A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

The most dangerous enemies masquerade as allies.

It is reprehensible to tell children their bodies are wrong and should be rejected, and to convince them, not only to hate their bodies, but to actually consent to let doctors cut off healthy body parts and disrupt endocrine systems in a vain effort to achieve greater happiness and peace of mind.

What makes these horrific actions even more disturbing is the pretense that this is being done out of love and care. When the perpetrators are allowed to convince others that anyone who tries to protect these children is the enemy, we know the world has turned upside down. In the upside-down world, friends and neighbors fight to allow the perpetrators of these atrocities to continue their crimes unimpeded, while silencing anyone who objects. Those who caution medical providers against immediately halting puberty, introducing cross-sex hormones or cutting off healthy body parts are seen as “transphobes.” Suggesting that teens who feel uncomfortable in their bodies might benefit from therapy to align their minds with their bodies is endorsing “conversion therapy.” Concern about sterility, sexual dysfunction, incontinence, infection, bone density problems, increased risk of stroke or heart attack, cancer, liver or kidney failure is somehow hateful. In upside down world, wrong is right, bad is good, and harm is care.

The best way to stop this psychological and bodily harm to our children is to let the world know what is really happening. We have to make it clear that the medical interventions involved in “gender affirming care” are not “lifesaving” and will, in varying degrees, make everyone who receives such interventions less healthy. We have to make it clear that the path to finding one’s authentic self is not forged through drastic cosmetic alterations in the form of toxic chemicals and invasive surgeries. any more than it is forged through rejection of one’s body and denial of biological reality.

I have witnessed the masquerade first-hand. I have had young woman tell me and nine other people that we are not welcome on “her” NYC block because we were counter-protesting a group of more than a thousand individuals clamoring to force NYU to give puberty blockers to two healthy 12-year-olds (one identifying as “transgender” and one as “non-binary”). I have been called a “transphobe” for daring to list the many documented health consequences associated with the use of synthetic cross-sex hormones and to beg my local school system to accept gender non-conforming children just as they are. My own child has told me I’m an unfit mother who she hopes will die alone because I didn’t pretend she was my son and agree to chop off her healthy breasts.

So how do we warn the world about this enemy? Or, to put it another way, why doesn’t most of the world see what is so obviously true? How did society come to think any of this was the right thing? Why would anyone fight for the right of men to enter women’s sports, prisons, rape crisis centers, domestic abuse centers, bathrooms or changing rooms? Why would anyone encourage parents to lie to their young children and/or compromise the health of their teenagers?

Why can’t people see the reality in front of them? It’s like the majority of people are inside a Little Red Riding Hood story and, just like the main character, they aren’t able to recognize those big eyes and ears, or, more pointedly, that big mouth that’s ready to swallow all of our children. They want to believe the big, bad wolf is their sweet grandma. Sadly, many people still won’t recognize the wolf, even as he feasts upon their children. At least Little Red Riding Hood eventually came to her senses!

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