Blissfully Almost Ignorant
Sitting in a room full of similarly minded mums in my friend's yurt I get that sinking feeling I always get when they talk about their kids and school. They are all homeschooling mums and they know ALL about the problems with school, and not just from a gender ide-fucking-ology viewpoint. As a mum to two trans-identified children who are caught up in this, I can't help but wonder which women are part of the #bekindbrigade and if they actually know what they are supporting.
Their relief and conviction at not being in the system is both intoxicating and ignorant at the same time. Sure, they know what kids are being taught is out of alignment and wholly inappropriate, but they don't exactly know why.
There was the usual talk of the importance of teaching kids respect and kindness to others but they had no real notion of what that #bekind approach is really doing for society. What does that actually mean for children in schools? What does that really mean for vulnerable children like mine? While kindness and understanding are upmost in any interaction but what does saying yes have to do with your kindness? #BeKind riiiiight??
Well, here's what you are agreeing to. You are opening your child up to a flawed belief system and a notion that is not grounded in reality. The notion that, after hundreds of centuries of history where every man, woman, child and dog were either male or female and required each other in order to 'promulgate the notion' that sex is binary, they have now decided it's not. Sex is now on a spectrum and you can be anywhere on it you want. I doubt this is in keeping with the progressive "be who you want to be" mantra that has since been thrown by the wayside by sparkly eyed idealistic kids for a more stunning and brave notion that you can literally be whatever sex you want. And woe betide anyone who dares topple your mentally fragile feeling house of flimsy nonsensical cards.
You are also telling your child that it is indeed possible that their feelings are true. It is wholly possible that the hatred of their body going through the vital process, that every other child for millennia has gone through, of growing and changing and becoming, is actually WRONG. Your child is wrong, their body is wrong, their soul is wrong. Your child is born in the wrong body. The wrong body, as if during your pregnancy you somehow made a wrong child inside you.
Every time you picked up your wrong baby and loved them and grew your connection with them, you were setting yourself and your child up for a lifetime of misery. Don't you think you would have felt that wrongness? Mother's intuition is strong, surely it should have given you some inkling you had a WRoNg Un?
In addition to right in being wrong, you are also telling your children that with a couple of skittles here, a small incision there, a penis pump and a wound drain, they will become the other sex. PRAISE BE your child will cured, because trans is the answer to all their ails! Of course, where is the mention of the irreversible damage or the life-long medicalisation and surgery required to maintain this illusion?
Another thing your child is now learning as fact is the idea that a man is now a woman if they say so. You may have spent your entire life up until now being sure your child knows that for their safety and protection, some men (certainly not all) should be considered dangerous. Some men can be unscrupulous and can try to lure you away. Safety for children and safeguarding of their innocence was always paramount. Now, this protection and instinctual cloak that we once enveloped our children in has become a massive flasher's mac. They must forego natural instinctual knowledge about their safe spaces and female needs and replace that with the notion that children should just deal with a penis in their face. Most of these 'men' never have any kind of medical or surgical treatment and remain physically and wholly male. It's OK. Gender idefuckingology says so.
Your children must now be au fait with dangerous, violent, sexual criminals who have raped women, tortured children, abused anything or anyone, sharing a prison cell with vulnerable women. It's perfectly safe and normal for a fully intact dangerous fox to be in amongst the chickens. It's OK. Gender idefuckingology says so.
Next what you are allowing your child to believe is that men who think they are women can join women in their competitive sports events and not enjoy advantages in strength, speed or endurance, even after having gone through puberty.
Also what your children are having embedded into their psyche when gender idefuckingology is introduced at such a young age is that women’s rights mean nothing. All the women who have fought for hundreds of years to obtain rights and privileges that their male counterparts have always enjoyed are now transphobes. This includes the women who died for the right to vote. And the women who stood up and fought against inequality - who fought not to be shackled to men and kitchens. This is not OK. This is not right. All those women have been shat upon from lofty heights by men in skirts.
So finally, with your support and vague knowledge of being part of the #bekindbrigade, it is inevitably you who are pushing for my autistic vulnerable impressionable children to believe they can be born in the wrong body and want to become boys at the age of eleven.
