Affirming Trans Identities is Harmful.
Don't do it. And don't teach children to do it either.
There’s a lot of pressure everywhere to affirm trans and nonbinary identities, including those declared by children. Affirmation is touted as kind, righteous, and even lifesaving. Many parents are committed to teaching their children to affirm, seeing it as an extension of the basic respect they want their young ones to show everyone.
But affirmation is not kind, respectful, righteous or lifesaving. It is not benign. In fact, it is extremely harmful to those who are affirmed, and those who do the affirming. This article discusses why, focusing on affirmation with respect to children.
For those new to this issue, here’s what various terms used in this article mean.
People with “trans identities” believe themselves to be the opposite sex.
Those with “nonbinary identities” claim to be sexless, both sexes, a third sex, or some other variation of not simply male or female.
“Affirmation” means agreeing that people are whatever sex or non-sex they claim to be, altering speech accordingly, and allowing the opposite sex into previously single-sex spaces and sports.
Eleven Things You Need to Know
1. Skyrocketing numbers of children are rejecting their bodies.
Vast numbers of children from preschool onward are declaring that their “gender identities” don’t match their sexed bodies and they are being affirmed in those identities. Seattle school district officials say that between 7 and 13% of 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students identified as transgender or as questioning their gender in 2023. These rates mirror what is happening across the country, with some schools having even higher percentages. In one California school, 16% of the students identify as transgender.
2. There have been huge increases in the number of children undergoing medical procedures to “align their bodies” with their gender identities.
London’s pediatric gender clinic had only 18 patients between 2000 and 2005, and then saw a total of 77 patients in 2009-2010. By 2021-2022, there were 3,585 patients, an increase of 4,555% in just over 10 years. Another 5300 children were on waiting lists seeking to become patients. London’s clinic is not unusual. In fact, all of the major gender centers in the world have reported several-thousand-percent increases in children presenting with gender distress in the same time frame. Approximately two-thirds of adolescents referred to specialist gender services have been put on puberty blockers and/or wrong sex hormones, with rates varying from clinic to clinic. Each year the number of medicalized children has been exponentially higher than the year before.
In the U.S., the number of clinics providing pediatric gender “medical care” has risen from zero less than 15 years ago to hundreds today. Analyses of selected insurance claims from 2017 to 2021 document nearly 18,000 children put on puberty blockers or cross sex hormones between 2017 and 2021. Analysts note that these numbers are “probably a significant undercount since they don’t include children whose records did not specify a gender dysphoria diagnosis or whose treatment wasn’t covered by insurance.” Each year there has been an exponential increase in the number of children undergoing puberty blockage or cross-sex hormone treatments, mastectomies and other surgeries.
3. The medical interventions carried out on children in the name of gender ideology are invasive and destructive.
Children as young as 9 are put on puberty blockers which disrupt not only development of their sex organs and sexual feelings, but also development of the rest of their bodies, including their brains and bones. Older children are put on “cross-sex hormones”—male concentrations of testosterone for girls, and female concentrations of estrogens for boys. Girls as young as 12 are having their breasts cut off. And yes, some children are having surgeries on their genitals, despite frequent claims that those are postponed until age 18.
Infertility, inability to ever have an orgasm, other sexual dysfunction, compromised bone health, altered brain development, cardio-pulmonary complications, debilitating vaginal atrophy in females, an inability to ever breastfeed, increased risk of cancer, urinary complications, and a wide range of other health problems are all consequences of so-called “gender affirmation medical care” for children. What happens to a particular child depends on many factors, but doctors acknowledge the high likelihood of various specific outcomes, especially infertility and impacts on orgasms and sexual function. Gender clinician Diane Ehrensaft states starkly that “blocking puberty takes away options for fertility for most.” Gender ideologist Dr. Marci Bowers has this to say about sexual pleasure: “I’m unaware of an individual claiming ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner [stage] 2 [of puberty].” (This is a common stage for puberty blockage.) Children cannot possibly comprehend the implications of undergoing medical “gender affirmation.”
Medical personnel are inflicting iatrogenic harm upon children—injuries and illnesses that result from medical procedures. Iatrogenic harm occurs with other kinds of medical care, but in those cases doctors are responding to a physical medical problem such as cancer, which could kill a child if not treated. In gender medicine, children with perfectly healthy bodies are subjected to chemical and surgical measures based solely on a mystical belief that those bodies aren’t the ones they were meant to have.
