The Gender Switch Trials Ultimatum

Gender dysphoria used to be a boy thing. Seriously. A preschool boy thing. Until 2012 there was no sign of teenage girls with gender dysphoria in the scientific literature at all. It was all about the boys. Today the Western world is seeing a surge of adolescent girls with the diagnosis. Girls are not only represented in the literature on gender dysphoria today, they have become a defining majority. They are letting us know that they are uncomfortable in their bodies, and we had better say and do what they say or else.

 

This is a story that goes back to when God was a teenager, with a modern twist. Teenage girls have the intelligence, the experience, and the motivation to strike fear in the heart of parents more than ever before. You may have noticed that preschool boys have not yet developed the skills to become Instagram influencers. Not so for the trans guys formerly identified as girls. 

These guys have powers that would have had the puritans in Salem questioning the motives for their trials, and rethinking their dress code to include pom-poms to cheer for the end of witch phobia.

 

Young people today live in the glow of a bonfire that our LGBTQ family started with a spark of desire for social justice. As it was with the hysteria in Salem, respectable people agree that questioning the wisdom of the public mood is tantamount to collusion with forces of darkness. Trans influencers coach girls about what to say to parents and medical professionals in order to reify their identity as someone who “always knew” they were different. 

 

Together with the other teens participating in the ritual of joining a “glitter family,” influencers assure girls who start to identify as trans guys that anyone who loves them unconditionally will be there for them every step of the way. They encourage girls to identify blood family members who question their trans identity as toxic, and transphobic. Anyone who does not say what their glitter family would say is considered a threat to be eliminated.    

 

In earlier times, suspected witches were bound and then tossed into a body of water. It was believed that witches spurned the sacrament of baptism, and water would reject their body and prevent them from drowning. Some efforts were made to prevent drowning of innocent people, but odds of survival were not good for anyone who was bound in this way. 

 

These days, those suspected of being a danger to the idea of gender freedom are likely to be bound by the treatment prescribed by their child’s glitter family and the medical standard of Affirmative Care. Dressed in the language of the struggle for civil rights and the good of society, you will be tossed in the deep waters of an ideology that gives puritans a cause to cheer.

 

In her book Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier explains how the desire to be someone who is independent of what other people think can provide a compelling reason to become someone else entirely, complete with a new name, designer hormones, and modified sex organs. There are so many Learning Stories here. Here are some ideas to consider.

Notice that if you were taught that you might have a “girl brain in a boy body” or vice versa, that is an imaginative way of saying that you get to choose what kind of boy or girl you will be. There are many different types of boys' brains and girls' brains. The brain you have is the right type of brain for your body.   

 

Recognize how you are being called to express yourself as an individual in a way that has never been known before in your family. No matter how much you want to be one of “us” instead of one of “them,” try to think of one thing you will never agree to do under any circumstances. 

 

Respond by giving yourself unconditional love, and affirming how brave you are. It can be easy to reject what makes us uncomfortable, with cartoonish stereotypes of what it is to be a boy or girl, a man or a woman. 

Affirm that the members of your family have an identity that cannot be threatened by changes in their body, or the words used to describe who they are. You are not bound to drown in the deep waters of what anyone else insists you must do to prove your love, or your commitment to liberty and justice.

Good guys win by asking questions and stating the obvious, not by acting as if there is nothing out of the ordinary about a good idea being used to justify a reign of terror.

When you find yourself at a pep rally where the cheerleaders are too filled with the spirit to see the bonfire is out of control, be a first responder. If you see something, say something. 

 

* GODSPEED stands for “Gather Only Data in Sync with the Purpose of Every Excellent Deed.”