The Devaluation of the Natural Body
How did our society evolve to devalue the natural body? How did we fail to impart upon our kids that we all went through phases of not liking aspects of our bodies and that most people continue throughout their whole lives being distressed about parts of their bodies and how they appear? Most women I know, including myself, will look at a digital photo taken of themselves and ask for a re-do if the angle of the shot or the way we posed accentuated an area that makes us feel self-conscious. I have been known to place my arms in positions that made them look a bit better, tilt my head or body one way or another to have my neck look less wrinkled, or adjust my pose to make my belly look less plump. Women, and probably men, too, start changing how we dress as we age to cover up less desirable-looking body parts, ones that are not as firm as they were in our youth.
Many women and some men, too, will have cosmetic facial work done to keep looking a bit younger. Most humans are not satisfied with their bodily appearance at many points in their lives. Magazines that tend to airbrush girls and women before the photos go to print, as well as the predominance of showcasing abnormally thin models, do not help girls and women feel good about their body image. How can any girl growing up measure up to artificial models they see in the media? Add in social media filters to make people look better, and the odds seem stacked against any girl growing up to be happy with how she looks.
Furthermore, puberty is natural and a basic human right that should not be denied to children. Parents might explain to kids that puberty is a stage of normal development into a healthy adult body and guide them through the process naturally. I know of no one who found navigating the puberty years and the changes their bodies went through to be an easy time.
Sadly, kids might have been told by misguided medical professionals that they can halt the process of puberty if they have become confused. But blocking puberty in most cases is not an appropriate response to a child’s concerns, questions, or confusion. When we start messing with nature and the body’s innate programming, we should not be surprised when kids experience lifelong adverse health consequences. Kids are not able to consent to what these drugs will do to their health when they grow older. They have been robbed of growing up and maturing naturally. Once placed on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, kids become medical patients for life. They will never experience the natural phases of their body’s maturity or the possibility of having a biological family of their own.
Note: In March 2024, the UK banned puberty blockers for children. According to CNN, “England’s National Health Service (NHS) has stopped prescribing puberty blockers for children and young people with gender dysphoria or gender incongruence, saying there is ‘not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness’ of puberty-suppressing hormones.”
Something went terribly wrong, though, when the message that our daughters started to get was that if they didn’t like their body or fit the stereotype of a woman, it was a sign that they were “trans.” It is totally natural to go through phases of displeasure with one’s body, particularly in an age when airbrushed models and filtered photos show unrealistic and unattainable goals. The answer is not to jab a syringe full of testosterone in your leg for the rest of your life and to have your healthy breasts removed with a mastectomy. These drastic measures do not solve body image issues and may even worsen them in the long term. When friends, family, therapists, and medical professionals only affirm irreversible medical measures without questioning a distressed child’s proclamation of wishing to look like the opposite sex, might they be enabling maladaptive thoughts and behaviors that harm the body and future health? If kids are rushed into altering their bodies with drugs and surgeries without exploring the true cause of their distress, might those who are pushing medical procedures be missing a vital piece of the puzzle in understanding the cause of body and gender dysphoria? I do not believe that the practice of affirmation only without question is sound reasoning by any person. Why not attempt to uncover, sort, and heal underlying issues that led to proclamations of being born wrong and hating body parts so much that the child requested their surgical removal?
I cannot believe that our world has gone so far toward disregarding the natural body that girls are having breasts removed with mastectomies and boys are having their genitals removed. It is incomprehensible to parents like me that surgeons dispose of these healthy body parts or incinerate them after their removal, claiming that doing so is a lifesaving procedure (by lifesaving, they mean to imply that the child would commit suicide if the surgery were not performed). I also cannot understand why taxpayer dollars fund these surgeries on kids and why insurance companies find the removal of healthy body parts and healthy reproductive organs to be a worthy inclusion in their policies that we all pay for, even if we don’t know it.