Female genital mutilation is outlawed in the United States and many other countries. But chemically stunting and surgically destroying children’s genitals and other sexual anatomy is encouraged under the guise of gender ideology.
4. There is no credible evidentiary basis for claims that affirmation improves mental health or prevents suicides.
Those who promote gender affirmation insist that it leads to significant improvements in mental health which outweigh any harms it might cause. They even label it “lifesaving” based on the claim that affirmation prevents suicides. 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?”
But there is no credible evidentiary basis for these claims. Since 2019, major reviews of the benefits and harms of gender medicalization for children have been conducted in Finland, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and the U.K. Every one of these has determined that the evidence relied upon for pediatric “gender affirmation medicine” is of very low quality. They state that it is inappropriate to claim that transition improves mental health and reduces suicides.
In response to these reviews (and other factors, such as detransitioners sharing their stories) numerous European countries are reversing course on “gender affirmation care” for children. England, Scotland, Wales, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway have all begun to severely restrict “gender affirmation” medical care for children, favoring psychosocial interventions as the first and usually the only treatment for minors.
The most recent, and most comprehensive of these reviews is the Cass Review, carried out at the behest of the UK National Health Service and named for pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass who led the effort. Published after four years of research and analysis, the review is a damning indictment of gender affirmation. It prompted suspension of puberty blockers for children in the UK, and severe restrictions on cross-sex hormones are expected soon. (Surgeries were already banned for minors.)
There are some indications that medical transitioning can impair mental health and increase suicidality, potential outcomes which labels for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones acknowledge. Gender clinic data and accounts from clinicians and detransitioners bolster concerns that transitioning can impair mental health. Reports of mental turmoil arising from hormonal treatments and suicidal thoughts emerging for the first time after medical transitions are common.
A long-term study comparing transitioned individuals to people who have not rejected their bodies found sharply elevated rates of suicide for the transitioned group (19 times higher overall, 40 times higher for females.) The study also found worse morbidity and mortality rates in the transitioned group.
5. “Gender identities” in children are clearly not immutable, and social transition is an active health intervention discouraged by experts.
The Cass Review addresses not only medical transition, but also social transition—which includes things like clothing changes and new pronouns. Social transition is said to be an active health intervention “because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning and longer-term outcomes.” The Review examined studies cited by some as establishing mental health benefits from social transition, finding nearly all to be of low quality. Just as there is no credible evidentiary basis for claimed benefits from medical transition, there is no credible evidentiary basis for claimed benefits from social transition.
The Cass Review strongly discourages social transition for pre-adolescent children, noting that “sex of rearing” may profoundly change a child’s developmental trajectory, with long-ranging consequences. It acknowledges that adolescent children have more autonomy and may embark on social transitions on their own but warns that keeping parents in the dark about those transitions undermines relationships essential for children’s long-term well-being.
If they are not affirmed, most children (60%-90%) desist from trans and nonbinary identities. This has been amply demonstrated in various studies.
Detransitioners offer further strong evidence that children’s declared gender identities are not immutable. Detransitioners are individuals who underwent medical affirmation, only to reverse course later, embracing the sex observed for them at birth.
Gender ideologues erroneously claim that regret and detransition are rare, often asserting that less than 1% of children who medically transition will regret their decision. This assertion is based on studies with severe methodological flaws, and biased interpretation of results. Rates of detransition are masked by inadequate follow-up with transitioned patients, and the reluctance of regretful patients to report back to those who harmed them. Recent data indicates a 30% rate of detransition just 4 years after transition. (Here’s a good summary of detransition data.)
The very nature of childhood renders claims that children know who they are and what’s best for them ludicrous. Small children learn through play and have a difficult time distinguishing fantasy from reality. They go through all sorts of identities as they grow. They also lack “sex constancy”, the understanding that a doll’s or a person’s sex is stable and doesn’t change with clothing and accessories. Older children are greatly influenced by peers and cannot be trusted to assess risks accurately and make wise decisions.
Thus, all children need the guidance and protection of adults. This is especially true regarding matters like what sex they are and whether to sign up for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, double mastectomies, and other invasive medical interventions with life-long impacts.
6. The overwhelming majority of children who identify as trans or nonbinary have conditions or histories that can trigger body dissociation and/or make them susceptible to the allure of friendships available upon transition. (See p. 45 and beyond in this report for extensive documentation.)
