Gender Politics

Delusions of Gender | Matt Walsh (WSJ Article Added)

Published by Papa Giorgio

There’s no doubt about it, the Left has transformed gender from a biological fact into an ideological opinion, but how did we get to this point? Why is everything the Left tells you about gender wrong?

Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh dispels the Left’s delusions of gender during a special event from The University of Texas at Austin. This event is part of Young America’s Foundation’s Robert and Patricia Herbold Lecture Series.

YAF makes every effort to host in-person campus events. Unfortunately, administrators at the University of Texas at Austin limited attendance to only 99 for this event.

Here is an excellent WALL STREET JOURNAL article (via TOP TECH SOLUTIONS):

‘What are your pronouns?” is a seemingly innocuous question that has become increasingly common. Pronouns are now frequently displayed prominently in social-media bios, email signatures and conference name tags. Vice President

Kamala Harris

features “she/her” pronouns in her

Twitter

bio, and Transportation Secretary

Pete Buttigieg

includes “he/him” in his. Then there are the singular “they/them” pronouns used by “nonbinary” people who identify as neither male nor female, as well as a growing list of bespoke “neopronouns” such as “ze/zir” or “fae/faer,” and the even stranger “noun-self” neopronouns like “bun/bunself” which, according to the

New York Times,

are identities that can encompass animals and fantasy characters.

A recent survey of 40,000 “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth” in the U.S. found that a full 25% use pronouns other than she/her and he/him exclusively. The Human Rights Campaign, which claims to be the “nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” recently tweeted that we should all begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are __________. What are yours?” We are told that asking for, sharing and respecting pronouns is “inclusive” to trans and nonbinary people, and that failing to do so may even constitute violence and oppression.

If this all sounds confusing and makes you uncomfortable for reasons you find difficult to articulate, you’re not alone. While being subjected to constant rituals of pronoun exchanges may seem silly or annoying at best and exhausting at worst, in reality participating in this ostensibly benign practice helps to normalize a regressive ideology that is inflicting enormous harm on society. To understand why, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with its core tenets.

Proponents of gender ideology have completely decoupled the terms “man,” “woman,” “boy” and “girl” from biological sex. Gender ideology teaches that the terms “man/boy” and “woman/girl”—and their corresponding “he/his” and “she/her” pronouns—refer to a person’s gender identity, while “male” and “female” refer to biological sex. While you may define a woman as a female human adult, gender ideology contends that a “woman” is an adult of either sex who simply “identifies” as a woman.

But what does it mean to “identify” as a man or woman?

Gender activists believe that being a man or a woman requires embracing stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, respectively, or the different social roles and expectations society imposes on people because of their sex. Planned Parenthood explicitly states that gender identity is “how you feel inside,” defines “gender” as a “a social and legal status, a set of expectations from society, about behaviors, characteristics, and thoughts,” and asserts that “it’s more about how you’re expected to act, because of your sex.”

A recent New York Times piece refers to “men, women and gender nonconforming people,” as though gender nonconformity were incompatible with being a man or a woman. According to the Genderbread Person, a popular educational tool for teaching young children about gender identity, the properties of “man-ness” and “woman-ness” include certain stereotypical “personality traits, jobs, hobbies, likes, dislikes, roles, [and] expectations.”

The clear message of gender ideology is that, if you’re a female who doesn’t “identify with” the social roles and stereotypes of femininity, then you’re not a woman; if you’re a male who similarly rejects the social roles and stereotypes of masculinity, then you’re not a man. Instead, you’re considered either transgender or nonbinary, and Planned Parenthood assures you that “there are medical treatments you can use to help your body better reflect who you are.” According to this line of thinking, certain personalities, behaviors and preferences are incompatible with certain types of anatomy.

So when someone asks for your pronouns, and you respond with “she/her,” even though you may be communicating the simple fact that you’re female, a gender ideologue would interpret this as an admission that you embrace femininity and the social roles and expectations associated with being female. While women’s-rights movements fought for decades to decouple womanhood from rigid stereotypes and social roles, modern gender ideology has melded them back together.

