Our members of Active Watchful Waiting[i] are a mixed group; parents, teachers, health professionals, detransitioners, transexual and members of the LGB community. And I would say, despite our differences and diversity what unites us is our deep concern at the pipelining of young people onto the conveyor belt of products and services that underpins the profits of the gender affirmation industry[ii]. The major profiteers of this industry being the medical and pharmaceutical organisations.[iii]
The major brand of this industry is ‘gender identity,’ to be your ‘authentic self’ via a product line drugs and surgeries. It’s core target market is the youth, LGB, Autistic, vulnerable youth with mental health comorbidities[iv] and young girls susceptible to social influence and contagion.
With regards to this bill on the table it’s playing it’s part in the ‘gender affirmation’ process in two ways. One being part of the social transition process and two through legitimising the conversion therapy process of LGB children.
So, one, ‘social transition’ starts with documentation. In schools it involves the referencing of and recording of student’s gender identity, new name and pronouns, clothing and bathroom use, etc. [v]
--Changing the sex on the birth certificate is taking the child’s social transitioning to another level, altogether.
This is not a neutral act[vi], most youth if pushed to socially transition will move onto the second stage which is medical transitioning[vii]. This involves taking of chemical castration and endometriosis drugs used to interfere or ‘block’ puberty[viii], cross-sex hormones and the last stage is extreme body modification (mastectomies and physical castration).
Instead of a future healthy life with body undamaged, these children who medically transition are set on course for lifetime pharma-co-logical dependence and increased risk of cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, thrombosis, sterility, and probable sexual dysfunction.
This bill takes an active part in this gender affirmation process because it does not just note the ‘gender identity,’ what the child feels about themselves at that time, it legally falsifies the child’s sex, it is dubious that this bill is affirming an existing ‘transgender identity’ it is for most youth creating[ix] a transgender identity. Because without this type of interference children that have an incongruence or disconnect with their body, up to 80- 98% of them will grow out of it once through puberty.
Furthermore, more than two thirds of those youth who would normally grow out of this will grow up to be gay or bisexual, as there is a high correlation[x] with gender non-conformance, homosexuality and bisexuality. What children are told if they are gender nonconforming is they are ‘born in the wrong body’ because they have a “gender identity” that does not match the gender norms or behaviour expected of their sex. In line with this idea, a female child more likely to grow up lesbian is expected to present as a (trans) boy, and a gender non-conforming male child is expected to identify as a (trans) girl.
Once a child is identified as trans, state education policies, Victoria State schools for example make a ‘gender affirmation plan’ so these impressionable LGB young people effectively are groomed to conform to a heterosexual norm. This is conversion therapy[xi]. LGB organisations like LGB Defence, Coalition of Activist Lesbians, LGB Alliance Australia and LGB Tasmania call it ‘transing the gay away.’
The other distinct cohort is girls. Before 2012, gender dysphoria in the past was almost exclusively boys (roughly .01%). But girls[xii] are now the majority of children who are transitioning, and this is more to do with gender ideation, a fixation on a gender identity, through social influence[xiii] and contagion. There are more than 95[xiv] gender identities thus far.
In research they are commonly referred to though as having ROGD[xv], rapid onset gender dysphoria. My co-founder of AWW also runs Australian Parents of ROGD kids,
she deals with 4-5 calls a week from distraught and desperate parents of these girls.
She told me recently of a typical call, a sobbing father called through desperate to stop his 15 year old daughter from cutting off her breasts. In the state he’s in if he denies her, this is child abuse, and he could lose her to the family court system, so she could be taken from her home as have many others.
Under the family court system there are criminal sanctions if he speaks of this. So, he – and he is one of over 1000 of these parents she has dealt with in the last 7 years, are gagged.
They suffer in silence and the system keeps most Australians in the dark on this reality.
This movement is not a grass roots movement; self-Id laws are one of several laws the trans gender lobbies’ handbook[xvi] (Only Adults? Good practices for legal recognition for youth) instructs trans lobbies to be put into place to enable children to be transitioned.
