Why Gender Ideology Doesn’t Impress Me — Part 1

Are We Ready to Look At It and Talk About It?

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

To say I’m not impressed with gender ideology is a massive understatement. Still, my reasons for being unimpressed are many, both personal and public. I’ve gathered them here as a collection in hopes that they will resonate with those impacted by, or advocating for those impacted by, this destructive ideology. In some sections, I provide links to my previous essays; in others, I point to articles by other writers. It is time for an open discussion focused on common sense and then a political unification for course correction away from an ideology that has gone too far.

Here are a few of the many reasons I’m not impressed with gender ideology:

Gender ideology targets kids and ensnarls them with a profit industry for life

Schools, education policies, and social justice proponents have encouraged and sometimes forced educators to teach children to believe they can be born in the wrong body. They tell kids that boys can become girls and girls can become boys. The ideology includes a funnel system, a gender medicalization superhighway, waiting in the wings to swoop up the children who ingest and accept this belief system. Even kids who are simply confused are sent to this pathway. An “easy” body modification plan is promoted to fix the “wrong bodies.” The multibillion-dollar gender industrial complex is creating a drug and medical dependency, meaning a profit stream, for the life of the captured child.

Those pushing the deception call it “Gender Affirmation Care,” manipulating the language and cloaking it in kind-sounding words so people will accept the plan. Sadly, once kids are medicalized with irreversible body changes from drugs and surgeries (the younger and quicker, the better), they will be “handcuffed” with costly, lifelong medical management. It doesn’t pay well to leave a kid’s body alone, and it is less financially lucrative to heal the issue that made a child reject his or her body. The gender industry doesn’t want the education system or parents to teach the kids to accept their natural bodies or to navigate puberty naturally. Those participating in the industry work hard to disrupt children’s natural development to keep the money-making superhighway open and fast-moving.

Thankfully, we are in a time of reckoning, and gender medicine is being exposed as a scandalous abuse perpetrated on our children. But how many more kids will we sacrifice to reckless experimentation and profiteering before it stops?

Gender ideology manipulates language

By manipulating language and compelling speech (being forced to use language one doesn’t believe in, such as calling others by gender pronouns that often make no sense), the gender industry and activists mislead at best, and at worst, camouflage destructive motives with nice-sounding words or by confusing the public so much that many people no longer know what a woman is. Some people also do not understand that a trans athlete competing in a girls’/women’s team or division is a biological male. Most people don’t have time to study and figure it all out, so they just mindlessly follow the latest policy at work, use the words they are told to say, and then begin to believe biased news outlets that add “anti,” “hate,” and other negative words to any questioning, resistance, protections, or sensible directives. When rainbows are added into the mix, who wouldn’t want to believe it is all a wonderful new development for society to be “trans” or to queer everything?

Thankfully, we are in a time of awakening, and the manipulation of language is being exposed as a tactic to bamboozle people or force them to say words they do not want to say. How much longer will we allow this misuse, even weaponization, of language to continue?

Gender ideology undermines and dishonors parents, harms the parent-child bond, and shatters families

Stripping parents of the authority to parent their child by using emotional blackmail against the parents is a tactic used in gender ideology to destabilize and demoralize those who dare to ask a question or express a concern about their child’s health or gender influence. Gender medicine professionals disempower and scare parents, saying the child will commit suicide (an unsubstantiated claim) if not medicalized immediately. And then others, such as ideologically captured teachers, counselors, social media influencers, and misguided friends and relatives, join the pressuring and undermining tactics by saying that the only way to love a child is to support a medicalized transition.

Gone is a parent’s ability to watch, wait, use caution, protect, teach resiliency, or share adaptive coping mechanisms. The gender industry created the urgency that gender confusion, angst, and the normal discomfort of growing up are medical issues and medical emergencies. If the industry can alter the body immediately with drugs and surgeries, locking in confusion and pathologizing the discomfort of growing up, they succeed in gaining a revenue stream for the life of the child. And once the parents lose their ability to parent and say no to such treatments, the child is easily controlled and manipulated by the motives of the industry.