Coercing people into publicly stating their pronouns in the name of “inclusion” is a Trojan horse that empowers gender ideology and expands its reach. It is the thin end of the gender activists’ wedge designed to normalize their worldview. Participating in pronoun rituals makes you complicit in gender ideology’s regressive belief system, thereby legitimizing it. Far from an innocuous act signaling support for inclusion, it serves as an implicit endorsement of gender ideology and all of its radical tenets.

Let me offer an analogy. Consider the Human Rights Campaign urging people to begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are ________. What are yours?” Now imagine a similar request from the American Federation of Astrologers encouraging everyone to begin conversations with, “Hi, I’m a Sagittarius. What’s your sign?” To respond with your own star sign would be to operate within and signal your tacit agreement with the belief system of astrology. If you reject astrology and respond to the question with “I don’t have a sign,” the reply might be “Of course you do! When were you born?” But that’s a completely different question.

Similarly, if you reject gender ideology’s claim that men and women are defined by their willful adherence to masculine and feminine roles and stereotypes, and so refuse to answer a request for pronouns, your interlocutor might say, “We all have pronouns! Do you identify as a man or a woman?” But because that concept of man and woman is nothing like yours, stating pronouns will only further normalize the ritual and validate a radical worldview.

The redefining of “man,” “woman,” “boy” and “girl” around sex-related stereotypes has serious real-world implications. The rejection of these stereotypes is now commonly viewed as a medical condition (gender dysphoria) to be treated with puberty blockers (for children), cross-sex hormones and surgeries that result in permanent sterility and consign patients to a lifetime of medical bills. The redefinition is also threatening the safety of women in prisons, as well as compromising the safety, fairness and dignity of women and girls in sports, as males who simply “identify” as girls or women are allowed access to these protected spaces.

The effort to resist gender ideology is reality’s last stand. We simply can’t ignore fundamental realities of our biology and expect positive outcomes for society. Pronoun rituals are extremely effective at normalizing and institutionalizing the abolition of biological sex in favor of gender identity. These rituals take advantage of people’s confusion and compassion to achieve compliance. But the time for politeness has long passed. The only proper response to the question “What are your pronouns?” is to reject the premise and refuse to answer.

Mr. Wright, an evolutionary biologist, is managing editor of Quillette.

 

 

Royal Gnosticism Displayed By the “Religious Left”

Published by Papa Giorgio

Clay Travis and Buck Sexton cover the recent Microsoft Employee Introductions during the company’s recent “Ignite” conference. This is a shorter version of a longer clip (LONG VERSION HERE), but the point of introducing “royalty” I thought deserved a segment of its own. I include the call by the blind gentleman.

A couple posts on the topic for the people who want to follow up on this:

  • ‘I’m a Caucasian Woman:’ Microsoft Event Highlights the Future of Woke Capitalism (VOICES OF A NATION)
  • ‘WTF Is This’? Microsoft Security Podcasters Introduce Themselves By Race, Gender, And Hairstyle (In Case You Couldn’t Tell By Looking At Them) (TWITCHY)
  • Microsoft Mocked for ‘Utterly Bananas’ Employee Introductions (RED STATE)

And a few weeks ago I heard something by Michael Knowles said at a DAILY WIRE symposium (DAILY WIRE BACKSTAGE: LIVE AT THE RYMAN) that really hit home with me. You always hear about “Leftism” being “religious,” or environmentalism being a “stand in religion,” and the like. This in my mind’s eye give the Postmodernist/Gnostic combo a real metaphysical “umph.”

Michael Horton defines some of the old vs. new aspects of “Gnosticism” (WAYBACK MACHINE). And Voddie Baucham describes how the Critical Race Theorists use it to “know” what is racist: “Voddie Baucham – What Is Ethnic Gnosticism?”

  • (Reform Wiki) In this clip, Pastor Voddie Baucham explains his phrase, “Ethnic Gnosticism,” which is the concept that certain people have a secret knowledge about racism because of their ethnicity.

Bari Weiss Wrecks CNN’s Brian Stelter!

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Just note “far right” is believing that gender/sex is binary) Bari Weiss, a former editor at The New York Times, spoke to CNN’s Brian Stelter about the tens of millions of regular Americans who know this to be true (despite what the mainstream media tells you to believe): “The world has gone mad.”

