To protect ourselves from illness or to be treated when we are ill, we have to trust the medical and scientific community. Most of the time our trust is not misplaced because the majority of doctors and scientists do the best they can in the light of current knowledge. The word "current" is important here because further research may sometimes show the treatment doctors provide is in error or could have been improved. Unfortunately when doctors and scientists make an error, it can be a real disaster. For example the past practice of lobotomies (removing part of the brain) performed on people suffering from depression or other mental illnesses was a cruel and useless treatment. Rose Kennedy, the sister of US President John F Kennedy, was subjected to a lobotomy, so this erroneous treatment was practiced in our recent past.
The current equivalent of lobotomies is the fashion for "transgendering" hapless children and subjecting them to the ingestion of hormones and later surgery because they might imagine - and are encouraged to think - that they have been born in the wrong "gender" - and there are apparently over 57 genders to choose from.
It is quite the fashion these days for the left-wing intelligentsia (yes, I know "left-wing intelligentsia" is an oxymoron) to insist that babies should not be assigned a "gender" or what we old-fashioned parents would call a "sex" at birth, but the fact and reality remains that the overwhelming majority of babies are born either male or female. There are a tiny - very tiny - number of tragic cases where there are sexual anomalies and the baby's sex is indeterminate from external appearance or its chromosomes have some anomaly such as XXY or XYY instead of the normal XX for a female and XY for a male. But these rare cases are medical disabilities like being born missing an arm or a leg. They do not prove that the vast majority of babies are not clearly identifiable as male or female. The very rare anomalous cases need sensitive scientific evaluation and possibly medical treatment, but they are no reason why a baby should not be assigned a sex at birth and enabled to identify with that sex.
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However, the latest "style" among the progressive elite is to not "label" babies as boys or girls but to let them choose at some undetermined time in their lives which of the 57 or more genders they want to be. These progressives also encourage those who have already identified as boys or girls to consider changing their "gender", and are happy to provide the necessary hormonal and surgical interventions. I was deeply concerned to read in The Australian (31/10/17) that "Mastectomies will be recommended for some adolescents alongside puberty blockers and hormone injections for managing gender dysphoria in young people". (Lobotomies anyone?)
In the following paragraph comes the clue to increasing this new disease of 'gender dysphoria': "And children from preschool age upwards, will be supported to explore their gender identity, provided with psychological care and helped to transition to their preferred gender, before being referred to an endocrinologist before hitting puberty". There is no mention of encouraging these pre-schoolers to identify with the gender they were born with.
The American College of Pediatricians urges healthcare professionals, educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.
1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: "XY" and "XX" are genetic markers of male and female, respectively – not genetic markers of a disorder. The norm for human design is to be conceived either male or female. Human sexuality is binary by design with the obvious purpose being the reproduction and flourishing of our species. This principle is self-evident. The exceedingly rare disorders of sex development (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs (also referred to as "intersex") do not constitute a third sex.
2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child's subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as "feeling like the opposite sex" or "somewhere in between" do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.
3. A person's belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5).5 The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.
4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. *Reversible or not, puberty- blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.
5. According to the DSM-5, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.
6. Pre-pubertal children diagnosed with gender dysphoria may be given puberty blockers as young as eleven, and will require cross-sex hormones in later adolescence to continue impersonating the opposite sex. These children will never be able to conceive any genetically related children even via artificial reproductive technology. In addition, cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to cardiac disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke, diabetes, and cancer.
7. Rates of suicide are nearly twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBTQ – affirming countries.12 What compassionate and reasonable person would condemn young children to this fate knowing that after puberty as many as 88% of girls and 98% of boys will eventually accept reality and achieve a state of mental and physical health?
8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse. Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to "gender clinics" where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures they will "choose" a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.
Michelle A. Cretella MD
President of the American College of Pediatricians
Quentin Van Meter MD
Vice President of the American College of Pediatricians
Pediatric Endocrinologist
Paul McHugh MD
University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital
The travesty of manipulating children to change their gender and cut off breasts and genitals is bordering on the criminal. Or maybe many of the transgender lobbyists have been subjected to lobotomies and are missing part of their brains.....
One of the world's foremost Orthodox leaders, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's department for external church relations, warned that Greece's new transgender law (which is similar to the situation in Australia) is "a crime before God and the people. Making gender a matter of personal choice is not only anti-Christian but anti-human. We are speaking about young 15-year-old boys and girls who may later completely change their minds."
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