One of the most pernicious aspects of this trend is the way it scoops up kids with a variety of existing mental health problems and provides the explanation that “they’re trans.”
The adults in the room, who should know better, go along with it. They see a bunch of kids with a variety of social and emotional problems and they attribute their problems to “being trans” (so we must transition them) or “being trans in a cold cruel world” (so we need to love-bomb them and accommodate them more, more, more).
The overall poor mental health of these kids provides the “evidence” that more and more must be done to “affirm” them -- basically providing validation that yes, hating their existing bodies is healthy and appropriate, and so let’s undertake drastic cosmetic steps to change how you look! -- but really it reminds me of the fact that muggings and ice cream consumption are higher in the summer.
When we look at these trans-identifying kids and see the overall precarious state of their mental health, and we attribute their unhappiness to “being trans,” we’re basically saying something akin to “Eating ice cream causes muggings.”
What happens when a bunch of already emotionally unwell kids, the kids who were already outsiders for a whole host of reasons, find an “explanation” for their outsider status and a way to get positive attention from adults and other kids at school? (Especially in a place like Davis, where such efforts by well-meaning people are over the top?)
Of course a bunch of kids are going to latch on to this as the explanation of their existing problems, especially if they didn’t fit in to begin with, and especially if they see that all the other quirky outsiders latch onto it too.
Finally, an explanation for them! A solution for them! Now they have a tribe, and at least for this brief moment in time, their tribe has some cachet! Of course they are eager for it.
And everyone else is in this dynamic -- the adults, the non-trans kids -- are expected to give special attention and “be nice.”
What’s driving this phenomenon should be screamingly obvious to every adult in the room. Ice cream does not cause muggings. These kids on the fringes with a variety of problems and poor mental health are not struggling because “they’re trans.”
If most adults can understand the former, why can’t we understand the latter and put a stop to this emotional and physical dead end for kids on the fringes?
Exactly. I've worked in a high school for 20 years. The same kids that were goth became emo became clinically depressed and anxious and now they are trans. Its the same kids, highly neurotic, negative emotions.
Exactly. Even though piercings and tatoos were 'body modifications' - to be 'unique and special' - no one was offered/given hormones and medications, and being encouraged to cut off healthy body parts. How is this new extreme down that path not obvious to everyone?
This social phenomenon has the promotion of a massive interest group with billions in funding. It is also the purview of seriously emotionally disturbed individuals who are now in positions of power. This is extremely dangerous.
"Nonbinary" is the null safety mechanism of gender identity. A teenager embarks on their "gender journey," finds no magical-mystical answer from the genderbread sorting hat, and achieves valid tribal membership through clothes and hair and such like signalling.
You know. The stuff we used to call "personality." Now it's "gender identity."
School curricula across the US explicitly push Gender Ideology and employ massive manipulation to do so. See the following article for details and examples:
Have called this place home for over 40 years. My wife was born here. I met her in the Jack-In-The-box parking lot while cruising with my friends. Yes, cruising was a thing back then... in 79. We were from a smaller farming community just 10 miles away. Davis today is more liberal and left than San Francisco. It is how I earned my self-awarded PHD in "liberal studies"... in this case my expertise in understanding the liberal species. I have many Davis resident liberal friends. But also have many conservative friends from the surrounding farming communities. So I can routinely contrast perspectives, behavior, practices and politics between both cohorts.
My general conclusion is that liberals and leftists are psychologically off. They are not very rational nor are they pragmatic. Their decision drivers come from a place of emotional turmoil... and they collect new members who struggle with the same malady. They tend to be negative and cynical.... and thus are prone to "throwing the baby out with the bath water" only to satiate their "need" to feel progress covering their negativity and cynicism. They are frankly unfit to lead. Yet, democracy puts them in power in places like Davis. And there they make a mess out of things.
My old Baby Boomer liberal friends have adopted the woke dogma. They are all in on climate change. They support limits on free speech. They have no problem with politicial abuses of power benefitting their politics. And they seem fine with the education system grooming young children into changing their gender.
You cannot really reason with them as their politics seem more important to them than life itself. The only thing we can do is isolate them and make sure we fight against their influence.
I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. Same experience with the unstable Lefties, who wouldn't admit that the SDS trashed our town. Met my now ex-husband, now-"thinks he's a woman" there in 1975. You might like my youtube channel:
It's one thing for a teacher to quietly and informally support a child who is gay, or who identifies as trans; that's been going on forever, and I think it's a good thing. Some parents are assholes, and the children of assholes still need support. So, yay, supportive teachers!
By *requiring* that transgender status be confidential even from parents, however, the school district is putting its faculty and staff in an uncomfortable position of adversity. Parents in that district *know* that teachers will keep secrets from them, which means they can't necessarily trust what those teachers tell them. Foiling of the aforementioned assholes (see previous paragraph) is a good thing, but I have my doubts about a policy that by default treats all parents as the enemy.
