A couple of years ago I was sitting in the waiting room of
a New York City hospital awaiting my first vaccine shot for
COVID-19 – a virus known, even then, to differentially
impact men and women. The attendant handed me a form to fill
out, which asked if I was a “trans-woman,” a “trans-man,”
“non-binary,” “bisexual,” “don’t
know,” or whether I was a “man” or a “woman.”
Some of the older people in line with me, people from Asia,
Africa, and South America, whose English was slightly compromised,
asked me, worriedly, “What’s the right answer?”
I
laughed and said, “There is no right answer.”
But
I was stunned, mystified. Why and when did all these gender
identity descriptors become official government policy? How
long had this been going on? Who or what was behind it? Had
this all happened, in part, via “stealth” as Sheila
Jeffreys, in her upcoming and powerful book: Penile Imperialism:
The Male Sex Right and Women’s Subordination suggests?
Or had I just been so isolated by the pandemic that I didn’t
get the memo?
In
fact, gender identity descriptors have been underway for a
long time. I certainly noticed it when Women’s Studies,
which I had pioneered, became Gender and Sexuality Studies,
(later Gender/LGBTQIA Studies), and when Ivy League universities
began offering courses in their Gender/LGBTQIA departments
about Black Transgender Caribbean Expatriates or Post-Colonial
Transgender Theology.
I
moaned, I groaned but I also thought: Young people always
have to do it their way.
But
now I know a bit more. In 2015, New York State’s Department
of Education released a 12-page outline about how schools
should address and protect “transgender and gender non-conforming
students” whose needs have previously gone unrecognized.
The document was crafted by the New York Civil Liberties Union
and the Empire Pride Agenda.
“The
school cannot tell the child’s parents what is going
on.”
It
is a practical guideline in which teachers and school administrators
are mandated to call the student by their chosen gender identity,
admit students based on their identity into previously single-sex
spaces, like bathrooms and locker rooms. If a pre-school-age
child prefers to be treated as if they are not the sex they
were “assigned” at birth, the teacher and school
must accommodate this choice, according to the guidance. If
a middle school student has not disclosed their gender identity
at home but does so at school, the teacher must keep the student’s
choice confidential or restricted to school. The school cannot
tell the child’s parents what is going on.
Such
trans and gender identity “rights” are piggybacking
on the hard-won/barely-won rights of girls and women to non-discrimination
under Title IX—but they are also disappearing sex as
a crucial distinction. In America, women do not yet even have
a sex-based Equal Rights amendment—and yet, the current
government wants to expand the Title IX rights to include
gender identity rights and to spell out what the punishments
are for discriminating against, bullying, those who claim
such identities.
As
“trans-women” (boys and men who identify as girls
and women) enter school bathrooms, not to mention all-female
shelters or prisons, they sometimes leer, grope, threaten,
or even assault the “cisgender” girls and women
– just as a portion of any group of men do. I despise
this descriptor: “Cisgender,” but this represents
the same way of thinking that has led to privileging gender
identity over sex; the same mindset has coined phrases such
as: “pregnant person,” “chest-feeding person,”
“body with a vagina,” all phrases positioned to
eradicate womankind entirely.
In
2021, the US Department of Education issued a document titled:
Federal Register Notice of Interpretation: Enforcement
of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 with Respect
to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.
It was signed by Suzanne B. Goldberg, Acting Assistant Secretary
for Civil Rights.
The
Federal Register Notice essentially relies upon but
expands Title IX to include “sexual orientation and
gender identity.” The impetus for this expansion has
come from “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender”
students whose needs are not covered by “Title IX’s
prohibition on sex discrimination.”
“Do
most people understand that the identities we mandate to
respect include surgically mutilating pre-adolescents?”
