GC Review - Saturday, October 29, 2022
In our weekly GC Review, we return to important articles from the war to date. You might have already seen some of them, but we think they all warrant revisiting.
This day in Herstory: Laura Maria Caterina Bassi Veratti, born October 29, 1711 (died February 20, 1778), was an Italian physicist and academic. Recognized and depicted as "Minerva" (goddess of wisdom), she was the first woman to have a doctorate in science, and the second woman in the world to earn the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Working at the University of Bologna, she was also the first salaried female teacher in a university. At one time the highest paid employee of the university, by the end of her life Bassi held two other professorships. She was also the first female member of any scientific establishment, when she was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna in 1732 at 21. (more)
Top 6 Myths About Trans Kids
Join us as we bust six of the biggest myths about trans kids. Number 5 will surprise you!
From Pseudonymous Reporting (Mystery)
By Sue Donym
March 7, 2022
There are a lot of myths about trans kids on the internet these days! Here’s 6 of the BIGGEST myths you’ll see about trans kids on the internet, and why they’re wrong!
1. Trans kids know who they are at a young age, and they become trans adults.
This isn’t true! A 2021 study recently replicated older findings that very few kids who say they’re trans grow up to be trans - no matter how insistent they are. This study found that only 12% of the young men it studied persisted in identifying as trans in adulthood - something many studies have found across both sexes, as the rate of ‘desistance’ ranges from 61-89% depending on study! Even then, some may still detransition as adults - and detransition is on the rise! This isn’t a choice a child can make, because like, they’re kids, you know? Why would you ask a ten-year old to make fertility decisions? Some people are just, like, totally wacked out, right?
The vast majority of ‘trans kids’ don’t grow up to be trans. They’re way more likely to grow up to be lesbian or gay! Which leads us into our next myth…
2. Trans kids and sexuality have nothing to do with each other!
A lot of people these days will tell you that gender identity and sexuality are separate! You can be trans and gay, for example! But that’s just not true! Particularly for trans kids. Studies on trans kids show that the vast majority are attracted to the sex they were born as. … read full article
The Twitching Generation
Around the world, doctors have noticed teenage patients reporting the sudden onset of tics. Is this the first illness spread by social media?
From The Atlantic (USA)
By Helen Lewis
Feb 27, 2022
Three years ago, the psychiatrist Kirsten Müller-Vahl began to notice something unusual about the newest patients at her clinic in Hannover, Germany. A typical Tourette’s patient is a boy who develops slow, mild motor tics—blinking or grimacing—at about age 5 to 7, followed later by simple vocalizations such as coughing. Only about one in 10 patients progress to the disorder’s most famous symptom—coprolalia, which involves shouting obscene or socially unacceptable words. Even then, most patients utter only half a dozen swear words, on repeat.
But these new patients were different. They were older, for a start—teenagers—and about half of them were girls. Their tics had arrived suddenly, explosively, and were extreme; some were shouting more than 100 different obscenities. This last symptom in particular struck Müller-Vahl as odd. “Even in extremely severely affected [Tourette’s] patients, they try to hide their coprolalia,” she told me. The teenagers she was now seeing did not. She had the impression, she said, that “they want to demonstrate that they suffer from these symptoms.” Even more strangely, many of her new patients were prone to involuntary outbursts of exactly the same phrase: Du bist hässlich. “You are ugly.”
Müller-Vahl, a professor of psychiatry at Hannover Medical School and the chair of the European Society for the Study of Tourette Syndrome, was not the only one puzzled by this phenomenon. The global community of Tourette’s researchers is tight-knit, and as they talked it became clear that a shift in patients and symptoms was happening all over the world, at the same time. Before the pandemic, 2 to 3 percent of pediatric patients at the Johns Hopkins University Tourette’s Center, in Baltimore, had acute-onset tic-like behaviors, but that rose last year to 10 to 20 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal. Texas Children’s Hospital reported seeing approximately 60 teenagers with sudden tics between March 2020 and the autumn of 2021, compared with just one or two a year before that. … read full article
Child Custody's Gender Gauntlet
Courts Are Adopting Gender Ideology, Parents are Paying the Price
From The Truth Fairy (USA)
By Abigail Shrier
Feb 7, 2022
Before she decided to strip him of all custody over his son, Drew*—before determining that he would have no say in whether Drew began medical gender transition—California Superior Court Judge Joni Hiramoto asked Ted Hudacko this: “If your son [Drew] were medically psychotic and believed himself to be the Queen of England, would you love him?”
“Of course I would,” the senior software engineer at Apple replied, according to the court transcript. “I’d also try to get him help.”