Mental health problems including an array of disorders (depressive, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, personality, obsessive compulsive, dissociative identity, and schizo-spectrum) are very common among trans- and nonbinary-identifying minors. As many as 70% or more of young people presenting with concerns about gender identity for the first time in adolescence have prior psychiatric disorders.
Eating disorders are common. In anorexic circles, one girl’s announcement of a non-female identity often prompts similar announcements by others. This may be due to a propensity towards social contagion in these groups. It may also be linked to differences in how girls who declare trans or nonbinary identities are treated by adults working with them. Anorexic girls are admonished if they say negative things about their bodies, but if they announce a trans or nonbinary identity, the admonitions cease, and girls’ self-denigrations are affirmed.
A very high percentage of trans- and nonbinary-identifying children are on the autism spectrum. This sets them up in multiple ways for being drawn into declaring trans and nonbinary identities.
A majority of trans- or nonbinary-identifying children are gay or will turn out to be gay when they mature. Transitioning enables them to claim to be heterosexual, which may be appealing to a child dealing with homophobia. (For more information, see page 60 of this document.)
Many trans- and nonbinary-identifying children are survivors of trauma, including sexual trauma. That trauma can lead them to dissociate from their bodies, rejecting in particular their sexual anatomy. It is shocking that some adults claim to be helping these children by inflicting further harm on that anatomy.
Given the widespread existence of the conditions described above, there is often an obvious explanation for why a child has rejected his or her sex—an explanation that makes much more sense than the mystical belief that the child has somehow been born in the wrong body.
Clearly, the huge wave of children undergoing gender-related hormonal and surgical alteration of their bodies is disproportionately composed of society’s most vulnerable children. This makes what is happening all the more horrifying. As their bodies are medically assaulted, these children are not given the counseling and other assistance they need. Any counseling they do receive prepares them for their new lives as medically-transitioned individuals. It doesn’t help them explore the roots of their trans identification, especially since such exploration is now forbidden in many jurisdictions. Counselors risk losing their licenses and enduring other punishments if they engage in the kind of therapy children need. Many detransitioners note that for years they didn’t get the psychological care they needed as they focused on the project of transitioning instead. Only upon detransition did they receive vital assistance.
7. WPATH, the body that issues Standards of Care for gender medicine, has no credibility.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health has always been an ideology-driven organization. Anyone can join, including activists with no medical credentials. Leaders include individuals who have undergone medical transition themselves and have a personal interest in validating that experience. At the request of activists, WPATH excludes from important meetings highly credentialed individuals who advocate a more cautious approach to the care of children. Other highly credentialed individuals have resigned after years of involvement, having discerned the undemocratic and ideology-driven manner in which WPATH operates.
In March of 2024 a large trove of internal WPATH communications was made public as the result of a whistleblower sharing it with journalists. This development has delivered a massive blow to WPATH’s attempts to portray itself as evidence-based, professional, and focused on the well-being of patients. What WPATH leaders and members say in private contrasts sharply with the image they try to convey publicly:
WPATH leaders and members don’t advocate cautious evaluation of patients prior to implementing invasive medical procedures. They are driven by an ideological conviction that virtually everyone should be immediately medically transitioned, and delays represent unacceptable “gatekeeping.” The Files include extraordinary conversations about patients with PTSD, dissociative identity disorder, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other serious mental illnesses. The collective judgment is always: get them on hormones and/or into surgeries asap. Thirteen-year-olds who are developmentally delayed? Individuals with confirmed or possible histories of sexual assault? Homeless men who will clearly not be able to carry out vital post-surgical protocols? The conclusion is always the same: move them forward to medical transitions right away.
WPATH leaders and members are clearly aware of the serious harms that result from puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. These are discussed at length without discernible concern for the suffering of patients, and without questioning whether common, severe harms may signal a need to reevaluate the affirmation model of care.
One common consequence of pediatric “gender care” that clinicians are clearly aware of is infertility. Apparently, it is common for patients in their mid-twenties to say they’ve found a wonderful partner and now want kids. Their sadness about infertility increases as the years go by. Inability to ever have an orgasm, other sexual dysfunction, and difficulties in finding romantic partners are also discussed as common outcomes for gender patients.