Brian Stelter is wrong… YouTube is increasingly removing (along with Twitter and Facebook and other social media outlets) any push back on “gender fluidity” and MANY other topics. Corporations disallow many a person’s views that tend toward conservative ideals. The schools and universities? Fuhgeddaboudit! And while Barry Weiss might have had CNN medical contributor Dr. Leana Wen remarked in June that any investigation of the lab theory shouldn’t lead to anti-Asian discrimination mixed up with this science writer for The New York Times who says promotion of the theory that the virus was manufactured in a Wuhan, China lab and escaped is “racist.” Glenn Greenwald notes the Tweet:

Stelter may also start with the Yale Law administrators who suggested a student’s membership in the Federalist Society could be grounds for discipline, including preemptive disbarment. I could go on, but I need to go to work.

SKITS: Nightmare In Paradise | 3-year Old Chooses Gender

Published by Papa Giorgio

MOONBATTERY hat-tip:

  • A recent arrival from Kansas learns what it is like to run a business in the People’s Republic of California…. You can see why the pathologically despotic Michael Bloomberg sees hyper-regulated California as a model to emulate. You can also see why moving vans tend to be full when they leave California and empty when they return. But the Third World still keeps the state’s population growing, if slowly.

Another skit where a 3-years old “chooses” his gender:

“Heteronormativity” – Dennis Prager Discusses Hallmark

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager takes a call from someone who brought up the “Hallmark Channel” controversy (see PJ-MEDIA for more). It is instructive because Prager is good at arguing politely for the ideal to be defended. Which is instructive for us all. (THE COLLEGE FIX has an interesting “Notre Dame” story on this very topic of “heteronormativity”):

Another Gay Man That Opposes Same-Sex Marriage #SSM

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted March 28, 2013)

Here is what Doug Mainwaring has to say on the issue via his article: “Same-Sex Marriage: We’re Playing Chess, Not Checkers” In another article, Ryan Anderson notes the tactics of the Left:

The Left’s Three Techniques on Marriage Redefinition — and How to Counter Them

This week, everyone’s talking about gay marriage. And as the Supreme Court weighs opinions on two, key court battles, both sides of the ongoing debate are on edge and continuing to advance their views on the matter. But among the many voices speaking out against same-sex marriage is one that may shock you: Doug Mainwaring, a conservative activist who is gay.

But the Left also has deployed three distinct tactics: First, they’ve been successful at oversimplifying the issue, personalizing it and refusing to engage the complexities of social reality. Second, they’ve implied that the LGBT community speaks in one voice. And third, they’ve demonized their opponents as “bigots” and “haters.”

We need to better understand the Left’s strategy, for there are lessons here.

Who could be against expanding benefits for more people? That’s the first technique the Left used: Oversimplify the issue while personalizing it. Redefine marriage so more people get health care or tax exemptions or whatever other grab bag of goodies you want to focus on. (Never mind that you don’t have to redefine marriage to solve policy problems.)

Viewed in this light, the marriage debate is like so many other liberal-conservative divides. Take almost any bad social or economic policy. It’s easy to identify the winners—the family getting Obamacare, the corn farmer getting a subsidy, the bank getting bailed out, the worker making an inflated wage. These all can be cast as stories of people getting “stuff.”

[….]

This is hard to counter, but it can be done. And we have to do a better job at it. We need to call out the Left when they oversimplify complex human realities. We also need to effectively communicate complexities using stories and examples.

The Left’s second technique is to disparage dissenters. Marriage revisionists mimic the tactics of abortion advocates. Pro-life women have been demeaned as women-in-name-only. Now gays and lesbians who oppose redefining marriage are described as self-loathing. Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer claim to speak for all women on abortion, while Andrew Sullivan and Zach Wahls are held up to speak for all LGBT families.

It is a strategy expressly devised to marginalize the experiences of folks like Bobby Lopez (see his article “Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Child’s View”) and Doug Mainwaring (who was raising his kids with his partner when he realized they needed a mom—his ex-wife—and wrote “I’m Gay and I Oppose Same-Sex Marriage”).

We need to do more to make heard the voices of such brave people. And in doing so we’ll address that first challenge of demonstrating complexities through real-life examples.

Lastly, the Left has tried to bully us into silence. A principal strategy of the forces that have worked for 20 years to redefine marriage has been cultural intimidation—threatening defenders of marriage with the stigma of being “haters” and “bigots.”

