenty of other legitimate female college athletes who are being bumped down the charts. As the linked article indicates, one parent of a female Penn swimmer was once again calling for the NCAA to “put science into the decision and discussion.” We already saw one collegiate swimming official end her career in protest over what’s been going on. Sadly, the NCAA has clearly drunk deeply from the new chalice of wokeness and they aren’t likely to voluntarily embark on a return to sanity any time soon.

This makes my head hurt.

 

 

What I Never Thought I Would See

On Monday The Federalist posted a list of thirteen things that have happened that they would not have believed five years ago.

Here is the list. Please follow the link to the article to read the details:

1. Men As Women

2. Blocking Puberty

3. Drafting Women

5. Massive Illegal Immigration

6. Widespread Censorship

7. Parents Labeled Terrorists

8. President’s Mental Abilities Doubted

9. Asking Athletes for Advice

10. Record Debt and Inflation

11. Covid Restrictions Continue and Some Increase

12. Major Scientific Advances Not Celebrated

13. Losing Our Lead

Please follow the link above to read the details. We are obviously not in a good place.

Sad, But Not Surprising

The transgender movement is a direct threat to women’s sports. A transgender woman can compete and win in women’s sports. A woman who transitions to a man will generally not do well in men’s sports. This is illustrated in a article posted yesterday at PJ Media.

The article reports:

Will Thomas was a moderately successful swimmer on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swim team for three years. But then he took a year off, reemerged as transgender, and started dominating the women’s swim team.

“One of my big concerns for trans people is feeling alone,” he told Penn Today. “Even if you don’t pay attention to the news … [about] states proposing and passing vicious anti-trans legislation, it can feel very lonely and overwhelming.”

“The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that’s usually really solid. Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?”

He added, “Being trans has not affected my ability to do this sport and being able to continue is very rewarding.”

It may not have affected his ability to do his sport, but as a transgender he is competing against women who generally do not have the upper body strength that men do. He is competing in an unequal playing field where he has an unfair advantage. How many women will lose college scholarships in swimming to a transgender women?

A New Level Of Insanity

On Thursday, the NC Family Policy Council website reported the following:

Lambda Legal, a national LGBTQ activist organization, is suing the State of North Carolina over what it characterizes as a “discriminatory policy” relating to birth certificates. Consistent with biology, history, and longstanding policy, current state law requires birth certificates in North Carolina to identify a child as either “male” or “female.” In 1975, the state modified the law to allow an individual to change the sex designation on his or her birth certificate if they file a written request with the State Registrar and provide a notarized statement from a licensed physician that they have undergone sex reassignment surgery.

In its complaint, Lambda Legal asks the federal district court to throw out the 1975 accommodation as unconstitutional, and simply allow transgender identifying persons to change the sex designations on their birth certificates upon request.

…In its complaint, Lambda Legal asks the federal district court to throw out the 1975 accommodation as unconstitutional, and simply allow transgender identifying persons to change the sex designations on their birth certificates upon request.

The UCLA Williams Institute School of Law reports:

In 2011, Gary J. Gates utilized two state-level population-based surveys that collected data from 2003 in California and from 2007 and 2009 in Massachusetts to estimate that 0.3% of the U.S. adult population, roughly 700,000 adults, identified as transgender.2 Since then, more state-level data sources have emerged that allow us to utilize an estimation procedure that would not have been possible with the limited data available in 2011. Compared to the data used in Gates’ study, these new data sources provide more recent data (2014), larger sample sizes, and more detailed information about respondents. This allows for the development of more recent, detailed, and statistically robust estimates of the percentage and number of adults in the United States who identify as transgender.

This report utilizes data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to estimate the percentage and number of adults who identify as transgender nationally and in all 50 states.3 We find that 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. This figure is double the estimate that utilized data from roughly a decade ago and implies that an estimated 1.4 million adults in the U.S. identify as transgender.4 State-level estimates of adults who identify as transgender range from 0.3% in North Dakota to 0.8% in Hawaii.5 In addition, due to current state-level policy debates that specifically target and affect transgender students, we provide estimates of the number of adults who identify as transgender by age. The youngest age group, 18 to 24 year olds, is more likely than older age groups to identify as transgender.

Transgender is being pushed on many of our children in school almost from kindergarten. Social media has a lot to do with its increase among teenagers and young adults. There are very few social media posts by people who have regretted transgender surgery or hormone treatments. Generally they are not posted. The social media posts seem to imply that changing your sex will solve all of your teenage problems. Obviously,  many of the teenagers who attempt this solution promptly find out that it is not the answer to their problems. Unfortunately many of the steps taken by the time a teenager realizes their mistake are irreversible. I don’t think it is unreasonable to require at least a letter of request to change the gender on your birth certificate.

Common Sense In Alabama

Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported that the Alabama state Senate voted Tuesday to make it a felony for medical professionals to treat minors with hormone therapy or sex change surgery.

The article reports:

The bill, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Shay Shelnutt and dubbed the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, passed through the chamber by a margin of 23-4, according to CBS News.

The bill would result in criminal felony charges for any medical professional who treats transgender minors under the age of 19 with “gender-affirming care” and would come with the punishment of up to 10 years in prison or a $15,000 fine.

…The bill also requires school staff in the state to notify parents that “a minor’s perception that his or her gender is inconsistent with his or her sex.”

If signed into law, the bill would be the first of its kind in the United States to be enacted.

The article includes the following information about objections to the bill:

Liberal groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, AIDS Alabama, and the Alabama American Civil Liberties Union, have voiced opposition to the bill, arguing that it puts transgender children at risk.

“Lawmakers are insisting that they know what’s best for transgender young people and ignoring the recommendations of medical experts, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and more,” Allison Scott, a director at the Campaign for Southern Equality, said about the legislation. “It’s effectively endangering many possible lifelines for a transgender child: Under this bill, they can’t go to their doctor for help, and they can’t seek counsel or comfort from their teachers or school staff.”