Sex should in no way be removed, conflated or be replaced with ‘gender identity’ in law. We should affirm all people’s birth sex as their legal sex, while ensuring all people protection from discrimination or interference based on their gender non-conforming appearance or behaviour, that’s’ all.
Catherine Anderson-Karena
Active Watchful Waiting Inc.
[i] https://lostintransition.org/about
[ii] The Business model of youth transitioning https://youtu.be/WH1hV0DkA6U
https://www.lostintransition.org/post/the-gender-industry-international-project-part-3a
[iii] https://jbilek.substack.com/p/big-pharma-big-tech-and-synthetic?
[iv] https://statsforgender.org/comorbidity/
https://statsforgender.org/autism/
[v] https://www.lostintransition.org/victoriapolicy
https://www.lostintransition.org/nswpolicy
[vi] Social transition – changing names, pronouns, clothing and bathroom use – correlates with the persistence of transgender identity.
Paediatric transition doctors in the Netherlands who first pioneered the use of puberty blockers in dysphoric children observe that social transition correlates with an increase in young people’s persistence when it comes to gender identity [1]. This led them to caution against social transition before puberty.
Another paper [2] notes that gender dysphoria is more persistent into adolescence where social transition has occurred, and as such asserts that social transition is a “psychosocial intervention [which] might be characterized as iatrogenic” – a medical problem caused by the treatment itself.
There is evidence [3] that social transition by the child was found to be strongly correlated with persistence for natal boys, more so than for girls.
REFERENCES
[1] de Vries, A. L., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2012). Clinical management of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents: The Dutch approach. Journal of Homosexuality 59 (3): 301–320. [Link]
[2] Zucker, K. J. (2019). Debate: Different strokes for different folks. Child and Adolescent Mental Health 25(1): 36-37. [Link]
[3] Steensma, T.D., McGuire, J.K., Kreukels, B.P., Beekman, A.J. & Cohen-Kettenis, P.T. (2013). Factors associated with desistence and persistence of childhood gender dysphoria: a quantitative follow-up study. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 52 (6): 582-90. [Link]
One study showed that, without social transition, nearly two-thirds of pre-teen gender-dysphoric males grow up to be gay or bisexual.
A University of Toronto study [1] found that 63.6% of boys with early onset gender dysphoria, who received ‘watchful waiting’ treatment and no pre-pubertal social transition, grew up to be gay or bisexual.
Only 12% of the study participants continued to identify as transfeminine.
REFERENCES
[1] Singh, D., Bradley, S.J. & Zucker, K.J. (2021). A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder. Frontiers in Psychology 12. [Link]
[vii] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11341001/NHS-discourage-social-transitioning-gender-questioning-children.html?ito=email_share_article-top
https://statsforgender.org/medical-transition/
[viii]https://www.lostintransition.org/puberty-blockers-are-harmful
[ix] https://statsforgender.org/teenagers/
[x] https://statsforgender.org/sexuality/
[xi] https://www.lgbdefence.org/post/gender-affirmation-transing-the-gay-away
[xii] https://statsforgender.org/females/
[xiii]https://statsforgender.org/social-influence/
[xiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gender_identities
[xv] https://www.lostintransition.org/rogd
[xvi] “Only Adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth” https://www.lostintransition.org/post/the-gender-industry-international-project-part-3a
The Denton’s handbook. Dentons, partnered with media conglomerate Thomson-Reuters to create a Trans Gender Diverse (TGD advocacy handbook, colloquially called the Denton’s Handbook, entitled; “Only Adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth.” (https://www.iglyo.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IGLYO_v3-1.pdf)
It focuses on strategies to mitigate the gender industry’s business risks. It also sets out 8-9 common goals for trans lobbies to pursue which creates alignment for advocacy across the world. i.e., in relation to minors
“Extending the process (self-id gender recognition) to minors” (pg. 16)
· Remove parental consent to medical & social transitioning to the appearance of the opposite sex
· Remove parental consent to the legal recognition of minors, e.g., in schools a child affirmed to be a ‘mature minor’ in order to transition without parental consent or knowledge.
