I want to send this incredible article by Carol Dansereau to every one of my government officials, from U.S. President, to local city council and school board menbers, to dog catcher.
I love how Carol wisely frames this all under the basic problem of "affirmation." It is in that first fatal step we are "taught" and manipulated into, if we accept or fall for it, via what I like to call The Preferred Pronoun Etiquette Lesson, to start saying something we know isn't true. That is the false foundation upon which the entire house of cards that is Gender Identity Disorder is built.
(I think it would be fair to resurrect that Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis, and assign it to everyone who now believes or promotes this madness.)
Carol nails it by bringing it all back to that first fatal misstep of affirming.
The more people in government and positions of power made aware of the many harms Carol brilliantly attributes to affirmation, the sooner we can each help discredit it all.
I encourage everyone reading this to share it with all of their electeds and 5 of our friends.
Shouldn’t the same premise apply to heterosexuals as well? Perhaps it is better to consider sexuality as a syndrome, with disparate possibilities of sexual identity considered too. Many individuals are not sexually conflicted about who, or what they are. But, there exists a not insignificant number of others who not certain that their physical sexuality matches their biological ones. Those born with some make and some female sexual organs is not a fantasy, or a personal feeling. Denying that such people exist does not solving any of the associated problems. Either for them, or for society. What if gender dysphoria is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, or somewhere else in the body. While I can accept the fact that some of victims of sexual dysphoria may be suffering a societal ambiguity about their sexuality, one should not simply ignore the reality that some are born with the physical attributes of the opposite sex. That too is a reality, whether we chose it accept it or not. Because of the stigma widely associated with a persons’ uncertainty about gender or sexual orientation that has built on centuries of the non-normalization of other than male and female genders, continuing to ignore and discriminate against those who may be confused by conflicting evidence of their true sexuality or identity.
Intersex/DSD conditions are entirely different from gender identity. And for these, any ambiguity whatsoever as to which sex a newborn is, is extremely rare. For most conditions sex is totally clear. The Gender Identity lobby has intentionally sown confusion, by misrepresenting, hijacking, and undercutting those with intersex/DSD conditions. Also, jumping from the existence of rare intersex conditions to redefining sex as being defined by feelings rather than sexual anatomy makes no sense.
What do you mean regarding people whose "physical sexualities" or feelings don't "match" their sex (as defined by primary sex organ at birth)? From my extensive review of what people mean by this, I've come to see gender identities as being mired in the most flagrant of sexist stereotypes. If you've got the male primary sex organ at birth, you're male (boy, then man); fight sexism that limits what you can do; don't fight clarity as to sex itself. (Ditto re females..)
(BTW sexual orientation is also entirely different from "gender identity", and there are lots of LG folks who are appalled at the homophobia and attacks they experience as the result of gender identity ideology. The huge propaganda machine pushing gender ideology has done a great job of confusing the issues.
Talk to gender critics. We fight against sexist stereotypes, for evidence-based medicine, for children's rights, and against the evisceration of sex-based rights.
An important comment I’d like to add is that I see ‘mastectomies as young as 12 via surgery’ all the time in articles. This is already an older cohort of girls that we are talking about.
The next younger cohort of girls who have been medicalized were put in puberty blockers BEFORE any development even began. Many are around the age of 14-16 now and have moved on to testosterone.
These girls do not require surgical mastectomies as they basically have undergone a drug induced one much earlier during the so called ‘pause button’ marketed stage.
The also have no comprehension of any normal pubertal developmental in comparison to their previous cohort.
And they will incur early osteoporosis, lack of proper brain development and other serious medical issues! Then we’ll all have to pay for their care. It is a travesty that Medicare pays for such “ affirming care” , pseudonym for Child mutilation !
Item #3 of the list of 11 things to know broke g@@gle’$ Gemini AI.
I had two separate tabs open for Gemini and one by one I posted each of the 11 items where one table was for “summarize” and the other was “check for accuracy.”
Tried multiple times to get it to perform the task for item 3 from the list and it wouldn’t budge other than to tell me it was an LLM program and unable to fulfill my request. And yet, it had a lot to say about each item when asked about accuracy, and in the summary tab, each summary was followed by a “important to note” section that it used to insert doubt and credit of the claims in each summary.