The children need to talk to their parents. That should be their first resort. Also, you can’t get your ears pierced without parental consent if you are under 18, why should you be encouraged to make such a life-changing decision without their knowledge or consent? If a child still wants to make that decision at 19, then he is considered an adult. However, I would like to point out that we don’t let children smoke or drink until they are 21. Why would we allow them to change their sex before they can smoke or drink? The logic escapes me.

The Censors At Amazon Are Censoring Any Books They Deem Offensive

There is a whole lot of offensive material out in our society that no one is censoring, so why has Amazon taken it upon themselves to censor anything that they find offensive? First of all, who defines offensive? Well, that seems to be the problem.

Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about Amazon’s censorship. Amazon has some interesting ideas about what needs to be censored.

The article reports:

For example, a popular documentary on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was banned from their streaming service this past week. Before that move, the company deplatformed conservative Ryan Anderson’s book critical of gender theory, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement.”

When Just the News reached out to Amazon over the ban on Anderson’s book, the outlet said the company directed them to a page outlining their “Content Guidelines for Books.” Under a section labeled “Offensive Content,” Amazon states that they “don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.”

“A review of those policies suggests that sometime in the last few months Amazon made a major change to the ways in which it moderates book content on its servers, imposing a much stricter standard on books than it had previously done,” the report said. It appears the company recently added so-called “hate speech” to their guidelines on book platforming and is amping up their censorship of the “offensive.”

The article notes an observation by Daily Wire podcast host and conservative author Matt Walsh that if Amazon bans conservative books (which is the direction they are going), publishers won’t publish them due to the lack of marketing outlets. This will abolish half of the political debate in America.

The article notes:

“When a company controls over 83% of the market for books, it begins the process of deleting ideas from a society,” the author argued. “A bookseller can sell whatever it wants. If ‘Marxist Books’ wants to only sell books that conform to its ideology, OK; that has integrity.”

“But this is the ‘world’s largest bookseller.’ Amazon can basically make books disappear for *all readers* — and does so on a blatantly dishonest basis. Under guise of removing ‘inappropriate’ content, they will really be removing ideas they disfavor,” she added.

Amazon has not banned books that speak favorably about transgender teenagers. This is not about objectionable material–it is about promoting a particular point of view–politically and socially.

Common Sense From A Legislator?

Breitbart reported yesterday that Tulsi Gabbard introduced the “Protect Women’s Sports Act” in Congress on Thursday.

The article reports:

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) maintained the distinction between the sexes while addressing critics of her Protect Women’s Sports Act in a Twitter video published on Sunday.

Gabbard introduced the above-mentioned legislation with Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) on Thursday. The bill proposes the restriction of federal funds from schools allowing boys and men to compete against girls and women in sports.

Gabbard identified broad physical advantages held by men relative to women as a rationale to segregate the sexes in the context of sports to preserve “a level playing field.”

There are two major aspects of this issue that need to be discussed. The first is the idea of high school boys in high school girls’ locker rooms. I suspect that fathers who remember what it was like to be a teenage boy would not support this idea. The second aspect is equally important. Young women who are outstanding high school athletes are being denied scholarships opportunities because they are losing in competition against biological young men.

Boys competing against boys and girls competing against girls used to be a non-issue, but the cultural warriors who want to undermine our basic societal norms have chosen to make it an issue. The issue of transgender has been pushed on teenagers through social media and added to the confusion that teenagers feel as they are attempting to find their identity. The real victims of this push to undermine what used to be understood are the teenagers who are often pushed into irreversible decisions because of peer pressure and pressure from social media. Parents need to stand up to the cultural warriors and protect their children.

This Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

The Epoch Times posted an article today about a sexual assault case in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. The alleged assault took place in a gender-neutral bathroom in a high school. I sincerely question if the people who came up with the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms were ever teenagers. Unfortunately we don’t live in a world that can safely support the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms. I’m not sure that world ever existed, but it does not exist now.

The article reports:

According to News 9 WOAW, 18-year-old Austin Sauer was arrested on Thursday on charges of child enticement, fourth-degree sexual assault, and exposing genitals to a child, the sex of whom has not been reported.

The Wisconsin state law defines fourth-degree sexual assault as “sexual contact with a person without the consent of that person.”

An officer from the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department told the local ABC affiliate that the incident took place in a gender-neutral bathroom at Rhinelander High School. The school has promptly closed that bathroom.

In a statement released to WOAW, Rhinelander School District Superintendent Kelli Jacobi said that “both students went into the bathroom voluntarily.”

“This was not a random incident, as both students went into the bathroom voluntarily,” she said. “The male student will no longer be able to be on school grounds, and the gender-neutral bathroom is no longer available to students.”

The article concludes:

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision in a privacy lawsuit against a public school district in Dallas, Oregon. A panel of three judges ruled in favor of the school district, saying that it did not violate federal law or constitutional rights with a “student safety plan” that allows transgender students to use bathroom, locker, and shower facilities that “match their self-identified gender.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court last May refused to hear an appeal in a case from Pennsylvania, in which lower federal courts upheld a school district’s policy of permitting transgender students to use restrooms or locker rooms matching their gender identity. Four students, who felt uncomfortable with the policy, sued the school district on the basis that it violated their privacy rights and federal laws under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

It seems to me that common sense needs to be part of this discussion. The majority of our high school students are not transgender. Those students are entitled to privacy. There is no reason for a student with male genitals to be in a high school girls’ locker room. I don’t know exactly what provisions would have to be made, but I wouldn’t want my granddaughters to have to deal with boys in their locker room. If they still have their male body parts, they are boys and do not belong in the girls’ locker room. If they no longer belong in the boys’ locker room, then other facilities need to be made available.

Addressing A Politically-Created Problem

Breitbart reported the following yesterday:

The New Hampshire House Education Committee will hold a public hearing on Tuesday on HB 1251, legislation to protect female athletic programs from men, or transgender women, who want to compete in girls’ and women’s sporting events.