I'm horrified by the elimination of family and parents. Curious when a transitioning child becomes ill, or has side effects from the hormones, or an infection from their surgery, will those currently demanding that patents be eliminated from all conversation and decision making, be the ones at their bedside? Will they be just as supportive to the student who changes their mind, and now suddenly is with a " community". In my 40 years in emergency medicine, I've never seen a government person sit at the bedside of an ill child for longer than the time it takes them to drop them off. You know who does, a family member, and usually a parent, or guardian. Years ago, i went to a lecture by a child psychiatrist who made this statement: "show me a child who keeps secrets from those who love them the most, and i'll show you a child who will progress to deep depression and often suicidal ideology." What a tragedy. Parents may be assholes, but this new wave of encouraging children to keep profoundly altering secrets, is most certainly NOT the answer to that.
In what sense should a teacher "support" a child? If you mean to support a child to separate them from the parent, this is grooming. This should put the teacher on the sex-offender list.
I think I was pretty clear in my initial statement that supporting a child does not mean lying to parents. What it CAN mean, however, is choosing not to reveal certain information, or just providing a space that feels safe and judgmental. Teachers have been doing that for gay kids for a long, long time, and it's a good practice.
As far as "grooming", I'm not sure I know what that means.
Grooming in this context means supporting a child to do things which are opposed by the parent. This provides a false and perverted sense of vindication for the trannie delusion.
And as to gay, there is way too much support for gay kids. We need to restore a simple thought: There is normal sexual relations, and there are abnormal ones. Gay, trannie - it's all perverse for kids.
The gay agenda is way too well-accepted. Gay kids should be a very small minority. 2-3% is the right level. By encouraging the delusion of gay normality, many are convinced that they are gay, when really they are just confused.
We have two school districts in Maine that have made it official policy to help kids transition without informing their parents. School-based mental health professionals are doing the grooming. One district is hiding behind a healthcare consent law that was passed to help emancipated kids get psychotherapy. Please report these professional counselors to their licensure boards for unethical practice. Providing mental health treatment for serious conditions without bringing parents into the treatment is a serious violation of ethics and a clear case of malpractice.
And getting a case going can provide an important "reality check" even if dismissed. If a large number of cases are filed, perhaps people will start paying attention.
This transgender fad, that is what it is, will destroy many. If they decide to transition completely, they will become a slave to the pharmacutical companies. They will have to take hormones for the rest of their lives to maintain the gender that they think they are. This is tragic.
As a trans widow, I have a unique perspective on the medical/mental health malpractice here. The term trans widow means the ex-wife of a man (top executive in his tech firm in this case, now mysteriously slightly demoted) who calls himself the "mother" of our children.
I recently invented "Trans Widow's Days of Girlhood!" Enjoy!
I appreciated this piece re: gender identity trends in Davis, CA. As a parent living in Davis, I have been concerned for awhile. While the trends you document are indeed compelling, I found the following claim quite explosive: "DJUSD students [can directly] access to transition-related medication such as hormones, letters for medical clearance for transition surgeries, and “assistance and advocacy with legal name and gender” change documents. Students as young as 12 can pursue any or all of the above without parental knowledge or consent, as these services fall under the category of “confidential sexual and reproductive health services.”
When I went to the linked Libs of TikTok piece as well as perused the documents linked to in that piece, I couldn't find any convincing evidence of this claim. Rather, it seems that the Libs of TikTok author and you have both made the inference that the parental consent exception for "confidential sexual and reproductive health services" means that 12 year olds could access puberty blockers (or more) without parent consent. Moreover, the exception to parental consent language quoted is from a contract between MLK High School and Communicare, so it's not clear it pertains to younger children, though it might. (Are there other contracts available?) When looking at the section of the contract, it also justifies the exception by stating it is in compliance with the law. What law? Did you dig into this more deeply?
Also, in the letter responding to the FOIA, the DJUSD Public Information Officer basically punts when asked about additional services offered to students with gender identity issues by stating "We do not have enough information..." to speak to this issue. Perhaps this is BS and they are being deliberately misleading, but we don't actually know this. Explosive claims should be well-supported with evidence.
I agree with Jandersca that there needs to be strong evidence this is happening, for two reasons. First, while I do believe it's happening, highly politicized issues tend to lead to exaggerated claims that backfire and weaken the core argument. (e.g. with climate change, the more crazy predictions turn out to be false, the easier it is for skeptics to dismiss the problem.)