In other words, the internet and likely all its publicly available AI has been high jacked by this fad.
Conclusions: The internet is not for consumption by unsupervised children, Period.
Smart phones are not for children.
Parents, now more than ever, are needing to start making some tough decisions beginning with choosing between their own material pursuits and short term happiness or their kids’ long term wellbeing.
Now, please don't hate me for not reading every single word, but I already know most of this stuff. Still, I appreciate it that you are laying it all out so clearly.
As for what we teach our children, that is a thorny issue which entirely depends on the child/parent relationship. If the child and parents are close, then being clear and upfront with your children on these issues should be helpful. If the child is looking for a reason to rebel, pressuring the child with the parents' views may serve to drive the child into experimentation. Now, I didn't have good parents when I was young, but they were honest people and I was able to recognize that. I could see that their honesty was good, and I emulated it. On the other hand, I didn't adopt their attitudes in every area. The truth be told, I had good judgement as a child.
I think it is important that we not teach children to dislike trans people. If anything, children can be given the idea that trans people are somewhat pitiful because of their ailment (which I think is true). That puts the child in the position of not wanting to be like trans people, but doesn't teach the child to dislike them. I do think it's important to be clear that there is no such thing as changing genders/sexes. Filling a child's head with all of the damage that trans treatments cause should be effective.
In my view, this is the lobotomy craze all over again -- except that back in the 1950's and 1960's it wasn't the victims who wanted the lobotomies. The fact that it is usually the individual (both adult and child) who wants to transition makes this a very thorny problem to fix. Girls want the freedom, independence and respect that boys get, while boys just want to be glamorous.
Now, this is where you may think I am getting flaky: I believe in reincarnation. Many lives are devoted to mistakes, and the mistakes made become a learning experience. Ultimately, the individual moves on to other lives and leaves the mistakes behind. What I'm saying is that this will resolve itself eventually. I believe we are immortal, and nothing is ever permanent. But the work you are doing, Carol, is important. The mistakes have to be fought.
> Parents are told—and their troubled children hear this—that the choice is between a dead child who is not affirmed, and a live child who has been medically transitioned. Doctors ask: “Would you rather have a dead son, or a live trans daughter?” “Would you rather have a dead daughter, or a live trans son?”
Remember, we have a word for a person who a third party says will be killed if their monetary and/or policy demands are not met: "hostage."
There is only one appropriate response to hostage-takers, and it involves a SWAT team.
There has to be a better word than “ affirmation”, since it is anything but positive , which that word means .Basically, it’s affirming a lie , and actually it’s abuse .
This is excellent and such a good summary of where we are now in the terrible world of gender politics. I want to make the man who is likely to be our net British PM, Keir Starmer, read it. He has the most superficial understanding of the problems and I fear we will go backwards in the UK once Labour is in power.
There is one small point of fact re the guidance for schools that you mention. It is not policy yet unfortunately.
It was a draft published in December 2023 and it went out to consultation. That process closed in March and the results of the consultation have not been released yet. So it is not official guidance yet and may get binned if Labour win the election. Even if it survives it will not be statutory so in theory can be ignored by activist teachers.
We wrote about the draft policy here in case you are interested.
Thanks so much for this, Shelley. I'll adjust the wording about the guidance tonight or early tomorrow. Please email me at caroldansereau@substack.com and let me know your direct email, so I can check in with you about this. Thanks for all your work!
Excellent - thank you for sharing this! There are other sides to the imposition of gender ideology on children, including the assault on freedom of religion and parental rights, and the general sexualization of children. But I supposed those are best addressed in separate articles.
This is a tour de force of compelling arguments to just say no to the 2+2=5 reasoning of the clearly loony theory of gender ideology. In support of this theory, all of society is turned into lobbyists and pharmaceutical salesmen to help market the services of doctors, therapists and others who are proponents of extreme body modification. They especially want to make sure body modification is covered by private and public health insurance and is recognized as a right in law.
