One of the benefits of working at Walt Disney World is that ‘cast members’ can bring family and friends to the parks for free. On one such visit several years ago, I brought a mom and dad along with their nine-year-old daughter. I had to work that day, so I walked the family into the park and then told them I’d meet up with them when my shift was done. Many hours later I caught up with them and asked how their day was going. Everyone said they were having a great time, but the parents had a gripe: at one point, a cast member had greeted the daughter with ‘Hello, Princess!’ Liberal-minded mom and dad didn’t take too kindly to this gender stereotype. “What if a little girl doesn’t want to be a princess? Not all girls are girly-girls.” They didn’t want their daughter being led into this rigid role of what a girl was meant to be.
I shrugged; it’s just one of the things cast members do in keeping with the ‘magic’—it’s a fantasy world, and Disney’s goal is to immerse you in it. In Fantasyland, every girl gets to be a princess;1 in Tomorrowland, she might be greeted with ‘Space Ranger’ or something futuristic-sounding.
Fast forward a couple years later to a Christmas party, and this same mom is telling me about one of their daughter’s friends, a little boy who is now ‘identifying’ as a girl. “He loves pink and sparkles and dresses—obviously, he’s really a girl!”
Let’s review.
Liberals/Progressives are
teaching girls that they should be ashamed to be feminine, and
celebrating boys who are exhibiting stereotypical feminine behavior and encouraging them to be the kind of girls they decided they no longer have any use for.
They’ve flipped the script completely. This is not progress; this is madness.
There are many reasons why a child may be confused about their sex or adopt a new ‘gender identity’—sexual abuse and trauma, autism, the completely natural discomfort with the body changes during puberty—but I want to focus on the reason most concerning to me: the kids who are likely to grow up to be gay. These are the kids who have a trans target on their backs.
Tomboys—many of whom would otherwise grow up to be lesbians—are now being told they really ARE boys.
And gentle, effeminate boys with a propensity to become gay men are being nudged to adopt a girl ‘identity’.
Some people will argue that the increasing number of trans-identified kids is due to increased acceptance. There is a kernel of truth in this. We know that acceptance of homosexuality has increased over the past couple of decades with the legalization of gay marriage. But when you factor in the joining of LGB with T & Q and the general public confusing/conflating these letters with one another, you have people so ‘accepting’ that they’ve leapfrogged over homosexuality into transgender territory.
Personally, reviewing everything I’ve seen over the past few years…I don’t believe we ever really achieved gay acceptance. What we had was tolerance. This was, in fact, the word I remember being most advocated with the gay rights movement back in the 80’s and 90’s. And tolerance and acceptance are two very different things. I think the public tolerated gay people long enough until a better solution came along. That solution arrived with ‘trans’. Some people will be loathe to admit this, but deep down inside… ‘trans’ makes them feel better. If they can PREVENT their kid from turning out gay, they’ve nipped the REAL problem in the bud.
The belief in ‘trans children’ is homophobic. If it stopped there—a belief—it would be bad enough. But it $wiftly $egued to ‘gender affirming care’. And ‘gender affirming care’ isn’t just homophobic. It’s the worst form of homophobia. It isn’t just conversion. It’s a sadistic *attempt* at a conversion that will never take place. All the drugs, surgeries, and magical thinking in the world will not make a boy into a girl. The lie of ‘trans’ is that no transition takes place. It’s an illusion.
‘Gender affirming care’ is the opposite of what it claims to be. There is no care. It’s abuse. It’s trying to ‘correct’ something that is ‘wrong’ with a child. Because a swishy boy makes people feel uncomfortable—even angry. By ‘affirming’ that boy’s female ‘gender identity’, what is actually being affirmed and validated is the internalized homophobia the kid is experiencing.
And this isn’t just a problem of heterosexual people not accepting homosexuality. What really startles and bewilders me is how many gay people I have conversations with about this issue who echo the thinking of the mother I described at the beginning. A gay guy at work told me of a little boy he knows: “No, but this kid…if you saw him…he really is a girl.” This, coming from a man with an effeminate lilting voice, who plays musical theater tunes during floorsets, and who revels in teaching the proper way to dramatically flip open a hand fan.
How can people not see what is so glaringly obvious?
Here are the questions I want to ask people who believe children are ‘trans’, based on gender nonconforming behavior:
How do you feel about effeminate gay men? Do they make you uncomfortable? Embarrassed? Angry? Disgusted? Do you pity them? Do they make you laugh? Be honest.
Now: How do you think those effeminate gay men behaved as children or teenagers? Do you think they just one day >snap< went from being masculine to effeminate? Or do you think they were probably effeminate little boys and teenagers too?
I don’t believe in ‘gender souls’ or ‘gendered brains’ in the wrong bodies. But if you want me to play devil’s advocate, OK. Let’s say for the sake of argument I did believe in ‘true trans’. Answer me this:
How do you tell the difference between an effeminate boy and a boy-who-is-really-a-girl?
How does the child himself know the difference?
Does an effeminate boy know what kind of sexual attraction he will have as an adult? How can he as a child make decisions about his future sexual orientation? How do you know he won’t be happy as a man who loves other men?
And the most important question of all:
Why does it make you feel better to believe that a little boy is ‘really’ a girl than to believe he may grow up to be a gay man?
In this great clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry sees the ‘gay potential’ in his new girlfriend’s young son. We all see it (because we have eyes and ears); the joke is that the kid’s mom is in denial. I love that Larry accepts the boy for who he is, and gets him the most perfect birthday present. Larry is even proud of himself! As he should be. But because Larry can never win (even though he’s usually right; therein lies the comedy), his girlfriend is mad.
This episode is from 2011. It most likely wouldn’t be made today. Because every ‘pre-gay’ boy who acts this flamboyant and shows an interest in fashion and sewing would be pushed toward a trans identity. At school, he would be taught that gender stereotypes = his ‘gender identity’, and that he is ‘really’ a girl ‘inside’. Rather than being blind to her son’s inclination to a future as a gay adult, the mom would be relieved that she could trans the gay away. The comedy has become a tragedy.
12 years ago, at least we could laugh at the mom’s homophobia. The boy would still have a fighting chance, and she would probably come around to learn how FREAKING AWESOME it is to have a gay son. Now…well, there’s nothing to laugh at anymore.
Although I do still see some cast members using this kind of greeting, it has since been discouraged.
The “don’t say gay” thing should be changed to “don’t say they”. LGB don’t have pronoun problems, trans people do. In fact the whole initial identity is a way of attaching trans to the more acceptable gay community, when Trans is the group that has hijacked the rainbow, the words kind and joy, and even calling taking opposite hormones “hormone replacement therapy” which it is not. HRT is what menopausal women take to help with hot flashes. And while I’m on that subject, has anyone ever thought that a girl with gender dysphoria may need some shots of estrogen, and a boy with gender dysphoria needs more testosterone? The big experiment that is being done should include that.
I watched a news segment that had two young women who met in the hospital when having breast removal surgery. They thought they were boys. They found they had a lot in common and fell in love. It ended with them running down the beach, topless and holding hands. That says it all, or at least says there should have been some psychotherapy from the beginning.
Thanks Gary for another wonderful piece. You are spot on as usual! Once you see what’s really going on it’s impossible to unsee it!