IGF CultureWatch

Who is more likely to protect the wellbeing of gender nonconforming kids, or kids that progressive public school teachers and diversity educrats, in their great wisdom, decide are gender nonconforming and therefore transgender, and therefore should be encouraged to self-identify as their affirming gender identity (as perceived by public school teachers and educrats)?

Sure, some gender nonconforming kids, and many gay kids, have unsupportive parents, or sometimes worse. But giving the state the power, through public school teachers and educrats driven by hard-edged progressive gender ideology, to “help” confused kids to adopt new, “affirming” names and pronouns, and to change into “affirming” clothes once at school and use the “affirming” restroom—putting them on a path toward sterilizing puberty blockers and surgeries—all without contacting or discussing these issues with the parents, crosses all kinds of lines. And, significantly, these policies threaten the otherwise healthy development of gender nonconforming gay kids.

The children have had their names and pronoun changed publicly — these facts are known to everyone in the school except for their own parents.

Such changes are psychosocial interventions that teachers are not competent to undertake. According to the first transgender president… https://t.co/5ASOys7zBT pic.twitter.com/sVQA0NcURt

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 29, 2023

Just incredible that left-wing politicians are making the case for government schools to facilitate a child's sexual transition—new names, pronouns, sexualities, and identities—while keeping the entire process a secret from parents. This is depraved and tyrannical. https://t.co/bvtt7gHTNA

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) August 30, 2023

defund teachers unions. pic.twitter.com/TZOJJbFw67

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) September 2, 2023

'Parents don't own their children.'

Leftwing progressivism has a fundamental belief that children are autonomous, miniature adults being subjugated by their parents.

They believe they must liberate them.

Once you get that, most of their child policies make sense.

— Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) August 31, 2023

When working on 2022 article about transgender athletes & elite sports, I called GLAAD. Their officials tried to tell me who I should NOT interview and that I should not "platform" tennis great and gay pioneer Martina Navratilova because her views ran counter to their line. https://t.co/xSWIRsbPXz

— Michael Powell (@powellAtlantic) August 24, 2023

https://t.co/enrSRgGkr8

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 24, 2023

The article in question was in fact deeply researched and painstakingly fair. https://t.co/xSWIRsbPXz

— Michael Powell (@powellAtlantic) August 24, 2023

And some good advice for children with gender dysphoria:

He continues:

Last month, a group of 18 medical experts from around the world published an open letter criticizing the U.S. Endocrine Society for its approach to youth gender transition, stating that while “the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors” is “of low or very low certainty … the risks are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication and the anguish of regret.” The troubling reality is that America’s ideologically captured medical and psychological associations find themselves increasingly isolated among their European peers when it comes to pediatric gender medicine, a challenging set of circumstances for American progressives, who are normally urging us to become more like Europe.

Best line from the review: “Either this is the story of Ellen, a young woman struggling to resist sex stereotypes and heteronormativity, or it’s the story of Elliot, a young man who embraced them.”

DEI—it’s to die for.

So true: