Gender-affirming or Delusion-affirming?

The term ‘gender-affirming’ is the latest catch phrase sweeping the world. What’s the big deal? It sounds pretty positive on the surface. It tells people that they are doing something good, something accepting and inclusive. That they will be good, upstanding people if they support this ideology.

Of course we want to affirm people’s gender-identity, right? It’s the morally righteous thing to do.

The problem is that ‘gender-affirming’ is one of those terms coined by the woke establishment to brainwash and mislead innocent people into jumping on the latest globalist propaganda bandwagon. Instead of actually affirming a person’s gender, it is affirming a dysfunction or a set of false beliefs.

Let’s say a small child expressed feelings of unworthiness, feeling not good enough, bad, ashamed of themselves as a person. Now imagine an adult saying to that child, “You are right. You are a bad, shameful, worthless piece of shit. You deserve to feel awful about yourself. In fact, you should feel bad about yourself for the rest of your life.” This would be considered emotional child abuse. Yet it is exactly what is happening with the current push for woke ‘gender affirmation’.

True gender affirmation would sound something like this:

4-year-old boy: “I like playing with dolls, I think I am a girl.”

Parent/teacher/counselor/rational adult: “Playing with dolls doesn’t mean that you are a girl. You can be a boy and like playing with dolls, just like you are doing right now.”

9-year-old girl: “I wish I had been born a boy.”

Parent/teacher/counselor/rational adult: “Tell me more about why you think that?” 

9-year-old girl: (Tells her story about why she thinks being a boy would be better)

Parent/teacher/counselor/rational adult: “I really hear you think that ____. And everyone feels that way sometimes, like they just wish they could be someone else. What I have learned is that we are all perfect just the way we are. You were born a girl, and that means that being a girl is exactly right for you. You are lovable and acceptable just the way you are.”

To me, true gender affirmation would mean supporting someone to love and accept their biological gender as perfect, no matter what false narratives they might be running on the mental or emotional level. The role of the rational adult has always been to support people to overcome delusion and accept their reality. The fact that many seemingly intelligent parents and health professionals of all kinds have willingly jumped aboard this dysfunction-affirming bandwagon demonstrates their lack of simple reasoning skills.

Thankfully, I’ve had the joy to work with some parents who still have access to critical thinking and reasoning skills. 

Here are a few snippets of my experience with children who wanted to change their gender:

There was an 11-year-old girl who expressed to her teacher that she wanted to be a boy. Her teacher, school nurse, and school counselor immediately began calling her ‘he/him’, changed her official school name to Dustin from Christine, and informed the parents that they would begin puberty blockers after a series of three (3!!) required counseling sessions. The parent asked my opinion. I said that there would be a very obvious underlying issue giving rise to her feelings, and encouraged the parent to hold off on the puberty blockers. I then referred a healthy, rational counselor for the child. After one session, the counselor informed the parents that the child had become traumatized during a sex education class. She was terrified of the idea of having painful period cramps, and so she decided if she was a boy she could avoid menstruation. After the counselor supported the child to overcome her normal fears, the child matter-of-factly announced that she was Christine again. The parents were amazed at how quickly and easily this whole identity crisis was resolved.

A 13-year-old boy wanted to be a girl. After a few counseling sessions with me, it was evident that his feelings had nothing to do with actually wanting to become a different gender. He was simply envious of how girls were treated in his family. He was being raised in a family where there were high expectations placed upon the male children in terms of education and career choice. He felt it was an unfair double-standard, and he was bitter that his sisters had it easier. The counseling supported him to see that changing gender as an act of rebellion would only introduce a whole new set of problems, many of which he had never considered. Instead, he learned strategies to better cope with his big feelings, learned how to communicate his feelings of unfairness in a more respectful manner with his parents and teachers, and learned how to speak to himself with less judgment and more compassion inside of his own head. He became both accepting and proud of who he was.

A 15-year-old girl wanted to be a man instead of a woman. It took a few sessions with me to get to some underlying issues. Many old traumas surfaced, with memories of her mother being abused by her father. She had a belief that men held all of the power and that women held none, so she thought becoming a man was the only way to have any control over her life.

After some deep, vulnerable self-reflection, she came to the startling self-awareness that she didn’t actually want to be a man, she simply had lots of judgment towards her mother that she had applied generally towards all womenkind. She judged her mother as weak, passive, a cowardly victim for never standing up for herself. She feared that she would end up as a victim of spousal abuse, that she would follow her mother’s patterning and act like a passive doormat to a domineering husband. She did beautiful inner work and claimed her power as a strong, capable, authentically powerful woman who knows her worth, commands respect, asserts healthy boundaries, and knows that vulnerability is a superpower, not a weakness. 

In all of my experiences with gender confusion, body dysmorphia, sexual identity, or anything having to do with gender or sexuality, there has always been an underlying cause that could be resolved with simple counseling tools: active listening, self-reflection, applying self-compassion to the old stories, clearing old trauma, updating limiting beliefs, and cultivating genuine self-acceptance.

In short, a child’s gender identity confusion can be easily and effectively treated the same way as any other mental health issue by competent, rational adults.

Much Love, joy, and light ahead to the awakening of humanity