The ideology subverts parental authority as it devalues parents and breaks familial bonds. As this agenda decimates more and more families, how will society and future generations function without this vital structure?

Thank goodness more parents are speaking up. But how much longer will society allow this ideology to hurt children and decimate families?

“Trans” social media influencers stifle doubts and are motivated by fame and followers

Some people on social media have gained artificial fame by promoting the altering of kids’ bodies and stifling any doubts kids might have about the process. Susceptible young girls are enticed to harm themselves by emulating strangers who profit from them, starting the girls on the trans train of medicalization. The social media influencers don’t have a way to screen the age of the kids who watch them, and they don’t know about the issues, traumas, or underlying comorbidities of the children they pull into their following.

The influencers are building a fanbase to bolster their own decisions to alter their bodies. The more followers an influencer collects, the more they think they are doing something important, even if girls harm themselves as a result. There is no way for the influencer to measure a kid’s mental health when one first shows up as a follower or as one watches video after video about how to take testosterone and move through the body-altering pathway the influencer promotes. When “trans” influencers place their stories and motives before the health of the children or young adults who follow them, the influencers are behaving questionably. It is not a good idea to encourage kids to become medically dependent for the rest of their lives when the influencers don’t even know the kids, their families, their circumstances, or their health issues. Yet social media influencers are willing to entice followers to engage in irreversible medical interventions without the ability to foresee what the youth’s life will be like decades in the future.

Social media influencers don’t gain followers and make money if they welcome doubt. They squash doubt because allowing it would put a crack in the legitimacy of the profit pathway. And discussing doubt, desisting, or detransitioners’ experiences might give space and growth to the influencer’s own buried doubt, which cannot be allowed due to the sunk cost fallacy.

However, Bethany Ward, who provides soul-centered guidance, counters this thrust to coerce and believes in the power of doubt. “Doubt is not the enemy of truth. It is the doorway to deeper knowing. It makes space for what we cannot yet see and allows truth to rise in its own time. If what you believe is true, it will not fear your questions. Let doubt be your guide. Let it break what was never meant to hold. Let it make space for what is waiting to be known.”

The Power of A Single Doubt

Let’s consider if social media could be harming kids, particularly teen girls’ mental health. How many more unchecked social media influencers will recruit our kids to harm themselves by pushing their agendas while simultaneously encouraging kids to ignore doubt?

Gender ideology harms the natural body

It’s hard to believe that we live in an era when children’s bodies are medical experiments, but it is true. Radical interventions are deconstructing kids’ natural functions and natural bodies. How did we arrive at medical “care” that disrupts the natural and delicate ecosystem of a child’s body? Why are we not protecting children’s bodies so they can grow up intact and with normal endocrine and organ functioning? Why are surgeons removing healthy body parts and healthy reproductive organs? Why do some adults think children can consent to a loss of fertility, sexual function, and pleasure and possibly disrupt their ability to pair with another as an adult? How many more healthy bodies will be compromised before the medicalization of gender identities stops?

Gender ideology ignores underlying comorbidities and rushes a quick fix instead of integrating the whole being

I cannot keep up with all the possible reasons a child may declare they are “trans.”

In her article “There Is No Way to Be Born Wrong,” Bethany Ward says, “Those caught in this ideology believe they are listening to their authentic selves. But they are only listening to a fragment. They are taking a single feeling, a single experience, and building an entire identity around it—one that demands permanent, irreversible change.” Ward goes on to say, “You were never meant to cut yourself apart to be whole.”

There Is No Way to Be Born Wrong

Why are medical and therapeutic fields ignoring underlying issues and encouraging fragmentation? When will these fields broaden to offer comprehensive, holistic care?

And finally, we have much to learn from detransitioners who got out of the ideology. But sadly, detransitioners are considered traitors by “trans” activists. Detransitioners do not receive care for the damage inflicted on their bodies. When will these kids receive compassionate care to heal the unnecessary harm inflicted on their bodies?

Readers, does this ideology impress you? If not, let’s get busy, address these issues, and return to common sense, comprehensive care, and compassion for all.

Watch for Part 2 of “Why Gender Ideology Doesn’t Impress Me.”

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.