Interestingly,
The National Center for Transgender Equality, in an undated
Fact Sheet on the U.S. Department of Education Policy, spells
out all these “rights” which specifically concern
“restrooms and locker rooms,” “names, pronouns
and student records,” “dress codes,” “respecting
students’ gender identities,” “confidentiality
of personal information,” and “student health
plans.” It states that “Schools that refuse to
follow Title IX can face serious consequences from the federal
government, even if they are relying on a contrary state law,”
and that the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (Department
of Education), can “sue schools that discriminate against
transgender students and seek to deny them federal funding.”
In
2017, New York City teachers were “required to call
students by their preferred pronouns” and all the rest
of it, as spelled out above.
Again,
in 2021, the U.S. Department of Education issued a Notice
of Interpretation explaining that it will “enforce Title
IX’s prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex
to include 1) discrimination based on sexual orientation;
and 2) discrimination based on gender identity.” Other
states, including New Jersey and California, have followed
suit.
Finally,
in an undated fifteen-page Guideline issued by the Board of
Education of New York City, educators are instructed in “supporting
students” by using their desired “names and pronouns”;
updating gender markers, records other than permanent records,
school IDs, and medical records; and ensuring gender-based
inclusion in “sports and physical education” and
“restrooms and locker rooms.”
All
I can ask is, “What would Orwell have to say?”
Do
most people understand that the “identities” we
mandate to “respect” include surgically mutilating
pre-adolescents, dosing them with hormones that may harm or
even kill them?
Do
they know that some pro-transgender doctors are already charting
some “buyer’s remorse,” among those who
wish to de-transition? For example, Dr. Erica Anderson, who
identifies as “transgender,” fears that we have
gone “too far,” and that many adolescents are
“making life-changing decisions” because it’s
“trendy,” “pushed on social media,”
or because of “peer pressure.” Are we looking
at a cult? Or at a real hard-wired phenomenon?
“Coming
out as trans affords a struggling teen with an identity, a
community, and the promise of one fix for multiple problems.”
In
my view, so many teenagers are uncomfortable with their bodies
which keep changing. Their bodies and minds are not mature
enough to take such risks without unknown consequences. However,
“coming out” as trans affords a struggling teen
with an identity, a community and the promise of one “fix”
for multiple problems.
Many
clinicians and parents are genuinely torn. When faced with
suicidal teenagers who insist they were born into the wrong
body, there is an understandable desire to want to alleviate
their suffering. Some trans activists are “loud,”
very certain, and incredibly demanding (they harass and censure
doctors who do not see it their way)—but so are those
conservatives who are busy banning such surgeries and hormone
treatments for non-adults.
Investigative
journalist Jennifer Bilek has exposed the huge and profitable
industry involved in the transgender movement, namely, the
profit gained by pharmaceutical companies, surgeons, and mental
health clinics. According to an article by Emily Bazelon in
the NY Times, “there are now 60 comprehensive gender
clinics in the United States” and perhaps “300,000
young people who identify as transgender.” Bazelon reminds
us that “Planned Parenthood is one of the largest providers
of gender-affirming hormones in the country.”
According
to some clinicians, two-thirds of the children seeking a transgender
solution to their suffering, are girls who do not want to
be tomboys or lesbians but who say that they really are boys
or men.
That’s
one hell of a desperate way out of patriarchy.
As
a former therapist and trained psychologist, I know that one
cannot or should not generalize, that each person must be
seen as an individual and that exceptions to a rule always
exist. And yet, I would err on the side of caution in this
matter. Long-term psychological evaluation, perhaps psychiatric
medication, definitely individual and group therapy—not
an instant “fix” that cannot be walked back.
Clinicians
have been de-platformed for saying anything like this.
Last week, I visited one of my doctors in her hospital office.
She closed the door, looked both ways, and told me that the
staff had now been instructed to change their language in
a way that was “sensitive” and “inclusive”
in terms of patients’ and staff’s “gender
identities.” In fact, she said, “a special unit
of transgender doctors was being created in order to work
with transgender patients.”
I
laughed and motioned her out into the hallway where the single-person
bathrooms now bore signs: “Gender Inclusive Restroom.”
As Dorothy once aptly noted: “Toto, we’re not
in Kansas anymore.”