Mostly though, as I sit with these lovely unintentionally 'ignorant' women who really do want equality, who really do tell their children you can be whatever you want to be, who really do think about exactly what they want their children to know and think carefully about how they say it, what I think sitting with these lucky bunch of blissfully unaware women is how I so wish I was just like them.
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Isn't it distressing that, even among those supposedly "enlightened" and "cautious" individuals (example given of homeschool moms who are generally more vigilant and alert to societal problems) there is an undercurrent of misplaced "charity" for those in this cult?
As a homeschool mom (just as vigilant as I could possibly be), I lost our eldest to this cult. I simply could not fathom the depths of this movement or comprehend the forces at work on my son. There was a naivete and personal innocence at work in me and my husband that left us in a stupor. I believe this is the case with many parents. This is simply beyond our grasp . Although we NEVER would (or have) affirmed our son's dysphoria, it took too many years to comprehend it and the forces working against us to encourage him in it to truly find ways to help him. By the time we did, it was too late. We're the "bad guys" who refuse to use the pronouns, name, etc. that his cult has inflicted upon him.
My point is this: we ALL need to wise up and be vocal, especially to those who are being deceived into believing that there is a way to "gently, kindly" address this cult. Back in the 70s, the parents who "kidnapped" their kids out of the Moonie movement were upheld as heroes; their kids were overwhelmingly accepted into "deprogramming" clinics. Likewise, parents of anorexic daughters were supported and thanked when stepping in to get medical and psychological treatment to save them.
Not so with us! We're all being told that the best thing we can do is set aside our own deeply held beliefs and conform to this "new reality." We're monsters if we don't. We're the ones perceived as sending our children hurtling toward suicide when we draw that line in the sand.
I was very grateful to read recently that one college, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, recently published a new compendium of behavioral guidelines for students and staff which included a section on transgenderism. It was refreshing to read: “In recent years, this term has increasingly been used in such a way as to presuppose — falsely — that a person can have a more fundamental ‘identity’ having to do with sexuality that is different from his or her biological reality,” the compendium says. “It is then supposed that there are many different types of ‘gender identities’ and that a person’s gender can change, perhaps quite frequently. Such suppositions become incoherent since, separated from a grounding in genuine, biological sexual differences, ‘gender identities’ can have no objective basis for how to distinguish them. Because a human person is a body-soul composite, not a soul or consciousness somehow inhabiting or possessing a body, he or she cannot actually be a woman inside a man’s body, a man inside a woman’s body, a neuter self, a third sex, or so on.”
Thus, “members of the university community should avoid using pronouns or titles of address (e.g., Mr., Ms., etc.) for themselves or others that are inconsistent with a person’s objective sexual identity,” the document says. “Even if intended as an act of charity, agreeing to use so-called ‘preferred pronouns’ or related titles of address — given our present cultural context — indicates approval of another person’s rejection of his or her objective sexual identity, or could easily be taken as approval. Hence, the use of such pronouns provides a negative witness in relation both to the person addressed and to all present or aware of the situation.”
YES!!! It is a NEGATIVE witness to affirm what is false!! It is NOT an act of charity, but rather, truly, a damnation into a lifestyle that will cause endless trial, suffering, medication, anxiety, depression and ruptured relationships. It is a dark, destructive and fear-driven mentality that society has slowly been bullied into accepting that says we must affirm. Truth is, there is no time for anyone to talk gently or overindulge when a child's life is in danger! If this ugly cult is ever going to be destroyed and children saved from it, we all MUST speak the truth with clarity and fortitude.
And finally, let me say unequivocally that, not matter HOW you choose to educate your children: public, private, home, or otherwise, if they have ANY internet or media access, they will be exposed. ALL of our children are at risk of succumbing to this because of its overwhelming prevalence online. Be ready to UNPLUG! Be vigilant. Be vocal. Be fearless. But be truly charitable!! Anger and blame and hate will never overcome evil. I love our son unconditionally and will never stop praying for him. May God have mercy on him and all those lost in this terrible cult.
Yes, I remember those days of blissful ignorance. There is no going back. The “be kind” thing isn’t about being kind. It’s about feeling and looking kind in the moment. It’s a mark of shallowness. I am sure I have been guilty of it in the past so I get it. It is the easier road to take. It avoids unpleasantness and discomfort. It’s just a meaningless social courtesy. But the way it’s played out with gender ideology is a whole different thing, a very dark and destructive thing.