Transmania Takes over the American Mind

We are entering into a great battle, not just a small skirmish, in the culture wars. On one side are academics, teachers, therapists, woke parents, administrators, doctors and the Biden administration. On the other are certain brave journalists like Abigail Shrier, politicians in states like Florida, Texas and Alabama-- accompanied by the victims of trans madness.

Clearly, transmania is now a social contagion. Children are being-- dare we say it, groomed-- to think that they can choose their own gender, that biology can be canceled with the proper biochemical and surgical mutilations.

If you do not accept it, you are, to the Biden administration, a bigot.  

If this is not mass hysteria, the term does not mean anything.

One understands the larger philosophical issue behind this madness. Beginning with Kant, certain philosophers have asserted that reality is what we see or say it is. There are no rocks or even clouds except that we name them or see them as such. This implies, by the force of the logic, that if we fail to say that a rock is a rock, it isn’t a rock. By extension, a boy is not a boy unless you say and think that he is a boy. If you change your thinking, then he will magically become a girl, or even a eunuch. Then you need but persuade everyone to think that he is a she, and he will effectively be a she.

If you believe this, you need to cease thinking that you are a philosopher. And you also should stop pretending that you are a conservative thinker. This is straight-up idealism; it is the basis for the totalitarian movements that infested the twentieth century. It rejects empirical and pragmatic thinking, to say nothing of science.

The notion that the people who are talking about “gender affirming care” also talk about respecting the science is deranged. It shows how badly the American mind has deteriorated. If you were wondering why countries around the world are not emulating America any more, the truth lies in intellectual incoherence and moral degeneracy.

How bad has it gotten? This, from Pajamas Media, via Maggie’s Farm:

A mom writing for Substack’s “Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans” is claiming that her kid went full trans-tard after going to a new, woke, trans-happy school.

She starts her article with this: “My teenage daughter has decided that she is “trans”. So have all her friends. Not some of them. Not most of them. Every. Single. One.”

The anonymous mother also states that her daughter showed no signs of gender dysphoria and had never heard the word “transgender” before enrolling at her new school. That’s where she met a group of nerdy, artsy kids. They began looking into all things transgender on the internet.

Then, one day, sha-ZAM! They were all suddenly “trans.” They no longer had any desire to speak with the “cis” kids, (that means cisgender, i.e. normal, not trans, not interested in disfiguring their genitals to be cool).

How can a bunch of kids suddenly all be trans? It’s what we call a “social contagion,” which Oxford Reference defines as “The spread of ideas, attitudes, or behaviour patterns in a group through imitation and conformity. Also called behavioural contagion.”

It’s when a group of people all start imitating each other to fit in.

As we know, researcher Lisa Littman and journalist Abigail Shrier have been warning about this social contagion for some time now. Apparently, their best efforts have only had a limited impact.

In truth, being trans is now a sign of coolness:

Trans kids are now considered to be cool, accepted, special, important, protected victims who are on the road to a great career despite their actual talent. The real question now is, why WOULDN’T a kid want to be trans today?

In a culture of victimhood, children who are actively encouraged to deny biology are now glorified. In truth, and after a time, these children will invariably live to regret their decision and will find themselves friendless and bereft.

Suzy Weiss offers some details about children who detransition on Bari Weiss’s Substack. (via Maggie’s Farm) It is or it should be a terrifying warning to children, but especially to the adults who are encouraging and facilitating these mutilations.

Weiss offers the story of Chloe. She shows how a vulnerable child has been seduced into trans mania, thus damaging her body and herself. And she was doing so with the collusion of adults, like her parents:

Chloe, who lives in California’s Central Valley, always hated her body. She spent a lot of time on Tumblr and learned words like “pansexual” and “bigender.” She remembers when she was 12, sitting on her bed, thinking, “Maybe I’m meant to live as a boy.”

By 2018, at age 14, Chloe was well along the path to what she imagined was boyhood. She was going by Leo. She was taking puberty blockers. And her mother was administering her weekly testosterone injections. Two years later, in early June 2020, she went under the knife.

Chloe was the beneficiary of what transgender activists call “gender-affirming care,” which means all the adults in her life—doctors, nurses, social workers, teachers, parents—actively supported her decision to become the person she believed she was meant to be, even if that person required an elective mastectomy in high school. Or taking puberty-blocking drugs. Or injecting cross-sex hormones, like testosterone.

In this, Chloe is also the poster child for the Biden administration’s recently announced transgender policy.

But then, Chloe began to regret her decision and her “gender affirming care.” It did not make her a boy. It made her something else, neither boy nor girl. 

And then there is the growing chorus of young people, including Chloe, who had come to regret—deeply—the decisions they had made and the gender-affirming care they had received.

In the middle of this story are teenagers who are largely going unheard by a government and a medical establishment that’s plowing ahead. “I don’t think gender affirming care helps kids like me,” says Chloe. “There should be more regard to alternatives in treating dysphoria, especially when it comes to kids.”