The bill — sponsored by New Hampshire Republicans Mark Pearson, Judy Aron, Regina Birdsell, Linda Camarota, Linda Gould, Kathleen Hoelzel, Alicia Lekas, Jeanine Notter, Katherine Prudhomme-O’Brien, Kim Rice, and Ruth Ward — states it is about “Discrimination Protection in Public Schools.”

The article reports the reaction to the bill:

Organizations for and against the bill are mobilizing the public. Save Women’s Sports and Cornerstone are hoping for the legislation to become law.

Cornerstone wrote in a notice about the public hearing:

Female athletes deserve a level playing field. They should not have to compete against biological males for a spot on the podium, even if those males claim a female gender identity. Biological males are already starting to dominate women’s competitive sports.

The Citizens Count website is reaching out to people who support transgender sports.

If the bill becomes law it would be effective 60 days after its passage.

Athletic scholarships are one ticket to college for athletic high school girls. In recent years many of these girls have lost scholarship opportunities because of losing to high school boys transitioning or claiming to identify as girls. Anyone who understands basic biology understands that this is simply unfair. I don’t have an answer to a transgender high school student who wants to complete athletically. Do we need a transgender athletic program? I don’t know. What I do know is that letting boys compete in girls’ sports is simply unfair to girls.

Insanity Made Legal

An article at New Jersey News 12 updated on December 23 reported that New Jersey birth certificates will now include a third, non-binary label come February 1.

The article reports:

Gov. Phil Murphy signed the Babs Siperstein Bill into law last July.

The new legislation gives parents the option of choosing a gender-neutral or non-binary identity on their child’s birth certificate. It also allows adults to change the gender marker on their birth and death certificates, without proof of reassignment surgery.

“Just because your sex assigned at birth is one thing, it does not necessarily mean that it is something that’s going to be consistent with your gender identity throughout your life,” says Ashley Chiappano with the group Garden State Equality.

I would like to remind Ms. Chiappano that the sex assigned at birth is not randomly assigned–it is based on visible biological, scientific information.

The article concludes:

Chiappano says that there is a difference between sex and gender.

“Sex is more like a label. When we’re talking about sex, this is assignment by a doctor,” she says. “Gender identity goes even further to say that it’s how you feel on the inside and how you express yourself. It’s how you express yourself through your clothing, your behavior, your personal appearance.”

The new law is named after Edison resident Babs Siperstein, the first elected transgender member of the Democratic National Committee in 2012.

New Jersey joins Oregon, California and Washington, which have all approved similar legislation. New York City also just changed birth certificates to be gender neutral.

I totally reject the idea that sex is assigned by a doctor. It is designated on the basis of visual evidence. It is becoming obvious that in several states the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Harming Women In The Name Of Equality

The law of unintended consequences seems to spend a lot of time in Washington. One of the best recent examples is the “Equality Act” promoted by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. If the Democrats can maintain their majority in the House of Representative and win a majority in the Senate in 2016, they will pass the Equality Act. So what will the Equality Act do? It will allow men transitioning to women to compete in women’s sports in high school. High school women are losing athletic scholarships because they are losing to transgender women in sports events (article here).

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the Democrat Party’s plans for America’s future.

The article notes:

Democrats have made girls’ sports a 2020 campaign issue, but establishment media outlets are keeping their viewers and readers in the dark.

Every Democratic frontrunner has pledged their support of the Equality Act, which would make “gender identity” a protected characteristic under federal anti-discrimination law. Among other things, the bill would force public schools to expand female athletic teams to include biological males who identify as transgender girls.

Every Democratic frontrunner for president has pledged their support for the bill, which passed the House in May with unanimous Democratic support. But when establishment media outlets have covered the Equality Act in relation to the 2020 election, the girls’ sports issue has gone missing.

An Oct. 10 CNN article noted that passing the Equality Act is a “top priority” for the 2020 campaigns of California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, but made no mention of the bill’s impact on female sports. CNN’s LGBT town hall the same day included zero questions about transgender athletes in girls’ sports.

The article concludes:

Polling from Morning Consult shows that majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents agree that male athletes who identify as transgender have a competitive advantage in girls’ sports, a view supported by scientific research on the subject.

Biologically male athletes have racked up victories in female sports.

Two biologically male runners in Connecticut have dominated girls’ high school track in the liberal state, which allows self-identified transgender athletes to compete as the opposite sex. At the NCAA level, a male runner who identifies as transgender won an NCAA women’s track championship in May after previously competing on the university’s men’s team.

Men competing as women harms women’s athletics. It defies science and common sense.

Are Children Becoming Collateral Damage In The Culture War?

The Daily Signal today posted an article by Sydney Wright, a business sales representative in the private sector and a student at Georgia Northwestern Technical College. Sydney Wright spent a year as a transgender man and shares her experience in the article.

In the article Sydney explains the path she traveled:

From my earliest years, I was always different from the other girls. I wore boy clothes, and I played with boy toys. I was a classic tomboy.

As I got older, I became romantically interested in other girls. In fact, with the exception of one guy I dated in high school, I exclusively dated girls.

At the time, you wouldn’t have been able to tell I was gay just from looking at me. I had long, blond hair, wore makeup, and carried myself rather femininely. But in my head, I knew I was gay—though I was more of a self-loathing gay.

The truth is, I didn’t like gays, and didn’t want to be associated with them. Yet there I was, dating only other girls.

Her journey begins in earnest with the viewing of successful transgender stories on Instagram. All the stories she saw painted a positive picture of transition and life after the transition. She expressed the feeling that being a transgender female would result in less negative feedback from society than being gay. She looked for books that would discuss both sides of the transgender issue, but found only books that supported the transgender movement and the medical procedures.

The article continues:

The first step was to find a therapist who would write me a letter to start me on male hormones.

I soon found a therapist who said she would help me, and I told her I wanted to start the hormones on my 19th birthday, which was only five weeks off. She required only a one-hour appointment each week.

That’s hardly enough time to get to know someone. Yet those five hours got me an official letter that unlocked the doors for me to get hormone therapy and become a “man.” It also helped me change my “sex” on my driver’s license from female to male.

I now see a huge problem with how easy this was. If the therapist had gone slower and been more careful, she would have seen that I wasn’t actually trans.

But by this time, I’d seen the promotional videos. I was convinced that my gender is what was “off,” and the therapist guided me along and made me feel like a sex change is what I needed.

By this point, my friends were also encouraging me to transition. “You’re a hot girl,” they said. “You’ll be a hot guy, too!” Others were too afraid to say anything against it, because after all, it was 2017. I never got pushback from anyone.

The article notes:

Not once did she tap the brakes to keep me from gender transition.

The article goes on to detail some of the medical problems a teenager may encounter with transition. Finally Miss Wright was encouraged to stop the transition by her grandfather. His wisdom probably saved her life. She then details the withdrawal process which also involved some serious medical problems.

The article concludes:

It’s insane to me that our society is letting this to happen to young people. At age 18, I wasn’t even legal to buy alcohol, but I was old enough to go to a therapist and get hormones to change my gender.

This is happening to vulnerable kids much younger than I was, and the adults are AWOL.

When you walk into these clinics, you won’t really see older people around. It’s boys and girls playing dress-up, brought there by clueless parents, waiting for the appointment that could likely ruin their lives.

I hope I’m not the only one who sees a major problem with this. Our culture has set up a fast-track to gender transition that will only result in scarred bodies and ruined lives—and the medical community is complicit. I met with these doctors in person and gave them my own cash. I can tell you they did not care.

At age 18, I wasn’t even legal to buy alcohol, but I was old enough to go to a therapist and get hormones to change my gender.

This is a public health crisis that our media and politicians are completely ignoring. More young people are being deceived every day, being told that the solution to their insecurity and identity problems is to get a sex change.

That’s just about the worst path you can put a young person on.

Until we do something, until the medical community puts up serious guardrails and begins to do its due diligence—and until politicians grow a spine and step in—expect to see more young people scarred for life.

If anything, I hope my story can serve as a warning bell and save some other young teenager the misery and grief I’ve been through.

Her story is chilling and should be a wake-up call to parents who for whatever reason are putting their children on the transgender train. The current transgender movement is a dangerous fad that ‘cool’ parents are taking part in. It is actually child abuse.

Common Sense Is Not Always Appreciated

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about some recent comments by Dr. Ben Carson.

The article shows us how a smear campaign works. The article reports:

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson issued an agency-wide email Friday attacking a “blatant mischaracterization” of his comments about transgenderism during his visit to California this week, which reportedly offended bureaucrats in San Francisco.

The Washington Post broke the story on Thursday, citing “three people present” at a HUD meeting:

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson expressed concern about “big, hairy men” trying to infiltrate women’s homeless shelters during an internal meeting, according to three people present who interpreted the remarks as an attack on transgender women.

While visiting HUD’s San Francisco office this week, Carson also lamented that society no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women, two of the agency staffers said.

Carson’s remarks visibly shocked and upset many of the roughly 50 HUD staffers who attended Tuesday’s meeting, and prompted at least one woman to walk out in protest, the staffers said.

A HUD official, who had not been present at the meeting, defended Carson, saying he never used derogatory language against transgendered people. The official added that “Carson was referring to men who pretend to be women to gain access to battered women’s shelters — and not singling out transgender women as “big, hairy men.”

The article concludes:

In May, Carson announced a new HUD rule that would allow local homeless shelters to decide for themselves if they wanted to use biological sex, not gender identity, as a basis for deciding how to provide housing. The policy under the Obama administration had been a one-size-fits-all rule forcing all shelters to recognize gender identity.

Carson has decided that the safety of homeless women must come before transgender concerns about identity — and before the political sentiments of agency bureaucrats based in a state that has failed to tackle growing homelessness.

The issue here is the safety of women seeking shelter from abuse. What is to stop an abuser from saying he is transsexual to gain access to a shelter and then terrorizing the women in it? Who wants to be responsible for the first death in a women’s shelter caused by a man who gained access by claiming to be a transsexual when he was not?

The policy here is common sense. It is in place to protect women. Are we willing to sacrifice the safety of abused women in order to placate the transgender movement?

Maybe There Is A Solution Not Yet Tried

Breitbart posted an article yesterday about an aspect of the transgender population that has not yet been fully considered.

The article reports:

A new study that examined students who claim to have gender identity issues found that, compared with 45 percent of students who are comfortable with their biological sex, 78 percent of gender-disturbed students met the criteria for at least one mental health problem.

Researchers affiliated with the Boston University School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, and University of Michigan School of Public Health, conducted the expansive study, published at the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The study, which included more than 1,200 college students with gender identity issues across 71 U.S. college campuses, found that, across commonly used mental health measures, 78 percent of the gender-disturbed students met the criteria for one or more of the outcomes of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-injury, and suicidality.

The article concludes:

In 2018, Dr. Lisa Littman at Brown University set out to learn more about why the number of adolescent girls identifying as transgender at Britain’s Gender Identity Development Service had increased from 41 percent in 2009 to 69 percent in 2017.

The researcher said she had observed teens without a history of gender dysphoria – a clinical term describing psychological discomfort caused by a sense one’s gender is incompatible with one’s biological sex – were “coming out” as transgender “after a period of immersing themselves in niche websites after similar announcements from friends.”

In her study of 256 parents, which was condemned by LGBT activists, Littman found 87 percent of the young people were reported to have “come out” as transgender after increased time spent on social media and the Internet and after “cluster outbreaks” of gender dysphoria among their groups of friends. Most of the teens who ultimately identified as transgender also showed increased popularity with peer groups afterward, according to their parents’ reports.

Additionally, Littman found nearly two-thirds of the young people whose parents participated in the survey had already been diagnosed with at least one psychiatric developmental disorder prior to the onset of the gender dysphoria. For example, nearly half of the young people had already attempted to harm themselves or had experienced a trauma, suggesting the mental health issues preceded the reported gender identity disturbance.

Recently, the academic response to a child who expresses a desire to change their sex has been to aid them in the process, sometimes without parent knowledge or consent. It would make more sense to search for underlying issues and deal with those issues before encouraging a child to walk down such a life-changing path. I recently read an article about a young boy, about nine or ten, who told his parents he wanted to be a girl. The parents sought counseling for the child, rather than simply go along with his wishes. The counseling revealed that because the child noticed that his younger sister who was handicapped got more attention from his parents than he did, he thought that if he were a girl, he would get more attention. His going through the transgender process would not have helped his problem at all. After counseling, the family dynamic was altered, and the boy went happily along the way as a little boy.

Not every person who claims to be transgender is actually transgender. Some have simply walked down that path in a desperate attempt to deal with other underlying issues. We do these people a disservice when we don’t look for and attempt to solve those underlying issues.

Usurping Parental Rights

Yahoo News posted a USA Today article about a 14-year-old school child who decided that she was a boy. The story is heartbreaking because the parents tried to provide the help the child needed, and the school undermined them every step of the way.

The article reports:

In April 2016, my then 14-year-old daughter became convinced that she was my son. In my attempt to help her, her public school undermined me every step of the way.

Throughout my daughter’s childhood, there were no signs that she wanted to be a boy. She loved stuffed animals, Pocahontas and wearing colorful bathing suits. I can’t recall a single interest that seemed unusually masculine, or any evidence that she was uncomfortable as a girl.

The only difficulty she had was forming and maintaining friendships. We later learned why: She was on the autism spectrum. She was very functional and did well in school, helped by her Individualized Education Program (IEP), a common practice for public school students who need special education.

At her high school, my daughter was approached by a girl who had recently come out at school as transgender. Shortly after meeting her, my daughter declared that she, too, was a boy trapped in a girl’s body and picked out a new masculine name.

The school began treating the girl as a boy and addressing her with masculine pronouns. The parents were unaware of this. When they found out about it, they requested that those in the school call her by her legal name at all times. Their request was ignored–the school continued to address her by a masculine name and masculine pronouns.

The article continues:

We met with the school district’s assistant superintendent, who told us the hands of school personnel are tied and that they had to follow the law. But there was no law, only the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleagues” letter of May 2016 that said schools need to officially affirm transgender students. Just three months later, in August 2016, a federal judge in Texas blocked the guidelines from being enforced. And in February 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidelines, leaving it to the states to set their own policies.

I also learned that the ACLU has sent threatening letters to schools stating that it is against the law to disclose a student’s gender identity, even to their parents. But this letter appears to misunderstand federal law. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act requires that schools allow parents to “inspect and review” their child’s education records as long as the child is under 18.

The article then reveals the peer pressure in the world of psychology:

We had our daughter evaluated by a psychologist approved by the school district. He told us that it was very clear that our daughter’s sudden transgender identity was driven by her underlying mental health conditions, but would only share his thoughts off the record because he feared the potential backlash he would receive. In the report he submitted to us and the school, he did not include these concerns that he would only share in person.

Please follow the link to the article to read the rest of the story. I need someone to explain to me how this sort of behavior by schools is in any way helpful to our children.

If You Are A Parent, This Is Frightening

Life Site News posted an article on Wednesday about what I would consider a serious violation of parental rights by the government.

The article reports:

The Minnesota mother whose son was maneuvered through a “sex change” by county officials has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review her case. She is charging the government with usurping her parental rights when its agents provided her son with transgender services and narcotic drugs against her wishes.

The Thomas More Society petitioned the High Court Wednesday on behalf of Anmarie Calgaro, arguing that Calgaro’s due process rights were “trampled on” when St. Louis County and its referred health providers “ended her parental control over her minor son without a court order of emancipation.”

“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare,” Thomas More Society special counsel Erick Kaardal said. “Anmarie Calgaro’s child, while a minor, was steered through a life-changing, permanent body altering process, becoming a pawn in someone else’s sociopolitical agenda and being influenced by those who have no legal or moral right to usurp the role of a parent.”

Calgaro sued state agencies and health providers in federal court in 2016 for terminating her parental rights without due process after her minor son was given elective medical services for a so-called “sex change” without her consent or a legal order of emancipation.

Her suit said the state’s entities decided on their own that the then-17-year-old boy was emancipated.

The defendants handled Calgaro’s son as an emancipated minor even though there had been no court action to that effect, the Thomas More statement says. Neither the school district, the county, nor any of the medical agencies named in the lawsuit gave Calgaro any notice or hearing before ending her parental rights over her minor child.

A district judge dismissed Calgaro’s lawsuit in May 2017, admitting that the boy was not legally emancipated by a court order but ruling that Calgaro’s parental rights “remained intact.” The Thomas More Society says the judge decreed that the de facto emancipation of Calgaro’s minor son by the county, school, and medical care providers did not constitute an infringement of constitutionally protected parental rights.

The case was appealed in July 2017 and the district court ruling upheld by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in March of this year.

St. Louis County decided without any basis that Calgaro’s son was emancipated and could receive government benefits, even though Calgaro was a “fit parent” who objected to their actions, the legal non-profit’s statement on the Supreme Court filing said.

The article concludes:

“And the St. Louis County School District in Minnesota has a custom and practice of barring a parent from involvement in the child’s education for more than two years after a child is deemed by the school principal, not by a court order, to be emancipated,” he said. “This is an unacceptable situation for any parent and a serious violation of parental and due process rights.”

Minnesota’s language regarding emancipation is vague, and state law presents no procedural due process rights for “fit parents,” according to Kaardal, even though it does so for those deemed unfit.

“Why wouldn’t we make this same effort for fit parents?” he asked.

Kaardal said he was concerned in particular about the conflict in Minnesota’s legal statutes.

“The U.S. Court of Appeals ignored the major disconnect in the District Court decision where the mother’s parental rights are admitted but not honored, and the ridiculous claims that the agencies which have violated Calgaro’s rights did nothing wrong,” he stated. “The United States Supreme Court now has the opportunity to untangle this incompatible and untenable scenario; so, nationwide fit parents can keep parenting without governmental interference.”