WPATH leaders and members talk about adenomas and cancers as an outcome of gender medicalization, without any apparent concern for people experiencing these. One WPATH clinician reports “…our team has a 16 y/o patient…Pt found to have two liver masses (hepatic adenomas)….and the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely, offending agent(s) are the hormones….” Another refers to a transitioned friend or colleague who developed hepatocarcinomas after 8 to 10 years on testosterone. “To the best of my knowledge it was linked to his hormonal treatment,” the clinician reports. “He was in his midlife. Unfortunately, I don’t have much more details since it was so advanced that he opted for palliative care and died a couple of months after.”
WPATH leaders and members are aware that there are growing numbers of detransitioners. Instead of expressing concern for those with regrets, they talk about the need to make sure that detransitioners don’t discourage other people from transitioning.
WPATH leaders and members openly acknowledge that they are not getting informed consent from children or their parents. They candidly agree that most are incapable of giving that consent. Patients and their parents lack a basic understanding of biology. Children are developmentally incapable of grasping the implications of what will happen to their bodies. Parents regularly don’t know what they should know about the consequences of what they’re signing their children up for.
WPATH clinicians regularly do gender surgeries on children. Some brag about how many. (“I have performed about 20 vaginoplasties in patients under 18 over the past 17 years.”) The ideal time for a boy to undergo genital surgery is during the summer before his senior year of high school, clinicians agree.
The WPATH Files shine a light on the experimental nature of what is being done to children. When clinicians pose questions to the group about how to handle situations, they are given anecdotal suggestions rather than references to tested protocols. Trans-identifying WPATH members even share what they did in their own personal gender journeys to address problems that arose.
It is clear from the WPATH Files that gender affirmation care has morphed from attempting to reduce distress from gender dysphoria to giving patients whatever they ask for so they can fulfill their “embodiment goals.” Patients are consumers. Doctors and other health professionals are people who give these consumers whatever they want. Clinicians boast not only about making bodies superficially resemble the opposite sex, but also about creating bodies that don’t exist in nature. Bodies without any visible sexual anatomy. Bodies with both a penis and a vagina. Bodies without nipples. These and more can all be ordered from your local gender doctor.
The Cass Review included an in-depth analysis of existing guidelines for pediatric gender care, concluding that most failed to follow international standards for guideline development. The research team could only recommend guidelines issued by Finland and Sweden, both of which discourage hormonal and surgical interventions for children. It did not recommend adherence to WPATH’s standards. These standards “lack developmental rigour” and WPATH “overstates the strength of the evidence in making” its recommendations. This is disturbing since many guidelines in use in the world are based on WPATH’s.
To make matters even worse, there is now compelling evidence that WPATH prevented publication of a systematic evidentiary review that it itself had commissioned. That review apparently reached the same conclusions as other systematic reviews.
It is common for those promoting gender affirmation medicine to assert that it is evidence-based and not experimental, and that the organizations that issue standards are professional, cautious, caring, and ethical. The WPATH Files and other documents thoroughly refute those assertions. The term that comes to mind as best describing the approach taken by WPATH, its leaders, and its members, is “quackery.”
8. Whistleblowers, detransitioners, and individuals posing as patients all corroborate the frightening realities of so-called gender affirmation care.
Numerous whistleblowers have come forward to talk about their experiences working in pediatric gender clinics. What they say meshes perfectly with what one would expect based on the WPATH Files. Children and vulnerable adults are being rapidly pushed forward to medicalization no matter what, without adequate psychological assessments, and without any real understanding of what they are getting into.
A 13-year-old girl with an abusive mother has experienced multiple sexual assaults and been diagnosed with depression, PTSD, anxiety, intermittent explosive disorder, and autism. She is promptly moved to a different counselor, when her first counselor (now a whistleblower) voices concerns with colleagues about clinicians putting her on testosterone and other “gender affirming” medications.
An 18-year-old returns to the clinic that authorized removal of her breasts saying she wants them “put back on.”
A girl on testosterone experiences severe atrophy of her vaginal tissues and ends up in the ER needing surgery to repair vaginal lacerations brought on by intercourse. She has bled through a pad, pants, and a towel wrapped around her waist.
Growing numbers of detransitioners are coming forward, including people who were medically transitioned as children. They are committed to telling their stories to protect other children from being harmed. These individuals were adamant about their trans identities…until they weren’t. Many had serious problems that were pushed to the side in favor of pursuing gender transitions—problems that were only addressed when they left belief in gender identities behind. See this, this, this, and this.
