Running anonymous opinion pieces seems a little risky for far-right publications prone to spreading misinformation. After all, just last month, Quillette retracted an essay written by Archie Carter, a disenchanted member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The only problem with the piece, aside from all of its factual errors, was that the whole thing was a hoax.
Even so, today The Federalist ran an anonymous essay that guides us through a parent’s harrowing experience dealing with an entire community that supports their child identifying as trans. Even the child’s school is supportive.
The school introduced the writer’s son to a cult also known as the gay-straight alliance. Yes, this anonymous hero believes gay-straight alliances are cults, blowing right past the obvious cults every school has – band, the speech and debate team, and virtually every sport.
This anonymous portrait in courage includes the writer asking the school if he (Or she! For someone who is such a stickler for gender, the writer’s is a mystery) could attend a gay-straight alliance meeting. The parent could only go once and had to be “chaperoned by the principal.” One can only imagine the lessons learned by everyone present on that auspicious day.
Because the bottom line for the writer turns out to be that the correct course of action as a parent is to isolate your trans child as much as possible – something cults actually know a thing or two about.
“Extracting children from the trans cult influence seems to offer hope toward undoing the brainwashing effect,” the parent writes. “… By cutting off internet access, withdrawing the child from public school and curtailing interactions with trans activists and other victims, parents are seeing children freed from the tyranny of the trans lie and returned to being the people they were born to be.”
“The coming years will tell the story of whether our children are savable, or lost for good,” the anon writer added.
Something about that phrase, “savable or lost for good,” reminded me why we’re here – to check some facts.
Will 80 to 95 percent of transgender children stop being trans after puberty if they don’t undergo medical treatments?
The author claims that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health “affirms” this finding, linking to a report that never mentions this information or these numbers. Instead, the report, which sets standards of care for trans and gender non-conforming people, says, “Refusing timely medical interventions for adolescents might prolong gender dysphoria and contribute to an appearance that could provoke abuse and stigmatization.”
The 80 percent figure comes from a 1995 study of 45 gender-nonconforming kids, 80 percent of whom weren’t transgender around their high school years. A study of 45 people is such a small sample that the statistic is likely meaningless.
The 95 percent figure has an even less sound source. Liberal-leaning Media Matters for America reported that Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, said the 95 percent figure during an interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight in 2017. This percentage doesn’t appear to come from a real source.
Still, those numbers and this fact – that 80 to 95 percent of transgender children will stop being trans by adolescence – have been repeated over and over and over again in conservative media.
Is autism linked to being transgender?
The writer, whose son is autistic, claims that autism is related to rapid-onset gender dysphoria. To back that up, the parent linked to a Plos One study that mentions autism only once. That mention is during a quote and not connected to actual data.
Rapid-onset gender dysphoria isn’t actually an official, vetted mental health diagnosis. In a correction of the study, Plos One wrote: “The term should not be used in a way to imply that it explains the experiences of all gender dysphoric youth nor should it be used to stigmatize vulnerable individuals.”
Plos One noted that the study was based on observations from parents, not hard data.
Leading up to Plos One’s correction, the study received a lot of criticism for suggesting that being trans is a phase or a disease, as it concluded that peer pressure leads teens to want to change genders.
While there is some overlap between the trans and autistic community, physicians are conflicted over whether or not there’s a cause-and-effect connection between the two. The few studies out there on the subject have yielded inconsistent results.
Contact Big If True editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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