“Under federal law, the right to parent is considered an unenumerated right, protected from governmental interference by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments,” said Kaardal. “The “liberty” of the Due Process Clauses safeguards those substantive rights “so rooted in the traditions and conscience as to be ranked as fundamental.”

The U.S. Supreme Court reconvenes in October.

 

Reaching For Fairness

Yesterday The Daily Wire reported the following:

On Monday, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys representing teen track star Selina Soule and two other minor female track athletes submitted a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights seeking an investigation into sex discrimination. The complaint specifically challenges the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) policy allowing biological males who identify as female to compete in girls’ athletics, ADF announced in a press release sent to The Daily Wire on Monday.

Per the CIAC policy, Soule was forced to compete against female-identifying biological males in a high-stakes track competition where two transgender sprinters beat the field, taking first and second place by significant margins; Soule landed in 8th place, missing an opportunity to compete in front of college coaches by two places.

“I am very happy for these athletes and I fully support them for being true to themselves and having the courage to do what they believe in,” Soule told host Fox News host Laura Ingraham in February. “But, in athletics, it’s an entirely different situation. It’s scientifically proven that males are built to be physically stronger than females. It’s unfair to put someone who is biologically a male, who has not undergone anything in terms of hormone therapy, against cis-gender girls.”

“Throughout the 2018-19 track season, males consistently deprived the female athletes who are part of the complaint of dozens of medals, opportunities to compete at a higher level, and the public recognition critical to college recruiting and scholarship opportunities,” an ADF news release said. “The complaint notes that CIAC’s policy and its results directly violated the requirements of Title IX, a federal regulation designed to protect equal athletic opportunities for women and girls.”

I will admit that this is a new issue to me. Transgender was not common when my children were in school. It does seem to me that adolescent girls and adolescent boys are different physically. Generally boys have more muscle mass and more upper body strength. That makes competition between the sexes uneven. If a male transitioning to female is allowed to compete against women, he has a physical advantage–he will generally be taller with more muscle mass. That seems unfair to me. The only logical solution is to set up athletic events specifically for transgender students. Otherwise the athletes are not competing on a level playing field.

Sad News From The World Of Track And Field

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that a biological male who identifies as a woman won the NCAA women’s track championship over the weekend.

The article reports:

The NCAA boasts of its “inclusion of transgender student-athletes” because they believe in and are committed to “diversity, inclusion and gender equity among its student-athletes, coaches and administrators. We seek to establish and maintain an inclusive culture that fosters equitable participation for student-athletes and career opportunities for coaches and administrators from diverse backgrounds.”

The left is completely destroying women’s sports.

Recall, “Rachel” McKinnon is a man who won the women’s cycling world championship in October of last year — all he had to do was show up and say he was a woman named Rachel and next thing you know he’s the world champion.

Two biological males have also crushed female competitors in high school track in Connecticut, ultimately destroying scholarship opportunities for young girls.

Meanwhile the feminists are silent on this issue.

This is really a shame. Women who would have been able to get college scholarships based on their athletic ability will now be overshadowed by men claiming to be women. I can’t imagine a woman wanting to compete in a sport against a man–men have different body structure and different muscle structure than women–whether they are ‘transitioning’ or not. The decision to let men compete against women goes against all common sense and all biology.

We Need To Pay Attention To What The House Of Representatives Just Passed

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when you could trust the running of the government to the people you elected and sent to Washington. They were paid to represent you; and as long as they didn’t wander too far off the main path, the system worked. Well, those days are gone. Legislation just passed in the House of Representatives has the potential to make you a criminal just for continuing on in the normalcy of your own private life.

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about some of the provisions of the Equality Act just passed by the House of Representatives. Among other things, women and girls would have to allow men claiming they were transitioning to women in their locker rooms and restrooms.

The article reports:

Far from merely expanding civil rights categories, it turns any recognition of the differences between the sexes or any preference for traditional sexual morality into actionable “hate,” creating fertile grounds for lawsuits.

“It is the most dangerous bill to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion that has ever been proposed on a national level,” says Houston Baptist University Prof. Robert Gagnon, an expert in biblical sexual morality. “It will codify into law that you are a bigot, the moral equivalent of a racist, tantamount to being a member of the Klu Klux Klan, who must be shut out of society and, wherever possible, harassed and persecuted for your beliefs.”

In other words, it will criminalize Christianity, an ongoing process that got a big boost from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling on same-sex “marriage.”

This draconian bill passed by a vote of 236-173, with 8 Republicans joining 228 Democrats. Another 16 Republicans and 7 Democrats did not vote.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has actually endorsed it. When did destroying the moral order and paving the way for more lawsuits against businesses become part of the chamber’s mission? Pouring legal acid on a marriage-and-family-based culture will not lead to a more stable society of upwardly mobile consumers. America is only as prosperous as its families are strong.

The article concludes:

Unless we reassert the primacy of natural marriage and natural sexuality, “our battle will be a losing one,” Mr. Smirak writes. “Our churches will end up essentially illegal. Sooner or later.”

MassResistance, a parents-rights group, has compiled a list of likely outcomes. Here’s a tweaked version:

1. It will undermine the civil rights movement that black Americans fought for.

2. Churches will be sued or lose tax-exempt status if they don’t accept LGBTQ behaviors.

3. Schoolchildren will be forced to learn how to engage in destructive LGBTQ behaviors [in California, it begins in kindergarten].

4. Parents who oppose this will be charged with discrimination.

5. Private colleges will lose funding, grants and scholarships.

6. Public accommodations and small businesses will be forced to allow men into women’s bathrooms and vice versa.

7. Business owners will be forced to violate their freedom of conscience.

8. Hospitals, clinics and the armed forces will be forced to offer experimental and harmful transgender treatments — including surgeries.

9. Foster and adoption agencies will be forced to close, as has already happened to Catholic Charities in several liberal cities.