They’ve said anyone who disagrees is the equivalent of a racist. They’ve sent a clear message:  Stand up for marriage, and we will, with the help of our media friends, demonize and marginalize you. Just ask Dan Cathy, president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A.

And now this last technique has made its way into a Supreme Court decision. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion that the only reason Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 was to “disparage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean” and “humiliate” gay and lesbian Americans. 

This kind of grotesque incivility is toxic. The fact that it is part of a majority opinion is not just outrageous but frightening.

[….]

So we marriage advocates must continue speaking out.  But we also need to learn how to state our case succinctly and winsomely: Marriage is the way that societies from time immemorial have united a man and woman as husband and wife to be mother and father to any children born of their union. That’s how children are provided with the precious gift of being brought up in the publicly supported bond of the mom and dad whose union gave them life.

Let’s refuse to be cowed into silence. Let’s redouble our efforts to help our fellow citizens to understand what every political community prior to the year 2000 understood.

Catchy slogans can address complicated issues for only so long. Eventually reality prevails. Silencing dissent may be possible at first, but over time more and more people find their voices.

Bullies may intimidate for a season, but in the end truth wins out.

See also THE BLAZE’S post about Doug entitled, “GAY ACTIVIST SHOCKS CRITICS WITH THIS SCATHING OP-ED…AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE” (Also LIFE SITE NEWS as well as Doug’s PDF)

Don’t know that “nixing” gender comes with these cases that this brave gay man mentioned above when he said, “Same-sex marriage will do the same, depriving children of their right to either a mom or a dad.” Here is part of the bill from Minnesota, Doug’s home state, that attempted just this:

But a look at SF925 reveals that something much more insidious than advocates let on is underway. This bill would strip the words “mother” and “father” of meaning under Minnesota law. Henceforth, the bill states, these words — among the most beloved and culturally freighted in the English language — “must be construed in a neutral manner to refer to a person of either gender.”

For more on this, see my post linked in the picture above, as well as Massachusetts doing the same. This should engender ANY conservative or conservatively minded libertarian (gay or straight) to oppose this movement predominantly guided by the Left and the many low-information (young) voters.

“[The laws of any state rest on] the basis that the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.” — Supreme Court, 1885

Here is another gay man talking about what marriage IS:

One of the most respected Canadian sociologist/scholar/homosexual, Paul Nathanson, writes that there are at least five functions that marriage serves–things that every culture must do in order to survive and thrive. They are:

1. Foster the bonding between men and women
2. Foster the birth and rearing of children
3. Foster the bonding between men and children
4. Foster some form of healthy masculine identity
5. Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults

Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues “Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival, … every human societ[y] has had to promote it actively . … Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.”

Going further he stated that “same sex marriage is a bad idea” …[he] only opposed “gay marriage, not gay relationships.”

Girls As Young As Eight Given Testosterone

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via the HERITAGE FOUNDATION:

Here is more about this from THE CHRISTIAN POST

WASHINGTON — Medical doctors and a mom of a trans-identifying child are urging the government to shut down medical operations that are harming children.

Their efforts to resist the medicalization of gender has led them to discover that government-funded research now allows wrong sex hormones such as testosterone to be given to girls as young as 8.

At a Thursday panel at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Dr. Michael Laidlaw addressed the medical harms of hormonal treatments and surgical interventions being performed on young people who believe they are the opposite sex. Doctors administering these treatments are advocating these harmful practices on increasingly younger children, he explained.

Today, medical scenarios such as girls as young as 13 and 14 undergoing double mastectomies and 17-year-old boys with penises of 9-year-olds, developmentally speaking, because of chemical puberty blockers, are now showing up, Laidlaw, a Rocklin, California-based endocrinologist, explained in his remarks.

[….]

To date, hormone blockers such as Lupron, which is used to treat both prostate cancer patients and children with precocious puberty, has never been through an FDA-approval process for the purpose of blocking normal puberty, and is prescribed off-label. Laidlaw refers to puberty blockers as a form of “chemical conversion therapy” and noted that the largest professional association for endocrinologists, The Endocrine Society, now recommends delaying puberty in gender dysphoric youth at Tanner stage 2, which is soon after the pubertal signals in the brain begin to occur.