Various individuals have gone undercover, posing as people with trans or nonbinary identities, to see how swiftly they will be medicalized. See this about a 14-year-old imposter and this about a 53-year-old one. Both waved red flag after red flag for gender clinicians. Both were moved forward to medical interventions very rapidly without any meaningful discussion of their needs or of the risks involved in medicalization.
9. The rise in trans and nonbinary identification among children parallels a disturbing rise in childhood mental health problems over the same time period---which culminated in a dire warning from the Center for Disease Control in 2023.
Results from the CDC’s 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed that more than 40% of boys and girls said they’d felt so sad or hopeless within the prior year that they’d been unable to do their regular activities like sports or schoolwork for at least two weeks. Twenty-two percent of high school students had seriously considered attempting suicide the previous year.
Results of the survey were particularly dire for girls, with nearly 3 in 5 teen girls (57%) saying they felt “persistently sad or hopeless.” Thirty percent of the girls said they had seriously considered dying by suicide—a percentage that has risen by nearly 60% in the past decade. The CDC found that there had been a dramatic rise in violent behaviors targeting girls in particular.
While anxiety and depression increased among teens during the pandemic, it had been building for many years before that. The plummeting of children’s mental health is mirrored by the rise in transgender and nonbinary identification, a phenomenon which also disproportionately involves girls. The rise in trauma, including sexual trauma, reported by the CDC could explain some of the increase in the number of girls dissociating from their bodies.
Smart phones, scant unsupervised outdoor freedom, enormous amounts of time spent on-line, early access to disturbing hard-core porn, and other factors are all tied up in the mental health crisis enveloping children today. Their anxiety and depression may also be linked to the news they hear constantly regarding ecological crises, ongoing wars, and massive economic inequity. It would be irrational to assume that these broader realities are not connected to more and more children rejecting their sex.
10. The rise in trans and nonbinary identification is happening in the context of massive indoctrination, targeting children from preschool onward.
Schools, libraries, social media platforms, and other forces are aggressively inculcating children into gender identity ideology. Children are told they can be boys, girls, or “something else”, and the choice is up to them. They are encouraged to go on “gender journeys” and to view their bodies as different from, and potentially in conflict with, their identities. Some lessons imply that people who don’t reject their sex are not as liberated or cool as those who do. Information contradicting the gender ideology narrative is strictly banned, so children get only a one-sided view of things. All of this may be contributing to the rapid rise in trans and nonbinary identification among children.
Many who have reviewed K-12 gender identity curricula and policies in the US have concluded that these are highly problematic. Among other things, widespread curricula and policies:
Fill children’s heads with false information about basic biology.
Promote sexist stereotypes.
Glorify hating one’s own body and promote unhealthy body image.
Undercut critical thinking skills and children’s ability to distinguish scientific fact from ideological belief.
Encourage fragility and a corresponding authoritarian commitment to shut down anyone who doesn’t believe what the child believes.
Create an irrational existential dilemma for children to navigate (What sex am I?) and foster an unhealthy obsession with superficial labels and categorizing everything as a “gender expression.”
For details, examine school curricula and policies via my Substack. See especially The Anti-Science Disaster of Gender Ideology in the Schools, School Boards: Grooming Kids for an Orwellian World., and Seattle Activists Submit Formal Demand to School Board.
While U.S. schools double down on teaching gender identity ideology to children and continue to enforce Affirmation Only policies, education policy in the UK has been moving away from this approach in the wake of the Cass Report. For more details on educational developments in the UK, see this article.
11. It is now common to find trans-identifying males in female spaces and sports.
For a glimpse at what has become an avalanche of males housed in female prisons, participating in female sports, taking honors and positions reserved for women, and more, see this, this, this, and this.
With so many schoolchildren declaring themselves trans or nonbinary, high school sports are by no means immune from this phenomenon. This spring, for example, in both Washington State and Oregon, males won first place trophies in girls’ state track events. Watch this video of a trans-identified boy trouncing girls at an Oregon track meet. Look at the male who took first-place at the Washington State track championship meet on May 25th as he ascends the podium after his decisive victory in the 400-meter girls 2A championship race.
Affirmation Hurts
The information laid out above contradicts the claim that affirmation is a good thing. In reality, affirmation is extremely harmful to those who are affirmed and to everyone else as well.
Affirming children hurts them.
Those who promote the affirmation of children’s trans or nonbinary identities insist that doing so is essential for the mental health of those children. They may even argue that children might kill themselves in response to not being affirmed. These assertions are based in ideology, not science. There is no credible evidentiary basis for claimed mental improvements, including supposed reductions in suicidality, flowing from affirmation. Affirmation may even decrease mental health and increase the risk of suicide.