"...all of society is turned into lobbyists and pharmaceutical sales(people)..." Brilliant! I love this and would like to share it. Thank you.
The Preferred Pronoun Etiquette Lesson is a stroke of genius because it simultaneously shames, guilt-trips, and frightens people into becoming the lobbyists and salespeople as you so incisively point out. And it intimidates people into sharing its etiquette and kindness warning with others, making it go viral. All while manipulating people into believing that lying is being respectful and kind to those afflicted with this set of false beliefs or genuine born-in-the-wrong-body malady.
Feel free to use it as you wish. I will never know the difference. But note I used salesmen intentionally, not opting for salespeople or saleswoman because it is the word salesman that evokes a visceral response to the con man who takes advantage of innocents. That word makes me think of the salesmen who peddled patent medicines and car salesmen, which is pretty much a pejorative. Note again that con man only goes one way. In the sense of the age-old grifter, there is no way to get the same force by using con woman or con person. It is only the word con man that has been used for decades. I am not talking about some modern day salesforce of politically correct words that have been approved by the human resources department. I am talking about a salesman, a man who would pretend to be your friend and tell you and sell you anything to get money out of your pocket and into his. I am talking about a man whose income depended only on his smooth ways and ability to sell anything, especially things no one needed or things not in as good of a condition as they appeared. Pharmaceutical sales is just a hair’s breadth from being there because of the opioid epidemic and the way doctors were turned into salesmen. There is no other way to say it. Women can be salesmen, too. Only salesmen will do.
This is a comprehensive summary of the detrimental effects of the affirmation-only policy. Subscribed!
Thank for an excellent summary. I've emailed it to my legislators in Oregon and posted it where I thought it would be helpful.
Brilliant idea, Nancy.
I want to send this incredible article by Carol Dansereau to every one of my government officials, from U.S. President, to local city council and school board menbers, to dog catcher.
I love how Carol wisely frames this all under the basic problem of "affirmation." It is in that first fatal step we are "taught" and manipulated into, if we accept or fall for it, via what I like to call The Preferred Pronoun Etiquette Lesson, to start saying something we know isn't true. That is the false foundation upon which the entire house of cards that is Gender Identity Disorder is built.
(I think it would be fair to resurrect that Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis, and assign it to everyone who now believes or promotes this madness.)
Carol nails it by bringing it all back to that first fatal misstep of affirming.
The more people in government and positions of power made aware of the many harms Carol brilliantly attributes to affirmation, the sooner we can each help discredit it all.
I encourage everyone reading this to share it with all of their electeds and 5 of our friends.
Indeed! Best to let the kids go through the phase with love and support & not promoting gender ideology. https://x.com/hattulajoy/status/1802688785597014156?s=46
Shouldn’t the same premise apply to heterosexuals as well? Perhaps it is better to consider sexuality as a syndrome, with disparate possibilities of sexual identity considered too. Many individuals are not sexually conflicted about who, or what they are. But, there exists a not insignificant number of others who not certain that their physical sexuality matches their biological ones. Those born with some make and some female sexual organs is not a fantasy, or a personal feeling. Denying that such people exist does not solving any of the associated problems. Either for them, or for society. What if gender dysphoria is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain, or somewhere else in the body. While I can accept the fact that some of victims of sexual dysphoria may be suffering a societal ambiguity about their sexuality, one should not simply ignore the reality that some are born with the physical attributes of the opposite sex. That too is a reality, whether we chose it accept it or not. Because of the stigma widely associated with a persons’ uncertainty about gender or sexual orientation that has built on centuries of the non-normalization of other than male and female genders, continuing to ignore and discriminate against those who may be confused by conflicting evidence of their true sexuality or identity.
Intersex/DSD conditions are entirely different from gender identity. And for these, any ambiguity whatsoever as to which sex a newborn is, is extremely rare. For most conditions sex is totally clear. The Gender Identity lobby has intentionally sown confusion, by misrepresenting, hijacking, and undercutting those with intersex/DSD conditions. Also, jumping from the existence of rare intersex conditions to redefining sex as being defined by feelings rather than sexual anatomy makes no sense.