10. Men will displace women in sports events (already happening).

Scenarios like the following case would become common: A Texas father has been charged in a divorce proceeding with child abuse for not “affirming” his 6-year-old son as female. The mother renamed James as “Luna” and makes him wear dresses to school. The father says James is all boy when he visits him, and goes by “James.” The Equality Act would greatly enhance the mother’s insane quest to turn their son into a girl.

The mother also seeks to terminate the father’s visitations and to “require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight,” writes Walt Heyer, a former transsexual, in the Federalist.

Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, describes the pediatric community’s encouragement of sex change and hormones for children as “institutionalized child abuse.”

The Equality Act would federalize such abuse, and religious faith won’t be a shield. Judges will see to that.

The bill is far more dangerous than most people know. It’s about time they knew — and told everyone they can, especially lawmakers.

This bill is the death knell for the family-based society that is America. If your Representative voted for it, please vote him or her out of office.

Child Abuse In Our Schools

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about a lawsuit filed by some parents against an Oregon school district. The case began with an 8-year-old boy with a stomach issue and ends with that child being encouraged to be a girl.

The article reports:

Parents in Woodburn said their 8-year-old son was held back from recess multiple times for one-on-one conversations about his gender identity – and they had no idea.

The mother and father in Woodburn are now suing a school district for nearly a million dollars after they say a second-grade teacher singled out their son by asking him if he was transgender. The parents say the teacher had inappropriate conversations with the child at school without their permission. …

The parents say this all started when their son started using the staff restroom because of a stomach problem. They say their son was uncomfortable using the boy’s bathroom because of his medical condition. However, they believe the teacher assumed their son was uncomfortable because he was transgender.

“Still today, a year later, if he plays with my niece, he’s a girl in that moment… if he plays with my nephew, he’s a boy,” said the mother.

The mother says her son was left confused and hurt after being singled out. Now, a year later, the 9-year-old is taking anxiety medication and going to therapy, according to his parents. The family says the boy’s confusion and emotional distress has also affected the entire family. The father says he’s suffering from panic attacks and the mother says she’s now on medical leave, suffering from anxiety and depression, and staying home from work.

It is entirely possible that the panic attacks and anxiety on the part of the parents might be something of an overreaction, but their complaint is certainly valid.

The article notes:

There’s video at the link, but it’s not embeddable here. Bear in mind that this wasn’t a teenager, which might be bad enough, but an eight year old with a stomach problem. Even granting the best of possible intentions, why wouldn’t the first step in dealing with suspicions of gender dysphoria be to contact the child’s parents? It’s not as if the parents in this case are social neanderthals, at least from the perspective of Academia. They tell reporter Bonnie Silkman in the video that they aren’t concerned about what identity he chooses as long as he chooses it, and not get indoctrinated into it by an activist teacher.

The article concludes:

The most impressively loco part of this story is that the teacher still works at the school — a full year after the school confirmed the parents’ story. The only correction the teacher received was to be reminded of the district’s policies on “controversial issues” and to notify parents and the school when she “alters a student’s regular school day.” Meanwhile, this family will be dealing with the aftershocks of her actions for years.

The school district declined to comment on the story because of the lawsuit, but they might owe an explanation to the other parents in the district, especially to those whose children are within this teacher’s supervision. How many other children has she attempted to indoctrinate into transgender identities? And how many of the parents in this school district — and elsewhere — might start considering private schools or home-schooling to protect their children from predatory behavior?

If I had children in that school district, this article would cause me to consider seriously the option of home-schooling.

Natural Consequences Of Stupid Policies

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about a recent high school girls’ track meet in Connecticut.

The article reports:

High school juniors Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood took first and second place in the state open indoor track championships Feb. 16, The Associated Press noted in a report Sunday. Both Miller and Yearwood are biological males who identify as transgender girls.

One of their competitors, high school junior Selina Soule, told the AP it was unfair to force female runners to compete against male runners.

“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” said Soule. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

Miller is the third-faster runner in the country in the girls’ 55-meter dash. Yearwood is close behind, tied for seventh nationally.

Along with the transgender movement is the idiotic idea that there is no difference between boys and girls. As unfortunate as what is happening in high school sports because of the transgender movement, the results of the various athletic contests illustrate the fact that boys are different than girls. Any woman who has gone on a diet with her husband could have told you that–she eats salads and green things and loses two pounds–he has steak and beer and loses ten pounds. We are made differently. It has to do with muscle mass and hormones. Selina Soule is right–it is unfair to force female runners to compete against male runners.

Hopefully the women who have had to put up with competing against men claiming to be women will learn from this experience. Men and women are different and need to be reminded to rejoice in their differences. I understand that there are some people who are confused about their gender, but what is happening now is the result of making something that is the exception rather than the rule fashionable. Hopefully the young people who are caught up in this current transgender fad will come to their senses before they do something irreversible.

Denying Science In A Way That Is Politically Correct

When you are born, you have either an x and a y chromosome or two xx chromosomes. Men have and x and a y, and women have two x’s. These chromosomes determine your biological makeup. There are only two options. However, lately politicians have decided to ignore the science and determine sex without consulting any obvious physical characteristics.

Hot Air posted an article today with the following headline: “Gillibrand: We need to federally recognize a third gender.”

The article reports:

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is going to great lengths to establish her far-left bona fides heading into the Democrat’s POTUS primary. This weekend she upped the ante even further by jumping onto the transgender rights bandwagon. When asked by a reporter, Gillibrand indicated that she would certainly be in favor of recognizing a third gender (defined as “X” or none of the above) at the federal level.

Isn’t that basically denying science?

The article concludes:

But now that she’s on the record, it may be time to ask her what happened to that whole thing about Democrats being “the party of science.” That’s the position they claim to take every time the subject of climate change comes up. But there is absolutely zero, zilch, nada evidence in medical science that human beings can be some sort of “third gender” or be “genderless” if they decide they don’t feel like one or the other. The only exceptions would be intersex individuals with genetic aberrations to the 23rd chromosomal pair. Such individuals should be able to pick whichever gender they prefer (of the two available choices) for purposes of legal classification. But as for the other 99.99% of the population, applying such a standard to legal documents can cause any number of complications for everything from law enforcement needs to federal allocation programs.