Of course, adults who promote this care are lying to children. They are telling children that injections of opposite sex hormones will make them into members of the opposite sex:

“I thought testosterone would transform me from being short and pudgy to lanky and male, but in a graceful type of way, not muscley,” said Helena Kerschner, 23. Helena is from Cincinnati, and she is one of the country’s most prominent detransitioners, as people who transition genders and then change back are called. She has a Substack with thousands of subscribers.

Growing up in Ohio meant Helena could only transition with a parent’s consent. (This is true in most states. Washington, Oregon, and California gave minors more wiggle room to transition on their own). But she was 15, and her parents were definitely not on board. She wore boys clothes and a breast binder, and cut her hair short.

The terrifying part is the collusion of adults. They are almost a cheering section, encouraging children to submit to mutilation. Therapists thrill to the prospect that a child is transgender.

Since they remain dumbfounded by normal adolescent anguish and are happy to treat transgenderism, the result is-- children are induced to decide to become transgender.

One understands that these adults should be in prison. And one knows that in some states in this country, new laws are going to put them there.

The guidance counselor at her public school agreed with Helena that she was a man. She helped her make a budget for her transition, and referred her to the school psychologist, who was even more gung-ho. “I remember the psychologist saying, ‘Your mom is a transphobe,’ and telling me about suicide risks.” They had three or four meetings before inviting Helena’s mother to have a conversation with the both of them, which didn't go well.

“I had a ton of issues with my academics and my mental health, but I never really got help with that,” she said. “As soon as I said I was trans, it was all hands on deck.”

Aside from the fact that testosterone is not a drug, taking it did not produce the promised effects:

The drug made her feel irritable and angry, and it gave her sex drive a massive boost that she called “overwhelming.” She began hitting herself, and once she cut herself with a serrated kitchen knife, which landed her in a psych ward for a week. After a year-and-a-half on testosterone, it began to dawn on her that “the reality I was living was not lining up with the fantasy I’d had as a teen.”

And then came the wish to detransition:

But when Helena watched it, she saw herself becoming more despondent. (The roommate, as it turned out, eventually also detransitioned.) That was in early 2018. Slowly, Helena realized she wasn’t a boy. “It was a crushing and terrifying feeling,” she said.

There is no evidence suggesting that this treatment actually treats anything. And yet, groups like the American Medical Assocation support it:

Proponents of gender-affirming care say its benefits dramatically outweigh the risks. But there’s little data to back that up, and in any case this is still a new phenomenon about which a great deal is not known. The American Medical Association staunchly supports gender-affirming care. Same with universities, especially elite universities. Same with the president of the United States. It’s unclear whether there is any academic or professional space left for the skeptics.

Trans activists argue that trans patients knew the risks. The kids or their parents gave informed consent, they say.

Here is the case of one Mia Elias:

Mia Elias, who started identifying as trans at 12, agrees with Kerschner. She was spending a lot of time on Tumblr, and in trans groups online. “I thought it was going to solve all my problems,” she said. She and her family lived near Ottawa, the Canadian capital. At 15, she went on testosterone and a puberty blocker. A year later, she realized she’d made a mistake but didn’t want to admit that to her therapist, who was also trans, so she lied and said she was happy with her body, which was now partially masculinized. In fact, she just wanted things to go back to the way they had been. “I was ashamed,” she said. “This was my whole life.”

And Julie, who transitioned and detransitioned, calls the treatment something akin to a lobotomy. She coined the phrase "collaborative idiocy" to describe it:

Julie, 27, who also transitioned and then detransitioned, likens the policy to the practice of lobotomy. “I have this intense rage in me over the harm that was done to me,” said Julie, who didn’t want to be identified out of fear of backlash from activists.

She called her treatment a “collaborative idiocy”—drawing together her parents, therapists and doctors. “It took a goddamn village.”

But, how much of the damage is irreversible? We are back with Chloe, now returned to becoming a female, though a female who had undergone a double mastectomy:

Detransitioning senior year was tough: She was dressing like a girl again, but still had “rough” features and a deep voice from all the testosterone. “I got looks from people, and other students would talk smack behind my back,” Chloe said. Her friends abandoned her. Another friend told her that “the gay side of my school hated me” because she detransitioned.

Recently, she met someone, a boy from two towns over, through a family friend. “I genuinely think he was a gift to me from God,” she said. She wished she still had her breasts. “I was looking for a niche to fit in and a sense of fulfillment,” says Chloe of those years of medicine, consultations, surgery, recovery, and self-discovery. Now? “I don’t really believe in gender identity at all.”

 

Dare we say that this is all beyond horrifying. Dare we add that it signals a culture in decline. We are not talking about a few cranks here and there. We are talking about medical officials, government officials, parents and teachers conspiring to mutilate children.

If it were not real, no one would believe it.