My friend and colleague Glenn Stanton penned a strong response to a recent Washington Post column that hailed parents for letting their three year-old toddler supposedly choose their sex. His comments appeared in The Federalist.
Here is an excerpt:
Naya is almost three years old. She/he/them is being raised by two guys, Jeremy and Bryan. The adults know the sex on Naya’s birth certificate, but that’s their secret. Not even Naya will know. They believe her real gender exists in her mind, not on a major medical and government document. Jeremy and Bryan are presented as wise and brave parents, the kind any child would be fortunate to have.
Please Admire Our Descent Into Insanity
Hesse explains Naya’s two dads “didn’t publicly share Naya’s birth-certificate sex.” You see, sometimes parents and medical staff just look for a penis or vagina on the baby and mindlessly sign the kid up as male or female based on this cursory assessment. Gender theory tells us this method, which has served all cultures at all times in all places pretty well since the beginning of man, can be simplistic and deceptive.
So Jeremy and Bryan posted the following announcement on their Facebook page: “If you interact with our kid, please make an effort to use Naya’s name, rather than a gendered pronoun.” This is because “much of our culture and many of our traditions are based on telling people (directly and indirectly) what they can and can’t do, or should and shouldn’t do, based on their gender rather than their capabilities.”
Why does this matter? Well, Jeremy explains, with equal parts compassion and insight, “And we know this has tremendously negative consequences for both kids and adults.” It makes one wonder how many of Hesse’s readers will see Jeremy and Bryan with the admiration she does. How many will find this parenting approach admirable or asinine?
Thus, do such stories help or hurt the gender redefinition cause? It’s one thing for “progressives” to support the cause in theory. It’s wholly another when they see how it actually presents itself in the real lives of children. Gender theorists and their media enablers don’t seem to appreciate just how wacky their basic assumptions sound to everyday people regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
Remember that Thing About Being the Party of Science?
These gender gadflies live in a make-believe world that is not only at odds with reality, it often stands against it. One of the most brilliant and celebrated neuropsychiatrists in the world is Allan Schore, a member of the clinical faculty at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. He doesn’t suffer fools lightly.
In a major 2017 article in the Infant Mental Health Journal on how boys’ neurobiology and neuroendocrinology is very distinct from that of their sisters, Schore laments how gender studies in developmental psychology have “remained divorced from and frequently antithetical to biology.” In other words, the downy stay-puffed softness of gender theory is proudly unattached from the rock-hard sciences of biology, and often directly contrary to it.
He is absolutely right. Contemporary gender theory is pure ideology. It is not informed by any biological science. It’s never been close enough to science to catch a cold. Science is here. Gender theory is over there. These are two very different things that are not on speaking terms.
Glenn concluded:
For all the drama, Jeremy said he would have been happy with any choice, because “there is no right answer.” Really? If I’ve been paying attention, it seems as if there is indeed a right answer. It’s the gender Naya supposedly is in her mind. Wasn’t that what this whole thing was about? None of the adults in this story seem to appreciate the irony-rich soil they are digging in here. It’s clear they haven’t thought this through.
So, it must be said and said crisply without apology. These two men raising Naya are seriously deceived. They are creating an alternate reality, not for make-believe fun, but for the very foundation of how this poor child will understand herself at her most basic level.
Yes, one’s sex doesn’t exist only in one’s genitalia. But it doesn’t exist solely in the mind either. It is present in every last piece of DNA in every cell of our very complex bodies. No dogma can wish this fact away. Our bodies don’t tell lies. Gender theory does, and we would say they are authentically silly ones if the consequences were not so serious.
Hesse and her editors, while all putting themselves out there as intelligent people, are completely taken by mere ideology. It does not exist under any microscope, in any laboratory or medical imaging machine. It is not only at odds with basic biological science, but as Schore explained, antithetical to it.
Live in that make-believe world if you choose, but the moment you bring children into it, your work as a parent and standing as a responsible adult must be called into serious question. A sane society must adopt that position. The moment you virtue-shame anyone who refuses to play along with your delusion, you’ve become one of the most extreme types of fundamentalist. It’s not what reasonable people do. This madness needs to stop.
Thank-you, Glenn, for your strong and clear analysis. To read Glenn’s entire piece, please click here.
How are you processing these dangerous and destructive trends? What’s your reaction? I look forward to reading your comments in the space below.
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