To be clear, you can call yourself whatever you want. I don’t object to it personally and the government has no business suppressing your speech in that fashion. But just because you happen to be in denial of reality, that doesn’t mean that the rest of us (or the government) are under any obligation to go along with your views. Gillibrand is running off to join the circus of politicians beclowning themselves in an effort to establish themselves at the far leftmost extreme of the ideological spectrum. But looking at the latest poll numbers, she isn’t making the sale to the socialist base thus far and it’s tough to imagine this will do the trick.

The Democrats are working very hard to make something that used to be very simple very complicated. Let’s go back to having boy babies and girl babies. It was much easier.

Laws Have Consequences

CNS News reported yesterday that a 5-year-old girl was allegedly assaulted in the girls’ bathroom by a boy who identifies as gender-fluid. Is anyone comfortable with that?

The article reports:

According to a legal complaint by Roger G. Brooks of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Vernadette R. Broyles of Georgia Adoption & Family Law Practice, the boy, who was also five years old, reportedly assaulted the girl as she was leaving a bathroom stall at Oakhurst Elementary School in November 2017.

“As [Victim] was emerging from a stall, the Assailant pushed her against a wall, pushed his hand between her legs, and repeatedly felt and poked at her genitals … while she struggled and called out for him to stop,” reads the legal complaint, dated May 22, 2018. “No one came to help.”

The boy had permission to enter the girls’ bathroom under a policy that “required” schools to “admit boys who identify as female into girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, and shower areas on school premises,” according to the legal complaint.

Prior to the 2016-2017 school year, boys were not permitted to enter restrooms for girls. However, in a July 26, 2016 email, the Superintendent of the City Schools of Decatur, David Dude, told school staff members that students should be permitted to use the restrooms that matched their gender identities.

The lawyers from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Vernadette R. Broyles of Georgia Adoption & Family Law Practice have gotten involved in the case.

The article reports:

In the complaint, the lawyers argued that the violation of girls’ privacy was a deliberate aspect of Oakhurst Elementary’s bathroom policy, not just a side effect.

“The Decatur Schools wish to ‘affirm’ boys who in some sense identify as girls by authorizing them to mingle with girls in areas that are reserved to single-sex use precisely because these areas involve some degree of undress, personal hygiene, and proximity that is considered to be inappropriate, intrusive, or potentially embarrassing between individuals of the opposite sex,” Brooks and Broyles wrote in the complaint.

“In other words, the violation of privacy of girls is not an unfortunate side effect of the policy – it is an essential goal of the policy,” the lawyers added.

The lawyers also noted that officials of the Decatur school system did not “make any inquiry” into possible “physical risks to girls” or “psychological stress” for girls, including those who may have been previously abused or assaulted.

How many little girls have to be assaulted before schools recognize the insanity of the idea of letting boys into girls private spaces? Are we ready to allow the high school football team to invade the girls’ locker room? Anyone who has raised a teenager can see the folly in this.

Preventing Truth

One of the major ideas the political left is currently supporting is transgenderism. The traditional idea of two genders–male and female–is regarded (by the left) as old fashioned and (in some cases) bigoted. Never mind what your DNA says–it’s how you feel that matters. There have been a number of people who have gone through the process of a sex change and regretted it, but somehow they have not received the positive coverage of those who parade their change around. Well, even science has gone political on the matter.

Breitbart is reporting the following today:

Bath Spa University stopped Psychotherapist James Caspian from examining cases of people who had surgery to reverse a “gender reassignment” after finding they regretted the decision.

…He pointed out that studies of the percentage of people regretting “transitioning” their gender ranged from a couple of per cent to 20 per cent, and said new research was needed as attitudes changed and practitioners observed a rise in those reversing surgery.

The university initially approved his research, but after he proposed finding more participants online and sent his ideas to the ethics sub-committee for clearance, he was told: “engaging in a potentially politically incorrect piece of research carries a risk to the University”.

“Attacks on social media may not be confined to the researcher but may involve the university,” university authorities added, The Times reports. “The posting of unpleasant material on blogs or social media may be detrimental to the reputation of the university.”

So if the truth may be unpopular or cause anything negative to be said about the University, the University does not want to know what the truth is. Wow. So much for the scientific method!

Letting Children Go Through Stages As Children

On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a twelve-year-old boy who changed his mind about transitioning to a girl.

The article reports:

As a young child, Patrick Mitchell had always wanted to be a girl, the Independent reported. “You wish you could just change everything about you, you just see any girl and you say, ‘I’d kill to be like that,'” Mitchell told interviewers.

After speaking with doctors, Mitchell was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began taking estrogen hormones in anticipation of a full transition. Mitchell grew out his hair and the treatment caused the prepubescent boy to grow a pair of breasts.

When teachers began to call him a girl in class, however, Mitchell began to question if he made the correct decision. “I began to realize I was actually comfortable in my body. Every day I just felt better,” he said.

Mitchell’s mother recounted his change of heart.

“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’m just not sure that I am a girl,'” she told “60 Minutes.” Mitchell has since stopped taking his estrogen treatment and plans to have surgery to remove the breast tissue.

Children go through stages when they identify with either parent as a role model. They pass through these stages and go on to the next stage (if they are allowed to do so). In my opinion it borders on child abuse to begin a sex change on any person under 21.

The article concludes:

Some studies have indicated that at least a portion of children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria ultimately embrace the sex they were assigned at birth, New York Magazine reported. One study conducted by the Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria at VU University Medical Center, a famous gender clinic in Amsterdam, found that around two-thirds of gender dysphoric minors eventually desisted. That is, the minors ultimately reverted to identify with the gender corresponding with their birth sex. Another study, conducted in conjunction with Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), found 88 percent of male minors ultimately desisted.

Trans activists strongly dispute those studies, arguing that they are “built upon bad statistics, bad science, homophobia, and transphobia,” HuffPost reported.