If you affirm a child’s trans or nonbinary identity, you are going against the recommendations of the most comprehensive review of “gender affirmation care” to date. The Cass Report joins others in declaring social transitioning an active health intervention and discouraging affirmation for children.
If not affirmed most children who reject their sex, come to accept it. In contrast, affirmation locks children into body rejection. It delivers vast numbers of children to unethical health professionals who implement invasive procedures without any credible evidentiary basis for doing so. By affirming children, you put them at risk of infertility, sexual dysfunction, and a range of other serious health problems, for no good reason.
To make matters worse, there is a good chance that the child you are affirming is among the most vulnerable of children. He or she is likely to be coping with one or more significant challenges, such as mental illness, a history of sexual abuse, and autism. He or she could also well be same-sex attracted and dealing with homophobia. By affirming trans or nonbinary identities you may well push these children towards so-called “gender affirmation medicine” and away from the help they need.
Affirmation bolsters the mystical and dangerous idea that some children are “born in the wrong body.” It ignores not only the specific challenges individual children may be facing, but also the fact that they’ve been subjected to aggressive indoctrination which promotes dissociation from the body.
When you affirm children, you reinforce all the false messages delivered to them via school curricula and other gender ideology-pushing forces. You tell them that everything they’ve been taught is true and valid. Yes, fraud is authenticity. Self-rejection is self-love. Men can have babies. Yes, it’s up to individuals to determine their sex. Yes, liking things stereotypically reserved for the opposite sex, means you are the opposite sex.
Affirmation also ignores the overarching mental health crisis facing children today, and the roots of that crisis. It is a cop-out based on the misguided belief that deferring to children, precisely when they most need adult leadership and protection, somehow empowers them.
Some maintain that whether you agree with a child’s self-proclaimed identity or not, affirmation is the only appropriate response as a matter of respect. But think about the message this sends. It teaches children that their happiness depends on validation from others. It tells them they are too fragile, too weak, too lacking in confidence to tolerate the fact that there are people with beliefs different from their own. What could be more disrespectful, condescending, and disempowering? What could mislead children more about what actual respect looks like than enabling them to force people to say things they don’t believe on pain of shunning, firing and other punishment.
When you affirm children’s trans or nonbinary identities, you are lying to them. You are gaslighting them. You are promising them something that can never be. You become a willing cast member in a Truman show focused on deceiving vulnerable children. This doesn’t help them. It hurts them. It makes you complicit in one of the biggest medical scandals of all time.
Affirmation hurts the children who witness it.
When you refer to people as other than their actual sex, you are gaslighting children who see you do this. You are reinforcing the gender identity miseducation they are experiencing alongside their trans- and nonbinary-identifying peers. You are increasing the chance that they, too, will “come out” as trans or nonbinary.
Via affirmation, you are helping to eliminate sex-based privacy and other sex-based rights for all children. You are saying that those rights don’t matter, and the feelings of anyone other than those who identify as trans or nonbinary don’t matter. You are sending a negative message to girls in particular, since so many sex-based programs and policies exist to address injustices historically borne by females.
Affirmation entrenches gender-identity-induced harm in the world children will inhabit when they grow up. Agreeing that people are whatever they claim to be, lends support to males who are forcing their way into female rape shelters, locker rooms, prisons, and sports, under the guise of identifying as women. It reinforces those who lambaste lesbians and gay men for rejecting as partners members of the opposite sex who identify as trans.
Affirmation undermines basic safeguarding. Children are taught to disregard the evidence of their own eyes and the knowledge they have about the sex of their classmates. They are taught that keeping secrets from parents is a good thing, and that teachers should actively join in misleading parents about at-school transitions. (At least 10 million students in the U.S. attend schools with policies that force teachers to participate in this subterfuge.) Girls learn that it’s wrong to object to naked men watching them disrobe in the women’s locker room because those men might be women. They learn that sharing a room or even a bed with a boy on an overnight school trip is fine if he says the magic words: “I’m a girl.”
Teaching children to affirm deepens the harm done to them by gender ideology.
When you tell a child to treat trans- or nonbinary-identifying people as if they truly were the other sex or sexless, you powerfully reinforce the indoctrination that child is under-going. Teaching children to affirm inculcates them into gender ideology much more effectively than having them just watch others engage in affirmation.
