There’s a huge division between older and younger generations that is deeply frustrating to those of my mid-fifties age group - and this comes sharply into focus with transgenderism. I don’t even “feel” old enough to qualify for this “older parent” age group. Maybe I should just identify as a 28 year old in a 58 yr olds body.
However, younger trans activists and allies think of “coming out” as queer, or LGBTQ+ as if it’s the same thing as coming out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual back in the eighties - the decades that this generation were never alive in, never experienced or were too young for the cultural force of these times to influence their thinking. Sexuality and sexual orientation have been around for millennia, literally since the dawn of humankind. Gender? The nineteen-fifties, maybe.
The conflation of sexual orientation, with gender identity (SOGI’s, as discussed earlier) is another of those fantastic wins for the trans movement, and the appropriation of the term “queer” (in my formative years an insult to male homosexuals) to mean, well, what? Precisely – straight, but gender-brainwashed? Bisexual but also Pangendered? A gender ally? Or maybe you just want some of that trans specialness to rub off on you.
Meanwhile the T in academia appropriate history too, by claiming that the Stonewall Riots in the sixties was started by a trans woman (it wasn’t) while I and my gay and straight friends, a few decades later, were protesting Section 28 in support of gay rights. Trans was nowhere to be seen then. The gender cult make huge efforts to promote the great Transing History Plan. This is the idea that any great Victorian female novelist or doctor HAD to be trans, if they felt forced to adopt the attire of the other sex, (ie adopting the clothing and appearance of a Victorian gentlemen) in order to bypass patriarchy and the gendered roles and expectations of women during that era.
Certain Roman emperors were non-binary it seeems, or gender-fluid, or pansexual, because they had sex with people of both/all sexes and genders. No they didn’t, they were crazed and debauched individuals who would rape any bodily orifice, male or female, by force because they were rapists drunk on their own power and magnificence.
These transing history attempts are used by the cult to cement the idea that trans and queer have always existed, therefore, they are historically valid, therefore they have equal “value” as any other identity that predates our contemporary lives. So this made-up nonsense invades academia and university life in particular. It matters not, how truthful or provable their absurd claims are, trans is not new, they would have us believe it’s as old as time itself. This must be so. Books, conference papers, and careers can be built on this.
When young people so uncritically accept sugar-coated ideas of diversity and inclusion that are inherently “good” without question, you can’t help but acknowledge the simple fact that these young people haven’t yet had their own children, with many still unsure of their own fluid sexuality or sexual orientation. And it costs them so little, to use pronouns when you meet someone new. “Sure, I’ll call you want you want me to call you, you’ll do the same for me”.
The idea that transitioning children is “a generational issue”, or part of the culture wars, is derisory. Think about what it costs a parent, to be berated for not using the compelled speech of pronouns, to be bullied by their own child who they saw born into the world - as sexed baby boys or girls. So many of these parents brought up their children and celebrated their child’s gender nonconformity or opposite-sex preferences, just as we did. They are having their truth, their reality stolen by their own children in hoc to the bodily dissociation celebration of their generation.
How have we completely lost sight of a young persons ability to be gender nonconforming within their own sex class? Instead, we have a generation of young people sterilized by drugs and mutilated by unnecessary surgery. Other young allies and supporters cheer it on. It must be social suicide today, for any young person to be Generation Z AND gender-critical. I applaud those that are; those that have the critical thinking skills to challenge the dogma and the propaganda of this authoritarian ideology.
Are we supposed to spend a lifetime pretending? Is that compliance enough? It always comes down to “I know that’s a lie, YOU know that’s a lie, WE ALL know that’s a lie” and yet here we are again; back in the world of Orwell’s Wrong Think. “It’ll cost me too much if I say the wrong thing”. So many trans people are sold the idea of a lifetime of “passing” that will never happen. It will scar them terribly, betray the brittle nature of their identities, and continue the deep anxieties that result from living a life relentlessly dependent on other people’s opinion of them. Listen to the voices of the thousands who have detransitioned. Last look I took, 29,000 members of a Reddit detransition group.
From what I’ve witnessed and understood from many of the young people sucked down this rabbit hole, the trans movement and the men who drive it on, gain massively from the inability of some young people to understand the difference between ones Sexual Orientation, and ones Gender Identity – they bundle the 2 up together, creating a SOGI. We have to work harder at uncoupling them, at pointing out the difference.