The reason that Jazz Jennings, transgender star of the TLC series “I am Jazz,” has reportedly never had any sexual sensations or orgasms is because his natural puberty was halted at this stage and was not allowed to occur, the California doctor explained. These puberty-blocking drugs also disrupt normal brain and bone development, putting kids at future risk of osteoporosis, he said.

In England, Oxford professor Michael Biggs discovered through a freedom of information request that at the Tavistock gender clinic, children reported greater self-harm with these particular medications, and girls exhibited greater emotional problems and dissatisfaction with their bodies, Laidlaw noted.

“Now you’d think if you had these side effects of these medications, wouldn’t you want to stop?” Laidlaw asked.

During his presentation, he played video clips of two doctors active in the medical transitioning of children, Ilana Sherer and Johanna Olson-Kennedy.

Sherer explained that puberty blockers are given to children at age 8 or 9, when they are in third and fourth grades. Olson-Kennedy is doing a 5-year study, for which she has received a $5.7 million National Institutes of Health research grant, and in one of her publications, it shows that mastectomies have been done on girls as young as 13. In the clip Laidlaw showed, Olson-Kennedy is seen on tape insisting adolescents have the capacity to make life-altering decisions, including to have their breasts removed….

Sex Matters (Sean McDowell)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Are the differences between men and women biological or socially constructed? What do women want from a relationship? What do men want? Are they the same? Or are they much different? Sean McDowell, Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Biola University sorts it all out in this eye-opening video.

Why You Can’t Argue with a Leftist

Published by Papa Giorgio

When two people share the same goals, they can disagree – even strongly disagree – and still have a productive discussion about how to reach those shared objectives. As comedian and author Owen Benjamin explains, the problem with America today is we no longer share the same goals, and that’s tearing us apart.

Daughters Are Coming Back From College, Men

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dennis Prager discusses a topic that is really a new piece of Leftist propaganda (within the past 5-years), that is, rapid onset gender dysphoria. Over the years of studying cults, brainwashing, separating children from family, etc., I see much of this in the inundation of these ideas in concentrated forms and peer pressure at the university.

The articles referenced by reading from the College Fix are these:

This is a travesty! The Left and Leftist parents and doctors start to block hormones in pre-teen children, when about 90% of young people who have “gender dysphoria” settle on being either gay or straight, and not trans. It is child abuse, number one. And number two, it is no different than the “psychosurgery” that was popular in the 40’s-60’s – that of lobotomies. It is sick. It was wrong then just as it is wrong now. Doctors and psychologists were wrong then JUST as they are wrong now. Which brings me to number three… it is not scientific.

WSJ: “When Your Daughter Defies Biology“

By Abigail Shrier — Jan. 6, 2019

A reader contacted me under a pseudonym a few months ago. She turned out to be a prominent Southern lawyer with a problem she hoped I’d write about. Her college-age daughter had always been a “girly girl” and intellectually precocious, but had struggled with anxiety and depression. She liked boys and had boyfriends in high school, but also faced social challenges and often found herself on the outs with cliques.

The young woman went off to college—which began, as it often does these days, with an invitation to state her name, sexual orientation and “pronouns.” When her anxiety flared during her first semester, she and several of her friends decided their angst had a fashionable cause: “gender dysphoria.” Within a year, the lawyer’s daughter had begun a course of testosterone. Her real drug—the one that hooked her—was the promise of a new identity. A shaved head, boys’ clothes and a new name formed the baptismal waters of a female-to-male rebirth.

This is the phenomenon Brown University public-health researcher Lisa Littman has identified as “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” ROGD differs from traditional gender dysphoria, a psychological affliction that begins in early childhood and is characterized by a severe and persistent feeling that one was born the wrong sex. ROGD is a social contagion that comes on suddenly in adolescence, afflicting teens who’d never exhibited any confusion about their sex.

Like other social contagions, such as cutting and bulimia, ROGD overwhelmingly afflicts girls. But unlike other conditions, this one—though not necessarily its sufferers—gets full support from the medical community. The standard for dealing with teens who assert they are transgender is “affirmative care”—immediately granting the patient’s stated identity. There are, to be sure, a few dissenters. “This idea that what we’re supposed to do as therapists is to ‘affirm’? That’s not my job,” said psychotherapist Lisa Marchiano. “If I work with someone who’s really suicidal because his wife left him, I don’t call his wife up and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to come back.’ . . . We don’t treat suicide by giving people exactly what they want.”