In addition, by affirming their peers, children become complicit in the harm done to them. At some point they may become aware of that harm and will need to deal with their complicity.
Most importantly, teaching children to affirm is harmful because it forces them to facilitate their own oppression. Children are told not just to docilely accept the loss of their rights. They are told to pretend that opposite sex individuals trampling their rights are not members of the opposite sex, so the trampling never even took place. They are even told to cheer for those who treat them with such disdain.
The girls displaced by a boy in the state championship track meet in Washington this spring didn’t just lose honors that were rightfully theirs. They were also required to go along with the pretense that the victor was a girl who had won fair and square. Teaching children to affirm trans and nonbinary identities teaches them to accept abuse.
Reality matters.
There’s another harm that flows from affirming trans and nonbinary identities that needs to be added to the ones elucidated above. Affirmation contradicts material reality. This has adverse implications for all of humanity.
Even if affirming trans and nonbinary identities didn’t cause the myriad harms described in this article—even if it could be legitimately framed as kind—it would still be based on asserting things that simply are not true. Fostering a society in which everyone dutifully agrees that 2 + 2 = 5 is not a good thing. It is Orwellian and dangerous. When a population can be persuaded to agree that men are women, it can also be persuaded to agree that ignorance is strength and war is peace. When a population can be induced to hate and silence anyone who refuses to chant false mantras, we live in an authoritarian dystopia.
Tropes and Smokescreens
Powerful forces behind gender ideology circulate tropes to divert attention away from the harms their ideology causes. These tropes cannot withstand even modest scrutiny:
No, it doesn’t make sense to proclaim that people’s self-definitions should always be affirmed. If someone’s identity contradicts material reality, destroys vital words, and/or eviscerates other people’s rights, affirmation is a bad idea.
No, gender identity is not an extension of LGB rights. Sexual orientation and gender identity are very different things. Moreover, gender identity ideology is setting LGB rights back dramatically. That’s why so many gay men and lesbians are active in the fight against it.
No, intersex doesn’t have anything to do with trans. Moreover, even if extremely rare congenital conditions represented additional sexes (which they don’t) it would make no sense to conclude that everyone should get to decide what sex they are.
For a bit more discussion of these and other tropes, read this:
What We Must Do
We are already told on a regular basis to affirm trans and nonbinary identities. As the number of children claiming these identities skyrockets in response to aggressive indoctrination and other factors, demands for affirmation will only increase.
The time has come to respectfully and firmly say No. Affirmation does serious harm to children who identify as trans or nonbinary. It does serious harm to other children as well. It hurts all people by undermining our sex-based rights, and by fostering an atmosphere in which growing numbers of people agree that 2 + 2 = 5.
We must not affirm trans and nonbinary identities, especially but not only those declared by children. We must stop teaching children to affirm.
Those who refuse to affirm are often declared hateful and discriminatory. These charges are absurd. Striving to protect children and others from the very real harms associated with affirmation is loving rather than hateful. In fact, given how harmful affirmation is, it could be argued that it is hateful to affirm. An equally strong case could be made that burying one’s head in the sand—choosing to remain ignorant of the information gender critics are trying to share—is hateful.
As to discrimination, those who identify as trans or nonbinary are entitled to the same rights as everyone else—no less, and also, no more. No one has the right to force their beliefs upon non-believers. No one has the right to trample the sex-based rights of other people. It makes no sense to conflate use of accurate pronouns and defense of sex-based rights with discrimination.
Those who don’t go along with gender ideology often face punishment. As more and more people stand up to that ideology, however, its power to hurt us evaporates. Outside of the U.S., the wheels are already falling off the gender identity bus, as those who stood alone for years are joined by others. Inside the U.S., polls consistently show that overwhelmingly Americans do not agree with gender identity’s core tenets.
It may be harder for a child to refuse to affirm trans and nonbinary identities than for an adult to do so. Parents and guardians must try to protect their children from the gender identity misinformation that bombards them daily, making sure they understand basic biology, for example. They should not encourage children to join in affirming trans and nonbinary identities. But it may be developmentally or otherwise impossible for children to not join with others as they refer to males as “she”, females as “he, and individuals of either sex as “they”, “ze” or some other neo pronoun.
The only real solution is removing policies and curricula that promote gender identity ideology from our schools and other institutions. With each passing day the harm caused by that ideology deepens. There is no time to waste.
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.