LGBTQ groups go into schools and teach gender ideology as fact. We ALL have a gender identity, we’re continually told. Everyone does – and if you don’t it’s because you’re Cis and your gender identity is invisible to you because you have the great privilege of being content with the body you’re born into. So you won’t ever notice something you’re so at ease with? I refuse the term Cis, it’s not necessary. It signals to everyone around you that you’re fully onboard, on-message about gender. You’re in the club. Maybe it’s this that makes you queer without even knowing it.
Along with most parents, I have no problem with children being taught to be tolerant, to be kind, to not punch your friends in the face or bully others. I have no problem with young children being taught that families come in all different shapes and sizes, that Pippa Penguin can have 2 mummies, or that Oscar lives with his 2 dads. No problem at all.
But I do have a huge problem with 3 – 7 year olds being confused and upset by the teaching of gender ideology as fact. Trans funded LGBTQ groups that come into schools to undertake this “training” (for the benefit of staff, as much as the pupils) encourage young children to believe that they are “trans” - because the child’s gender nonconformity is somehow held up as evidence of interest in the oppositely-sexed stereotypical behaviours and interests. Many of these children use a different name behind their parents back, treat the pupil as the other sex, or ask them to believe that there are over 100 different genders. Or was that just CBBC training videos? It’s all out there, for everyone to see. Many large LGBTQ organisations make no effort to hide it.
A large number of these training organisations use themes of Diversity or Inclusion, as the means to smuggle in gender ideology. Not just in schools, but into businesses and organisations. I’m all for Diversity. I’m all for Inclusion – but Inclusion, as a concept, necessitates the widening or dismantling of previously-set boundaries in order that, well, in order that more people can be included. It really doesn’t take long before Queer Theory raises its ugly head – destroying boundaries is critical to an understanding of this infantile pseudo-philosophy – and the overlap of queer theory and trans rights is exposed by the destabilising of familial bonds and family relationships, and of age boundaries. Many schools have been caught out for socially transitioning children, and keeping that knowledge from their parents.
And lets face it, only cults seek to separate child from parent in this way, to sever a sacred bond.
Young peoples confusion over their own sexuality, and inexperience as a natural part of simply being young, is exploited to the full by gender ideologists who groom them with ready answers, stock responses framed through the gender prism, about how the world works, how human sexuality works. Many young people - too challenged by their own mental health and lack of self esteem - uncritically receive it while the grown ups stand at the back of the room, arms folded or staring into their iPhones, oblivious to the mess going on. Our own daughter was schooled behind our backs in knowing precisely what to say to our GP, in order to be referred, in order to have her own diagnosis of gender dysphoria rubber-stamped and confirmed. Cult members had schooled her well.
Some gender critical academics also believe that media-friendly “affirming” parents of their so-called “trans children” (ie gender non-conforming children) actually highlight the existence of Munchausens-by-Proxy – a carer or parent enjoying attention from the harm and abuse their own child suffers. And when you see how these children are conveyor-belted towards life-changing drugs and surgeries, it’s sometimes hard not to agree.
Parents love those social media likes for having such a brave and stunning champion-child to share with the world. Some parents adore the attention that they get, while remaining bludgeoned by “Be Kind” and trans-affirming propoganda.
But Children Cannot Consent to Puberty Blockers, as was so ably demonstrated by recent court rulings in the UK and elsewhere, and where is the will to implement change? Stop this gravy train. A thirteen or fourteen year old girl can’t fully comprehend the implications of being sterilized, by untested drugs. All they see is how brave and boyish these young trans men are, on their skateboarding YouTube channels and “transition journey” films on YouTube.
Well these young YouTube trans men are the happy few that make it (for the time being) the remainder don’t appear to survive the full journey, and it would appear that no long term follow-up studies exist. I think we’re currently on the brink of a tsunami wave of transition regret and desistence. Dig deeper behind the social media gloss and you’ll find those that fell by the wayside or are stuck in some hellish limbo of botched surgeries, failed phalloplasties, or trans regret.
There are also many parents, like ourselves, who have suffered the psychological trauma of being estranged by their own children, as they slip further and further down the spiral of transition and abuse by the groomers and enablers now at the centre of their lives – and the groomers validation is a drug that the groomer must also have for themselves. The cult of gender worship welcomes anyone committed to joining their new queer family. These queer families become small cult bubbles, carefully controlling who’s IN and who’s OUT, by dint of the level of affirmation and validation members offer each other.
Groomers who are already trans or non binary get a huge charge from this – why wouldn’t they? The groomee is validating them. A cycle of co-dependency builds. Abusers need Enablers. Relationships become mutual co-dependencies of validation.
The young trans person is then protected by some invisible force-field of affirming glitter family and friends. Those who won’t comply with the group delusion are exiled. Un-affirming or concerned parents are replaced with queer “role models” or trans mentors, who will champion the young trans person and school them in their own interpretations of quack Queer Theory. Or encourage splitting from non-affirming family. I’ve read the texts, I’ve seen the conversations. I’ve been told that I fully deserve to have our daughter removed from our lives. I’ve experienced it in real life and am white with rage that it happened to us.
Going on 24/7 as a backdrop to all this, once you look under the bonnet, is an entire generation of young women constantly shown how much entitlement men can take, how much women are expected to step aside and make way for a man, because it’s so much better to be a man. Men can get away with stuff women can’t, and they’re listened to. Their freedoms, rights and responsibilities are respected and self-regulated by patriarchy. Men can mark their own homework.
Young women, on the other hand, are constantly scrutinised in a multitude of unfavourable ways and against an index of impossible and unachievable stereotypes. Well I think this last phrase perfectly sums up what gender appears to be, if anyone dare define it.
When even a man, now, can become a woman, what is the point of remaining as a girl or young woman? They see their own sex appropriated, scrutinized, hated.
As a young man in my early twenties, I lost all this baggage back in the eighties, when sexual ambiguity was all the rage, when it didn’t matter one iota how David Bowie or Marilyn, Boy George or even the doll-faced David Sylvian “identified”, they were simply men, knew they were men, were men in their own right, on their own terms, and didn’t pretend to be the opposite sex.
What do we have now? Little Mix, bra tops, Kardashian role models for young women? anime, pink & blue toy packaging returns, penis packers for toddlers, hyper-sexualised pop culture. I mean come on! Even in the nineties, All Saints sometimes sang in boiler suits!
Like a lot of my generation, I learnt and absorbed just how easy it was to express yourself, to present or to dress any way you wanted. Nothing surprises or shocks me about “the way we look” or “the way we want to be” and it’s been that way for decades. Anyone can be whoever they want to be, how they want to look. It really sickens me to see how far backwards we’ve been sliding – how regressive in particular, the left “progressives” have become, and how futile it has become to ask politicians to examine the erosion of women’s rights and spaces, alongside the widespread abuse of children and young people with poor mental health.
So take a look at today’s young non binary “role models” for example - try Jeffrey Marsh or Alok, or Jamie (all male of course) and what do you see? I don’t see anyone pushing any boundaries, or exploring stereotypes, or expanding the bandwidth of what it means to be a man. I see the pushing and performance of gender ideology on the young, of narcissistic exhibitionism, of a preening, ego-centric, attention-seeking. I see predatory behaviour, and “come and join us in the big queer family”, and plenty of that “Sssh! Don’t tell your parents”. There is nothing edgy or cool about these men.
Is it any wonder then, that embedded within this porn-soaked culture, sexting, upskirting, choking, sexist stereotypes of boy/girl bands, K pop and pop culture, the gaming avatars, deep fake porn, of cosplay, of their daily screen interactions, the online chat boards infiltrated by predatory men, the grotesque cartoons of women seen in drag culture, the cool celebrity non-binary “identities”, it ALL seems to feed into a message that says being a young woman today just isn’t good enough. It’s not worth it. It’s the short straw.
Just stop and look at what men are getting away with. We really need to wake up to this because other men – the bad sort - are hiding it, denying it, deflecting our view of it. Or do men just ignore it? “This happens elsewhere, not in my community”. Grow some balls guys, walk a mile in your daughters shoes around school or campus.
Link that to sexist and misogynistic attitudes of some of their male peers, how “fuckable” their female friends are, how abhorrent and old-fashioned same-sex attraction has become (because gender supplants sex, remember?), and bodily dissociation is the result. It’s well documented if you’re strong enough to look for it. Detransitioners discuss it – though of course we can’t afford to listen to their inconvenient truths, too transphobic. They are outcasts, after all. The cult has sent them to the gulags, along with all the rest of the gender heretics.
This mass psychosis of transing and trans positivity is framed as “finding your authentic self” or “being the best version of yourself you can be”, while surgeons and the medical-industrial complex pocket the dosh and continue to disseminate trans-affirming propaganda through as many influencers and stakeholders as they can find, leaflet-dropping the cult pyramid floors beneath them. They are driven to find new customers, to grow the market. Ideological capture wins constantly.
But people are discouraged from looking, because that would be bigoted and hateful. It’s wrong to question or challenge this authoritarian ideology. Heretics must be punished; you don’t want to be a Terf. Don’t even think of questioning or challenging trans women in sport like Emily Bridges or Lia Thomas. The BBC will report your concerns about males invading women’s spaces to the police, who now drive around in rainbow-painted police cars, calling for “hate crimes” to be reported. Such is the Orwellian world we live in, as of 2022. Wrong Think.
So we end up with the on-going rise in poor mental health, struggling to define gender dysphoria (and its multiple comorbidities) and 40,000 young women- last time I looked - on ONE crowd funding platform begging for money to fund their “top surgery” – that’s a bilateral double mastectomy for trans-identifying girls, likely on top of testosterone, which has already probably made them infertile and may well lead to an early hysterectomy, and a massive victory for the men and money machine that promotes this toxic pseudoscience.
Our daughter, inhabiting an “identity” – a Trans Cult Ambassador - is one of that number and I’m in pieces at the thought of the abuse and grooming that others enacted upon her, for her to even consider that becoming infertile and having your breasts cut off was somehow a price worth paying, for fixing yourself in time, and closing off possible futures she once had the potential to explore.
Listen to the detransitioners, the trans widows, other parents. Demand transparency over what your children are being taught in schools. Don’t be taken in by supporting this cult.
Transing Youth - a cult
✔ Hostile or extreme reaction to dissenting views &/or opinions - yes
✔ Worship of an authoritarian and charismatic leader/idol (replace leader/idol with Unchallengeable Big Idea) – yes to unchallengeable big idea, yes to a number of individual, ‘local’ authoritarian and charismatic mentors/influencers
✔ Parents + close family and friends cut off/excluded/dishonoured -yes
✔ Intoxicating affirmation/confirmation/approval from “above” - yes
✔ Us v Them mentality, splitting, Good v Evil, “Be Kind” mantra -yes
✔ Grooming, indoctrination, bringing in new members, new “recruits” - yes
✔ Distortion of accepted truths or denying facts; manipulating reality – yes
✔ Insistence on maintaining and upholding delusional beliefs - yes
✔ Evidence of “establishment” approval cited as evidence of legitimacy - yes
✔ Outright denial of long-established scientific facts -yes
✔ Hostility, shunning, isolating, ostracising those who leave/detransition -yes
✔ Attempts to impose their own societal model on wider world -yes
✔ Belief in a new world order, new generation, youth as a “sacred caste”, and untouchable or deified (brave and stunning GNC kids) - yes
✔ Use of mind & body-altering drugs and physical transforming procedures -yes
✔ Members encouraged to socialize or link only with other trusted group members
✔ Use of social media, for Love Bombing, blocking, group think, triangulation, indoctrination, forced teaming, cancellation, “educate yourself!” and social contagion (ie vitriolic message to everyone on FB – ending in asking them to de-friend if don’t agree.)
✔ Secrecy, stealth and coercion, used because the ends justify the means - yes
✔ Widespread appropriation and manipulation of language to suit aims –yes
✔ Thought-terminating clichés, mantras, closing down critical thought - yes
✔ Historical Revisionism – “transing history” ie to include well-known historical figures who had to disguise themselves as the opposite sex in order to gain acceptance, reach a professional goal etc framed as T within LGBTQ+ movement
I sometimes have to catch my breath when I think of the scale of it all, embedded within (as you say) every are of public life. A cult, funded and facilitated by a global industry. I think that for a lot of it, people only see one aspect of it, whereas those like us who have - for whatever reason - been forced to see how it all joins up, it still shocks me. I'm still incredulous that more people can't see it yet
As I've said before, you are absolutely right that this is the new version of a cult. The biggest - most scary - difference between this cult and all others is that this cult is supported by every major societal group that ordinarily rejects cults and assists in helping families extricate their vulnerable young from those cults. Schools and universities, government (including our sweet President), the medical establishment (with many ethical objectors being ignored from within), mainstream media, large corporations, and our neighbors - all on-board. Making this the most powerful cult to ever infect our young and our vulnerable.