Gender Incongruence/Transgender
After the meeting
Therefore, what?
Step 1:
Talk to your children
Affirm Your Child's Sex
Regularly affirm your sons in their masculinity and your daughters in their femininity. “I’m so glad God made you a girl!” “I am so happy you’re my child and that you’re a boy!” “What’s good about being a girl (or a boy)?”
Understanding DNA
Can a chicken egg become a sheep? Can a carrot seed become a watermelon? (Opportunity to discuss DNA also determines what sex you become and no matter what costume you put on – or how much you desire it – you cannot become something different than what your DNA is coded to be.)
Imaginative Fun is Not Reality
If I say I am a unicorn does that make me one? (Opportunity to discuss that our feelings, however fun or imaginative, do not constitute reality.)
Have Open Conversations
For Older Children: “Do you know someone who is confused about their gender? What are your thoughts about this?” (Try to make the conversation a dialogue, rather than a lecture.)
Explain Your Family's Position
“We don’t know they ‘whys’ of transgenderism, but there are truths we do know.” (Explain your families positions; such as, “God made humans male and female.” “Individuals are born either male or female. Why might God have made us that way?”)
Be Compassionate, but Speak Truth
Explain that loving and showing compassion to a friend who is gender-confused does not mean that you have to support and validate an untruth. Reaffirm how important it is to always tell and stand up for truth.
Teach about Identity
Teach: A person’s behavior is not their identity. Behaviors do not define anyone. Discuss the dangers of attaching labels to ourselves.
Step 2:
Talk to family members and friends
What does the research say?
The research is quite clear that 75-90 percent (depending on the study) of children who experience gender dysphoria will accept their natal sex by the time they reach adulthood. How relevant is this fact in the overall discussion and does it change your view of how we should respond to gender dysphoria in children?
What is the compassionate response?
Culture, media – even politicians – are promoting the importance of validating individuals in their desire to transition (socially, hormonally, and surgically). Discuss if this helps, or harms, an individual. Is there a better approach, if one is truly caring and compassionate?
Women's Rights
What impact, if any, has the transgender movement had on women’s rights? Why would some women who identify as “radical feminist” strongly oppose transgender activism?
Parental Rights
Should we give government the power to remove a child from their home and the care of parents if “transitioning” is recommended by medical community and a parent(s) do not agree? What do you recommend in these situations?
Step 3:
Engage the Broader Community
Support Prudent Policies
Give support to prudent policies and legislation that prevents adults from interfering with a child’s normal, natural bodily development. (See Chapter 7 of When Harry Became Sally.)
Women's Sports
Get behind and support “Protect Women’s Sports” laws.
Beware of "Public Accommodation" clauses in anti-discrimination laws
Stand against public policies and legislation that make it legal for biological males to access women-only spaces – or to participate in women’s sports. (This type of policy will usually come in the form of “anti-discrimination laws on the basis of SOGI [Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity”] – particularly within “public accommodation” clauses. Read proposed policies/legislation very carefully.)
Conversion Therapy Laws
Oppose laws banning counseling for individuals who experience gender confusion, yet desire to become comfortable with their natal sex. These misguided laws usually take the form of a ban on “conversion therapy.”
*Note: We support counseling for any underlying trauma or for social dynamics at home or school that may play a role in gender dysphoria – not harsh treatments such as electro-shock therapy which is, thankfully, a thing of the past. Unfortunately, “conversion therapy” bans lump all therapies into the same category.
Discover how your child's school handles gender incongruence issues
Monitor how your child’s school handles gender incongruence issues. Especially be aware of the content of the sex education programs, anti-bullying programs, and outside entities being allowed into your school purporting to teach “diversity” and “inclusion.” Know your school’s opt-in/opt out policies. Share your findings with those around you.
Share What You've Learned
Share what you’ve learned on this topic whenever possible, including on social media. Be prepared to have civil, kind and courageous conversations with those around you.
Talking Points-
Gender Incongruence
We should always begin by working to help the mind fit better with the body before we start altering the body to fit the mind.
In children, gender incongruence has an overwhelming probability of desistance, resolving on its own 80 to 95 percent of the time by adulthood, according to an abundance of professional literature.
The risks and permanent consequences of undergoing transitioning are sobering. It makes someone a patient for the rest of his or her life.
Human beings should be affirmed, not false identities and sexual confusion.
Conditioning children to believe a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful should be viewed as child abuse.
(American Academy of Pediatricians)
No amount of opposite-sex hormones or surgery will change the DNA which is imprinted in every single cell of the body.
“Hormone therapy will not alter bone structure, lung volume or heart size of the transwoman athlete, especially if she transitions post-puberty, so natural advantages including joint articulation, stroke volume, and maximal oxygen uptake will be maintained… We conclude that the advantage to transwomen afforded by the IOC guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”
Taryn Knox, et al., “Transwomen in elite sport: scientific and ethical considerations” Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (6) 2019.
Science has documented at least 6,500 genetic differences between men and women. No one disputes this when providing appropriately different medical treatment to men and women. We must approach patients in accordance with their biology, their DNA, not in accordance with their perceptions.
Men produce 570 percent more testosterone than women do, leading to major physical advantages over women in muscle complexion, bone thickness, skeletal muscle mass, and red blood cell count. Studies also show men produce more Type II muscle fibers (fast-twitch muscles) than they do Type I muscle fibers (slow-twitch). This gives them more power and helps make men stronger and faster.
For our children who experience gender incongruence, here are the results of “Affirmative Care:”
-Powerful, dangerous hormones to block kids’ normal puberty.
-High-dose, high-risk sex hormones with deadly blood clot and cancer risks.
-Hazardous surgeries for boys to turn the intestine into an imitation vagina while destroying their penis and removing their testicles.
-Breast binders and mastectomies to destroy teenage girls’ healthy breast tissue, and ovary and uterus removal, ensuring infertility forever.
All of this done in the name of reducing child trans suicide. But we can reduce child trans suicide—by providing proper
mental health care.
Disorders of sexual development (intersex conditions) do not constitute a third sex or a spectrum of sex. There is no third gamete, no third gonad, no third genital, no third reproductive system.
Individuals may feel comfortable with prevailing cultural expectations for persons of their sex, or they may feel uncomfortable. They can decide to act in “non-gender conforming” ways or they can opt to be conventional. None of this changes whether someone is male or female.
If you want to cut off an arm or a leg, you’re mentally ill [Body Identity Integrity Disorder], but if you want to cut off healthy breasts and genitals then you are transgender and you don’t have a mental illness. Try to make sense of that!
Social Media Resources
Help Spread the Word
The Ambiguity Trap
What do you do when you favor a policy or proposed law many people would find unsavory or politically unpalatable? Give it an ambiguous name – something that sounds good and people won’t recognize as questionable. Narrative and communication specialists call it “intentional ambiguity.”
Ambiguous terms and expressions cause confusion and have become associated with anti-family and pro-abortion policies. Examples include: prostitute = sex worker, reproductive health services = abortion, embryonic pulsing = unborn child’s heartbeat, parents = any two people, death with dignity = assisted suicide, fertility regulation = abortion.
Go to opposition websites and news outlets. Learn how those you disagree with think, the strategies they use, and their words and messaging. Then be skeptical when reading proposed laws and policy initiatives. Watch for vaguely worded phrases and always ask for definitions/clarifications. Words matter; so use them carefully – which sometimes means not using certain terms at all. Remember:
“Ambiguity about the truth will be used against the truth.” Ryan Anderson & Robert George
“First learn the meaning of what you say and then speak.” Epictetus