But giving in to patients’ demands is exactly what most medical professionals do when faced with ROGD. Like fashionable and tragic misdiagnoses of the past, this one comes with irreversible physical trauma. “Top surgery,” a euphemism for double mastectomies. Infertility. Permanent rounding of facial features or squaring of the jawline. Bodily and facial hair that never goes away.

Planned Parenthood furnishes testosterone to young women on an “informed consent” basis, without requiring any psychological evaluation. Student health plans at 86 colleges—including those of nearly every Ivy League school—cover not only cross-sex hormones but surgery as well.

ROGD-afflicted adolescents typically suffer anxiety and depression at a difficult stage of life, when confusion is at least as pervasive as fun, and there is everywhere the sense that they ought to be having the times of their lives. I spoke with 18 parents, 14 of them mothers—all articulate, intellectual, educated and feminist. They burst with pride in daughters who, until the ROGD spell hit, were highly accomplished, usually bound for top universities. Except for two mothers whose daughters have desisted, all insisted on anonymity. They are terrified their daughters will discover the depth of their dissent and cut them off. They are determined to use whatever influence they have left to halt their daughters’ next voluntary disfigurement.

Nearly every force in society is aligned against these parents: Churches scramble to rewrite their liturgies for greater “inclusiveness.” Therapists and psychiatrists undermine parental authority with immediate affirmation of teens’ self-diagnoses. Campus counselors happily refer students to clinics that dispense hormones on the first visit. Laws against “conversion therapy,” which purports to cure homosexuality, are on the books in 14 states and the District of Columbia. These statutes also prohibit “efforts to change a patient’s . . . gender identity,” in the words of the New Jersey law—effectively threatening counselors who might otherwise dissuade teens from proceeding with hormone treatment or surgery.

Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram and YouTube host an endless supply of mentors, who cheerfully document their own physical transitions, omitting mention of dangerous side effects and offering tips on how to pass as a man and how to break away from unsupportive parents. For anxious teens who tend toward obsession, these videos can be mesmerizing. Though the stars are typically pictured alone in a bedroom, they project exuberance and social élan. As one female-to-male YouTube guru who goes by “Alex Bertie” puts it: “Taking testosterone is the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m so happy within myself. It did not solve all of my problems, but it’s given me the strength to make the most out of life and to battle my other demons like my social issues.”

Brie Jontry, a spokeswoman for Fourth Wave Now, an international support network for these families, is one of the two mothers who spoke on the record. She tells me ROGD teens often come from politically progressive families. Many of the mothers I spoke with say they enthusiastically supported same-sex marriage long before it was legal anywhere. Some of them describe welcoming the news when their daughters came out as lesbians. But when their daughters suddenly decided that they were actually men and started clamoring for hormones and surgery, the mothers begged them to reconsider, or at least slow down.

“If your kid went off and joined the Moonies, people would feel sorry for you, and they would understand that this is a bad thing and that your kid shouldn’t be in the Moonies,” one mother, a former leader of the pro-gay organization Pflag, said. “With this, I can’t even tell anybody. I talk to my husband, that’s it.” The couple have faithfully covered their daughter’s tuition, health-care and cellphone bills—even though she refuses to speak to them.

Under the influence of testosterone and the spell of transgression, ROGD daughters grow churlish and aggressive. Under the banner of civil rights, they assume the moral high ground. Their mothers take cover behind pseudonyms. As ROGD daughters rage against the biology they hope to defy, their mothers bear its burden, evincing its maternal instinct—the stubborn refusal to abandon their young.

Ms. Shrier is a writer living in Los Angeles.

 

California Madness: Grammar Police Cannot Follow Own Rules

Published by Papa Giorgio

California knows no bounds when it comes to radical LGBT activism. On Thursday, State Senator and Senate Judiciary Committee chair Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) announced that only “gender neutral” pronouns will be permitted during committee hearings. (DAILY WIRE)

At one point California Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson says, “We are using what my grammar teacher would have heart attack over. We are using the phrase they. My grammar teacher’s long gone. And I won’t be hearing from her. If any of you.” She says it almost in the context that with the death of her grammar teacher, so too dies the old way of speaking. As if here grammar was the arbiter of the truth of grammar.