“I understand that qualifier,” Judge Hiramoto replied. “But if it were—if you were told by [Drew’s] psychiatrist, psychologist that [Drew] was very fragile and that confronting him—or, I’m sorry, confronting them with the idea that they are not the Queen of England is very harmful to their mental health, could you go along and say, ‘OK, [Drew], you are the Queen of England and I love you; you are my child and I want you to do great and please continue to see your psychologist.’ Could you do that?”
“Yes,” Hudacko said. “That sounds like part of a process that might take some time, sure.”
“What process?” Judge Hiramoto said. “What is the thing that might take some time? Accepting the idea that [Drew] occupies an identity that you believe is not true?”
“The identity you just mentioned to me was the Queen of England,” Ted began. “I can tell him and I can affirm that to him, to reassuring him situationally; but objectively, he is not the Queen of England and that won’t change, and even the therapist in that case would know that.” … read full article
Trans exceptionalism and ordinary children
From Writing Behavior (Canada)
By Eliza Mondegreen
Feb 17, 2022
Trans activists, ‘affirmative’ medical providers, and parents tend to see kids who identify as transgender as exceptional. To these children, none of the normal rules and nothing we know about child development seems to apply.
But children who identify as transgender are just that: children. They hurt, like other children. They’re trying to figure out themselves and the strange world they live in, like other children.
They’ll change over time, like other children, in unpredictable ways, like other children.
And they will grow up, like all children. They will surprise themselves and us.
Children who identify as trans only have one body and one life, like all children. They are—as Ian McEwan put it—“easily torn and not easily mended.”
Children who identify as trans don’t have endocrine conditions or birth defects. They’re not the vanguard of some transhuman future. Rather, they’re made of the same stuff that children have always been made of, with the same needs for care and attention. … read full article
A childhood is not reversible
From Transgender Trend (UK)
Feb 27, 2022
Childhood social transition is portrayed as ‘kind’ and ‘affirming.’ But what are we setting a child up for when puberty hits, if we pretend they are the opposite sex for the best part of their childhood? A clinical psychologist, with over 15 years of experience of working with adults, children and families, explains the inevitable consequences.
It was when it happened the third time in a week that I started to really wonder. The parent would be telling me about their teenager, about their mental anguish, suicidal thoughts and self harm, and then they’d drop something in, so casually that I’d almost think I’d missed it, ‘Oh, and he’s a transboy (or girl), transitioned when he (or she) was five (or six or seven), but that’s all fine’. And with that, I knew I’d been warned off. Nothing to see here.
I’m a psychologist, my job is to explore, to look for meaning. I work with families and young people. I try to understand why people behave and feel the way they do and to share that understanding. I ask uncomfortable questions sometimes, particularly of parents, about how everyone’s behaviour in the family is inter-related and how children can sometimes show the distress for the whole family. Usually I’m curious about any big change in a child’s life. I’d ask, so how did that happen? What was going on about that time? How was that decision made? … read full article
The Trevor Project: The Indoctrination of Our Children
From Good Intentions to Gender Goliath: The Trevor Project abuses vulnerable kids through sexual and gender grooming.
From The 11th Hour (USA)
By Emily
March 18, 2022
For those living outside the sphere of LGBT propaganda, you may not know that the Trevor Project (TP) is a well-funded and highly visible charity in the US, that claims to focus on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, “transgender,” queer, and questioning youth. As a lifelong liberal American woman, with a daughter who a few years ago began telling her father and me that she was a boy, I became aware that TP is the go-to resource for LGBT youth. Pre-teens, adolescents and younger adults battling feelings of dysphoria or simply curious about so-called “gender identity” generally gravitate to the TP, eventually.
The size and scope of this Goliath
With $35 million (pdf) a year in funding, the TP’s size and scale enable them to engage in a weapons-grade propaganda campaign against vulnerable children and young adults. Their arsenal includes 24/7 chat services with an army of counselors trained in TP’s gender ideology via text (TrevorText), phone chat (TrevorChat), and a peer-to-peer forum called TrevorSpace that allows vulnerable kids as young as 13 to engage directly with other kids suffering a crisis of identity around their sexed bodies, and more disturbingly, with adults up-to (and sometimes older than) 25 years old.
Who Funds the Trevor Project?
Many of the brands Americans love, and trust fund the TP, including but not limited to Macy’s, Chipotle, and H&M. Their list of funders also includes social media tech companies, like Google, Facebook, and TikTok; investment houses, like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, media conglomerates like Disney and AT&T. Not surprisingly, pharma companies like Abbvie, Gilead and Bristol Myers Squib among others are also partnered with the charity. … read full article
The Trevor Project: Undercover Mom
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
March 4, 2022
Here is the original story of how I contacted Trevor Project about detransition and hormones and was subjected to their propaganda and activist agenda:
Why did I engage with the Trevor Project to see how they interact with minors?