The next level of incredulity of this progression is that parents who do not want these measures taken on their kids’ bodies are demonized. Parents like me are profoundly disturbed that an ideology masquerading as science has been working against our kids and dismantling our families. We cannot believe how many people and institutions call this good medicine. From a parent’s perspective, the world is becoming unrecognizable along with the modified bodies of our precious children.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: I will advocate that the root cause of a child’s distress be explored, treated, and healed. This exploration takes time. Removing healthy body parts and healthy reproductive organs of our children should be the absolute last-resort treatment for body and gender dysphoria. The motto “first, do no harm” is sadly lacking in the world of gender ideology and how it “cares” for our children.
Occasionally, parents see hope on the horizon when young detransitioners speak out about what happened to them. Laura Becker describes herself as a survivor of the trans cult and a detrans whistleblower. She says, “I want to start referring to ‘Gender Affirming Care’ (GAC) as ‘Elective Gender Modification’ (EGM).” Others use the term sex trait modification. Whatever you call the push of “Gender Affirmation Care” with drugs and surgeries, those medical interventions don’t change the innate sex of male and female. Many parents see drastic surgery on their child’s body as elective and not lifesaving in most cases. When will the greater public see it that way too?
Chloe Cole, another brave young woman, has spoken out about the harms of medicalizing kids. She describes herself as a former trans kid who was given puberty blockers at 13 and a double mastectomy at 15, and then she detransitioned back to her natal sex at 16, but her body and health would never be the same again. How many harmed kids does it take to alert people about the medical scandal happening to more and more vulnerable youth?
Doctors are also concerned about the harm befalling kids and the loss of ethics within medicine. In the podcast Gender, A Wider Lens, hosts Sasha Ayad and Stella O’Malley spoke with Dr. Eithan Haim on February 23, 2024. Dr. Haim is the founder of Alliance for Medical Ethics, an organization that promotes freedom of thought and truth in medicine regarding important ethical issues such as sex-modification procedures on minors and COVID-19 policies. Dr. Haim is a general surgeon practicing in Texas and recently completed his residency in General Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Dr. Haim is concerned about a shift in medicine that has lost its goal and sense of the meaning to restore and strengthen naturally occurring physiology. He has observed a movement that seems to be following an ideological pursuit of creating something new and leaning toward a transhumanist approach to patients under physicians’ care.
When drastic medical interventions are rushed, kids might quickly find themselves in a deep hole. Caeleigh MacNeil writes about the concept of sunk-cost fallacy in her February 2024 article, “How the sunk cost fallacy influences our decisions.” She says, “The sunk cost fallacy is our tendency to continue with something we’ve invested money, effort, or time into—even if the current costs outweigh the benefits. When we fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy, we make irrational decisions that are against our best interest—essentially digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole.”
As a parent, I wish to suggest that kids take the off-ramp of cross-sex medicalization while they can. The longer kids move down the path of cross-sex hormones and a progression of surgeries to modify their appearance, the more drugs and surgeries they will need to deal with the adverse effects of the drugs and the complications of the surgeries. They will have signed up to be a medical patient for life, spending more and more time in doctors’ offices and taking additional medications to help mitigate the effects of the cross-sex hormones that flip their bodies’ delicate and natural balance upside down.
Kids may express themselves with clothes, hairstyles, jewelry, and tattoos, if they must, but it is in their long-term best interest to leave their precious bodies alone. Please let all the delicate systems of balance within the body perform their miraculous work without interference. Please be suspicious of those who misguidedly suggest more and more bodily interventions. They are unlikely to have a child’s future health and well-being as their prime motive when they suggest procedures. They may be money-motivated or ideologically driven, neither of which provide children and vulnerable young adults with the true care they deserve. Exercise caution when someone suggests that the body be experimented upon, because many interventions are not reversible if one has regrets, complications, or wants to go back to their natural body because they were not mature enough or in a stable mental state when they agreed to extreme interventions.
I stand with all parents and others who find the “Gender Affirmation Care” approach to the health of our kids a misguided and deplorable trend in our world today. Please wake up and stand up by saying no to unnecessary medicalization procedures on children and vulnerable young adults.
Lisa Shultz advocates for parents’ and women’s rights. She is deeply concerned about the influence of gender identity ideology and the lack of comprehensive, ethical care for children and vulnerable adults.
I, too, am profoundly disturbed by the eager acceptance of what cannot possibly be true. Sex is binary and cannot be changed. The mental health toll is a whole other story.
Thank you for your perspective. I am in agreement.