What do you mean regarding people whose "physical sexualities" or feelings don't "match" their sex (as defined by primary sex organ at birth)? From my extensive review of what people mean by this, I've come to see gender identities as being mired in the most flagrant of sexist stereotypes. If you've got the male primary sex organ at birth, you're male (boy, then man); fight sexism that limits what you can do; don't fight clarity as to sex itself. (Ditto re females..)
(BTW sexual orientation is also entirely different from "gender identity", and there are lots of LG folks who are appalled at the homophobia and attacks they experience as the result of gender identity ideology. The huge propaganda machine pushing gender ideology has done a great job of confusing the issues.
Talk to gender critics. We fight against sexist stereotypes, for evidence-based medicine, for children's rights, and against the evisceration of sex-based rights.
An important comment I’d like to add is that I see ‘mastectomies as young as 12 via surgery’ all the time in articles. This is already an older cohort of girls that we are talking about.
The next younger cohort of girls who have been medicalized were put in puberty blockers BEFORE any development even began. Many are around the age of 14-16 now and have moved on to testosterone.
These girls do not require surgical mastectomies as they basically have undergone a drug induced one much earlier during the so called ‘pause button’ marketed stage.
The also have no comprehension of any normal pubertal developmental in comparison to their previous cohort.
And they will incur early osteoporosis, lack of proper brain development and other serious medical issues! Then we’ll all have to pay for their care. It is a travesty that Medicare pays for such “ affirming care” , pseudonym for Child mutilation !
I didn't know pubertal suppression prevented breast development! This is the first I've heard of that. Wow.
Thanks for the info.
Item #3 of the list of 11 things to know broke g@@gle’$ Gemini AI.
I had two separate tabs open for Gemini and one by one I posted each of the 11 items where one table was for “summarize” and the other was “check for accuracy.”
Tried multiple times to get it to perform the task for item 3 from the list and it wouldn’t budge other than to tell me it was an LLM program and unable to fulfill my request. And yet, it had a lot to say about each item when asked about accuracy, and in the summary tab, each summary was followed by a “important to note” section that it used to insert doubt and credit of the claims in each summary.
In other words, the internet and likely all its publicly available AI has been high jacked by this fad.
Conclusions: The internet is not for consumption by unsupervised children, Period.
Smart phones are not for children.
Parents, now more than ever, are needing to start making some tough decisions beginning with choosing between their own material pursuits and short term happiness or their kids’ long term wellbeing.
Great post! Thank you for it 🙂
Now, please don't hate me for not reading every single word, but I already know most of this stuff. Still, I appreciate it that you are laying it all out so clearly.
As for what we teach our children, that is a thorny issue which entirely depends on the child/parent relationship. If the child and parents are close, then being clear and upfront with your children on these issues should be helpful. If the child is looking for a reason to rebel, pressuring the child with the parents' views may serve to drive the child into experimentation. Now, I didn't have good parents when I was young, but they were honest people and I was able to recognize that. I could see that their honesty was good, and I emulated it. On the other hand, I didn't adopt their attitudes in every area. The truth be told, I had good judgement as a child.
I think it is important that we not teach children to dislike trans people. If anything, children can be given the idea that trans people are somewhat pitiful because of their ailment (which I think is true). That puts the child in the position of not wanting to be like trans people, but doesn't teach the child to dislike them. I do think it's important to be clear that there is no such thing as changing genders/sexes. Filling a child's head with all of the damage that trans treatments cause should be effective.
In my view, this is the lobotomy craze all over again -- except that back in the 1950's and 1960's it wasn't the victims who wanted the lobotomies. The fact that it is usually the individual (both adult and child) who wants to transition makes this a very thorny problem to fix. Girls want the freedom, independence and respect that boys get, while boys just want to be glamorous.
Now, this is where you may think I am getting flaky: I believe in reincarnation. Many lives are devoted to mistakes, and the mistakes made become a learning experience. Ultimately, the individual moves on to other lives and leaves the mistakes behind. What I'm saying is that this will resolve itself eventually. I believe we are immortal, and nothing is ever permanent. But the work you are doing, Carol, is important. The mistakes have to be fought.
