December 5, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — A pro-“transgender” National Post report that Canadian pediatricians are seeing an increase in patient referrals for “gender non-conforming” preschool children who think they are and want be the opposite sex has alarmed pro-family experts on gender confusion.
The November 17 National Post article – headlined “‘I feel like a boy, mom:’ Doctors seeing an increase in preschoolers convinced they are in the wrong body” – tells the story of the families of two preschoolers, one boy, one girl, who decide at young ages that they are the opposite sex. Their parents indulge their feelings and encourage the children to live in their “gender non-conformity.”
The Post reports:
“Doctors say they are seeing a slow, but steady increase in referrals for children as young as three and four displaying ‘gender non-conforming behaviours’ that run a spectrum, from boys dressing in stereotypical ‘girlish’ clothes, or sometimes even pretending to not have a penis by pushing it between their legs, to ‘gender dysphoria’ — psychiatry’s label for the distress that may accompany the ‘incongruence’ or mismatch between ‘one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender.’”
“Assigned gender” is the terminology used by gender “progressives” for one’s birth sex. Rather than follow the age-old determination of doctors who proclaim “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” based on the baby’s genitalia, they claim that the baby is merely “assigned” a male or female status at birth. But that does not necessarily conform to the child’s “gender.” At any stage of life, a person may embrace or change to any of a wide array of “gender identities.”
The article focuses on parents confirming their child’s appropriated “gender” and not trying to “fix” the problem. Dr. Stephen Feder, identified as “co-director of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario’s gender diversity clinic in Ottawa,” says he is thankful that the clinic does not get a lot of requests from parents to “fix my child” or “change by child.”
Last year, the province of Ontario, like several U.S. states, banned change (reparative) therapy for minors, following lobbying campaigns by LGBTQ activists.
Reacting to one study that found that “80 percent of children treated for gender dysphoria are no longer happy by high school [and] grew to accept the gender they were ‘assigned’ at birth,” Dr. Feder told the National Post that “treatment of the [gender-nonconforming] child shouldn’t be sidetracked by any ‘statistical predictions.’”
“It is probably safe to say that those who are most entrenched in gender expression that is different from their assigned gender are most likely to identify as trans after puberty,” he said.
The Post continues: “Feder and others say what’s clear is that transgender isn’t an ‘acquired phenomenon,’ or the result of exposure to a particular experience or abuse. It’s part of their biology,’ he says. ‘Why their biology turns out in that way, I don’t think that’s known.’”
Transgenderism not inborn: researchers
That “born transgender” opinion contradicts one of the main findings of a meta-analysis of other studies published earlier this year in The New Atlantis journal by two highly respected researchers in the field of psychiatry, Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh, who found:
The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be “a man trapped in a woman’s body” or “a woman trapped in a man’s body” — is not supported by scientific evidence. …
Children are a special case when addressing transgender issues. Only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood.
There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents, although some children may have improved psychological well-being if they are encouraged and supported in their cross-gender identification. There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.
More criticism of the pro-transgender-kids philosophy comes from Brian Camenker, who sees great irony in a gender ideology that says a person (even a young child) can become one of scores of “gender identities” or “sexual orientations” yet condemns “ex-gays” and “ex-transgenders” and bans concerned parents from helping their child achieve a normal heterosexual identity.
Camenker, founder and president of MassResistance, which opposes the LGBTQ agenda, reacted to the National Post article:
“This shows how monstrous and sick the medical profession and its groupthink have become. The only sane part of this otherwise insane scenario is reparative therapy, which helps people unravel and deal with the trauma and dysfunction that transgender behavior is a symptom of. So of course, these ‘medical’ people attack it.”
Childhood trauma and gender confusion
Moreover, there is evidence that severe gender confusion can be “acquired” from traumatic childhood experiences, as with the case of former transsexual Walt Heyer, who recalls growing up as a “trans-kid.” Heyer lived most of his life tormented by gender confusion and went through body-disfiguring “sex reassignment surgery” as an adult before re-embracing his biological masculinity.
Heyer, author of “Paper Genders: Pulling the Mask Off the Transgender Phenomenon,” and founder of the SexChangeRegret.com website, writes about the traumatic roots of his own gender confusion, caused by the twisted behavior of his own grandmother:
It wasn’t my mother but my grandmother who clothed me in a purple chiffon dress she made for me. That dress set in motion a life filled with gender dysphoria, sexual abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, and finally, an unnecessary gender reassignment surgery. My life was ripped apart by a trusted adult who enjoyed dressing me as a girl.
My mom and dad didn’t have any idea that when they dropped their son off for a weekend at Grandma’s that she was dressing their boy in girls’ clothes. Grandma told me it was our little secret. My grandmother withheld affirmations of me as a boy, but she lavished delighted praise upon me when I was dressed as a girl. Feelings of euphoria swept over me with her praise, followed later by depression and insecurity about being a boy. Her actions planted the idea in me that I was born in the wrong body. She nourished and encouraged the idea, and over time it took on a life of its own.
Only a caricature?
Another leading conservative expert in the field says that affirming a non-biological identity results in the child living out only “caricature” of the opposite sex.
Joseph Nicolosi, the world’s leading advocate of Reparative Therapy, which seeks to correct emotional and psychological “deficits” of people with unwanted same-sex attractions or severe gender confusion (dysphoria), told LifeSiteNews:
“Today, therapists are failing to ask, 'But why does the child reject his biologically appropriate gender? What could be going on in the family to make the child feel that it is unsafe or undesirable to identify with the parent of the same sex?' If the parents in fact go along with the child's expressed desire to be the opposite sex, they will see that he (if a boy) acquires — not true femininity — but a sad caricature of it.”
In his book, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, Nicolosi strongly advises parents not to encourage nor allow their child to engage in play activities that would normally be associated with the opposite-sex play — e.g., boys playing with Barbie dolls. His advice is condemned as harmful by the pro-transgender-youth experts quoted in the National Post.
Hurting children
Denise Shick, founder and executive director of the Christian Help 4 Families Ministry whose father shared his shocking “secret” with her as a nine-year-old girl that he wanted to become a “woman.” cautions against parents and doctors confirming children in identities that do not match their natural body. Shick told LifeSiteNews:
“Over 80 percent of these children will outgrow their confusion, which leads to a great concern of the outcome for the 'progressive' push to encourage children and parents to a new norm — — one that leads to a lifetime of hormones, medications and probable physical issues.”
“Encouraging the child to indulge in their delusion does more harm than good and leads to a misbelief of reality and biology. This is a dangerous game society is playing out, and I fear we will only see an increase in suicide or addictive behaviors to deal with the outcome as the child becomes an adult.”
“A more effective way would be for parents to provide a secure and loving relationship while encouraging the child to embrace the sex they really are, and protect the right to see a therapist who can assist if needed.”
As LifeSiteNews reported, in April two Canadian professors from the University of Alberta condemned the Alberta government’s radical pro-transgender school “guidelines” as “incredibly misguided,” “reckless,” and “dangerous” to the youth involved. Dr. Blaine Achen and Dr. Theodore K. Fenske explained that:
Gender is a social construct based on “subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy onward,” and as such is the rightful subject of psychotherapy and family therapy when it differs from biological reality.
Identifying one’s gender as different from one’s biological sex is a disorder very much like anorexia, the doctors explain. And as with anorexics, the job of parents, doctors, and teachers is “not to uncritically approve” their disordered thinking “but to help them recognize the source of such confusion and to reaffirm and help re-align their ‘assigned’ sexual gender with their perceived identity.”