The answer is simple: Because I had to. I am trying to keep my child safe from bad influences, peer pressure, and drug use.
I never imagined that the bad influences in my kid's life would be the mental health community; I never imagined the drug we were trying to shield her from would be testosterone.
History
My child spent a lot of time on The Trevor Project website when she first asserted a "transboy" gender identity around age 12. She also spent a lot of time on Tumblr, Discord, and other sites at the time. I had no idea they were actively grooming my child into ideology and a new belief system.
I remember how strange it was to see a post on TrevorSpace.org about a pre-pubescent boy stating that he is "asexual." Of course he is, I thought. You haven’t even gone through puberty! At the time, I thought it was harmless, maybe even charming. What didn’t occur to me to ask was why the site was encouraging young children to talk about their sexuality–especially with older adolescents and adults? Looking back, I feel even less comfortable with it. Especially since any user must state sexuality, gender, and gender identity to even start to chat with any of the therapists.
Fast forward three years
We have been affirming our child under the advice of our "highly credentialed" medical and mental health team, but transition was not therapeutic for our kid. After social transition, my child had three inpatient hospitalizations for self-harm and suiciality, including at least one suicide attempt. Yet in our state, due to a ban on so-called conversion therapy, affirmation is the only legal approach for dysphoric kids ….
My chat with the Trevor Project - as a parent
As it became clear that my child might be exploring desistance and finding resolution from gender dysphoria, I wanted to make sure we had some social support. So I contacted the Trevor Project for resources on detransition. They had none. I kept asking them and saying surely they must have something. They finally sent me something from Stonewall, making it seem as though detransition is super rare, even though we actually have no idea how common or uncommon it is since most detransitioners do not return to their clinics to tell them. … read full article
When it comes to minor transition, gender activists leave lawmakers little choice
From Washington Examiner (USA)
By Debra Soh
March 14, 2022
On Tuesday, Idaho’s state House of Representatives approved a bill criminalizing medical treatments for gender dysphoric youth.
Alabama has already advanced similar legislation criminalizing hormonal and surgical interventions for minors, and in Texas, parents can be investigated by the Department of Family and Protective Services for allowing a child to transition medically.
The early transitioning approach, which typically involves a social and eventual medical transition, is not supported by scientific research as the best treatment for a child’s gender dysphoria. (I do not do clinical work anymore and am basing my conclusions on the research literature.) Most children will desist, outgrowing their gender dysphoria by the time they reach puberty. In the event that only a social transition is facilitated, research shows this is associated with gender dysphoria persisting.
Unfortunately, this information is for the most part completely hidden from parents making these decisions. Instead of allowing families to consider all sides of the argument, transgender activists and their allies frame any reference to desistence as hateful, choosing instead to promote the false narrative that every gender dysphoric child is at high risk of suicide if they don’t transition and vilifying any clinician or expert who disagrees. … read full article
'Sterilisation risk' from gender medicine
A French medical organisation has sounded the alarm about an epidemic-like surge in young people seeking hormone drugs and surgery
From Gender Clinic News (Australia)
By Bernard Lane
March 23, 2022
The gist
The French National Academy of Medicine has joined the international shift to caution on medicalised gender change for young people.
The academy, which advises France’s government on health, warns physicians of the epidemic-like rise in minors seeking hormonal drug treatments, the risk of over-diagnosis and the possible role of social media immersion.
“Great medical caution must be taken in children and adolescents, given the vulnerability, particularly psychological, of this population,” the academy says in a statement supported by a majority vote of its members last month.
The academy says the hormonal and surgical treatments known as “gender affirming care” — with results supposed to mimic the opposite-sex body desired by young people who identify as transgender — can cause “many undesirable effects and even serious complications [including] risk of sterility”. … read full article
Gender expert: online influencers rush adolescents towards transition
From The Times (UK)
By Keiran Southern
April 18, 2022
Social media influencers are pushing young people who are unsure about their gender into hasty decisions to transition, according to a clinical psychologist who is herself transgender.
Dr Erica Anderson said some young people suffering from mental health problems such as depression and anxiety were not receiving adequate care and were instead being offered hormones or surgery.
She said there had been an “onslaught” of providers aiming to help youngsters questioning their gender identity, but for some the process was set in motion too quickly. … read full article
I think "A Childhood Is Not Reversabable"should be given to every new parent just like I began being a parent 65 years ago by reading Dr. Spock. Thanks for sharing it with all of us. This is so important, all parents want to do what is best for their child and follow the best advice we can get and this is such good advice. Keep up this important sharing.