So thorough and you cover everything! Thank you for this!!!
> Parents are told—and their troubled children hear this—that the choice is between a dead child who is not affirmed, and a live child who has been medically transitioned. Doctors ask: “Would you rather have a dead son, or a live trans daughter?” “Would you rather have a dead daughter, or a live trans son?”
Remember, we have a word for a person who a third party says will be killed if their monetary and/or policy demands are not met: "hostage."
There is only one appropriate response to hostage-takers, and it involves a SWAT team.
Or losing their medical license.
There has to be a better word than “ affirmation”, since it is anything but positive , which that word means .Basically, it’s affirming a lie , and actually it’s abuse .
It reads like a horror story.
I think it is!
You can’t confirm an identity which doesn’t exist in the first place.
Hi, Carol, I’m one of the Transgender Trend team.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/
This is excellent and such a good summary of where we are now in the terrible world of gender politics. I want to make the man who is likely to be our net British PM, Keir Starmer, read it. He has the most superficial understanding of the problems and I fear we will go backwards in the UK once Labour is in power.
There is one small point of fact re the guidance for schools that you mention. It is not policy yet unfortunately.
It was a draft published in December 2023 and it went out to consultation. That process closed in March and the results of the consultation have not been released yet. So it is not official guidance yet and may get binned if Labour win the election. Even if it survives it will not be statutory so in theory can be ignored by activist teachers.
We wrote about the draft policy here in case you are interested.
https://www.transgendertrend.com/government-draft-schools-guidance-gender-questioning-children/
https://www.transgendertrend.com/gender-questioning-children-consultation-response/
Best wishes Shelley Charlesworth
Thanks so much for this, Shelley. I'll adjust the wording about the guidance tonight or early tomorrow. Please email me at caroldansereau@substack.com and let me know your direct email, so I can check in with you about this. Thanks for all your work!
Excellent - thank you for sharing this! There are other sides to the imposition of gender ideology on children, including the assault on freedom of religion and parental rights, and the general sexualization of children. But I supposed those are best addressed in separate articles.
Thank you for this, it's very comprehensive
Oh, and great job, Carol!
This is a tour de force of compelling arguments to just say no to the 2+2=5 reasoning of the clearly loony theory of gender ideology. In support of this theory, all of society is turned into lobbyists and pharmaceutical salesmen to help market the services of doctors, therapists and others who are proponents of extreme body modification. They especially want to make sure body modification is covered by private and public health insurance and is recognized as a right in law.
"...all of society is turned into lobbyists and pharmaceutical sales(people)..." Brilliant! I love this and would like to share it. Thank you.
The Preferred Pronoun Etiquette Lesson is a stroke of genius because it simultaneously shames, guilt-trips, and frightens people into becoming the lobbyists and salespeople as you so incisively point out. And it intimidates people into sharing its etiquette and kindness warning with others, making it go viral. All while manipulating people into believing that lying is being respectful and kind to those afflicted with this set of false beliefs or genuine born-in-the-wrong-body malady.
Feel free to use it as you wish. I will never know the difference. But note I used salesmen intentionally, not opting for salespeople or saleswoman because it is the word salesman that evokes a visceral response to the con man who takes advantage of innocents. That word makes me think of the salesmen who peddled patent medicines and car salesmen, which is pretty much a pejorative. Note again that con man only goes one way. In the sense of the age-old grifter, there is no way to get the same force by using con woman or con person. It is only the word con man that has been used for decades. I am not talking about some modern day salesforce of politically correct words that have been approved by the human resources department. I am talking about a salesman, a man who would pretend to be your friend and tell you and sell you anything to get money out of your pocket and into his. I am talking about a man whose income depended only on his smooth ways and ability to sell anything, especially things no one needed or things not in as good of a condition as they appeared. Pharmaceutical sales is just a hair’s breadth from being there because of the opioid epidemic and the way doctors were turned into salesmen. There is no other way to say it. Women can be salesmen, too. Only salesmen will do.
Ha! I hear what you're saying. It makes sense.. You have such a great way with words, too i really enjoy your writing. Thank you.