Second, and more importantly, the lawsuits from destransitioned children are going to be legion and massive. One pillar of those suits will be that those encouraging transition knew or should have known they were doing harm. Giving hormones to minors without parental consent will fall into that category, so evidence that the schools and providers knew it was happening and took steps to hide the fact will be important. Getting it on the record about Communicare will later be worth a few million dollars to some girl with facial hair.
Well, it is unlikely that mentally ill kids will identify themselves as such, so this trans-trick question is a way to find out just how many sick kids we have on our hands.
One of the most pernicious aspects of this trend is the way it scoops up kids with a variety of existing mental health problems and provides the explanation that “they’re trans.”
The adults in the room, who should know better, go along with it. They see a bunch of kids with a variety of social and emotional problems and they attribute their problems to “being trans” (so we must transition them) or “being trans in a cold cruel world” (so we need to love-bomb them and accommodate them more, more, more).
The overall poor mental health of these kids provides the “evidence” that more and more must be done to “affirm” them -- basically providing validation that yes, hating their existing bodies is healthy and appropriate, and so let’s undertake drastic cosmetic steps to change how you look! -- but really it reminds me of the fact that muggings and ice cream consumption are higher in the summer.
When we look at these trans-identifying kids and see the overall precarious state of their mental health, and we attribute their unhappiness to “being trans,” we’re basically saying something akin to “Eating ice cream causes muggings.”
What happens when a bunch of already emotionally unwell kids, the kids who were already outsiders for a whole host of reasons, find an “explanation” for their outsider status and a way to get positive attention from adults and other kids at school? (Especially in a place like Davis, where such efforts by well-meaning people are over the top?)
Of course a bunch of kids are going to latch on to this as the explanation of their existing problems, especially if they didn’t fit in to begin with, and especially if they see that all the other quirky outsiders latch onto it too.
Finally, an explanation for them! A solution for them! Now they have a tribe, and at least for this brief moment in time, their tribe has some cachet! Of course they are eager for it.
And everyone else is in this dynamic -- the adults, the non-trans kids -- are expected to give special attention and “be nice.”
What’s driving this phenomenon should be screamingly obvious to every adult in the room. Ice cream does not cause muggings. These kids on the fringes with a variety of problems and poor mental health are not struggling because “they’re trans.”
If most adults can understand the former, why can’t we understand the latter and put a stop to this emotional and physical dead end for kids on the fringes?
Back when I was in school these kids just became Goth.
Makeup and black nail polish is much easier to reverse than surgery.
Exactly. I've worked in a high school for 20 years. The same kids that were goth became emo became clinically depressed and anxious and now they are trans. Its the same kids, highly neurotic, negative emotions.
It’s like everyone who’s been around long enough can see it! Or parents who also have much older kids.
These kids always existed: and their problems always existed. None of it had to do with gender.
Exactly. Even though piercings and tatoos were 'body modifications' - to be 'unique and special' - no one was offered/given hormones and medications, and being encouraged to cut off healthy body parts. How is this new extreme down that path not obvious to everyone?
This social phenomenon has the promotion of a massive interest group with billions in funding. It is also the purview of seriously emotionally disturbed individuals who are now in positions of power. This is extremely dangerous.
"Nonbinary" is the null safety mechanism of gender identity. A teenager embarks on their "gender journey," finds no magical-mystical answer from the genderbread sorting hat, and achieves valid tribal membership through clothes and hair and such like signalling.
You know. The stuff we used to call "personality." Now it's "gender identity."
If that’s as far as it went, it might be a harmless “phase” of the type that teens often go through.
Problem is they are cult evangelists to the vulnerable kids
Honestly, the "nonbionary kids" are the ones to worry least about.
School curricula across the US explicitly push Gender Ideology and employ massive manipulation to do so. See the following article for details and examples:
https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/the-anti-science-disaster-of-gender
Challenges are being mounted...petitions/suits against school districts and agencies. Be part of that network: caroldansereau@substack.com
Have called this place home for over 40 years. My wife was born here. I met her in the Jack-In-The-box parking lot while cruising with my friends. Yes, cruising was a thing back then... in 79. We were from a smaller farming community just 10 miles away. Davis today is more liberal and left than San Francisco. It is how I earned my self-awarded PHD in "liberal studies"... in this case my expertise in understanding the liberal species. I have many Davis resident liberal friends. But also have many conservative friends from the surrounding farming communities. So I can routinely contrast perspectives, behavior, practices and politics between both cohorts.
My general conclusion is that liberals and leftists are psychologically off. They are not very rational nor are they pragmatic. Their decision drivers come from a place of emotional turmoil... and they collect new members who struggle with the same malady. They tend to be negative and cynical.... and thus are prone to "throwing the baby out with the bath water" only to satiate their "need" to feel progress covering their negativity and cynicism. They are frankly unfit to lead. Yet, democracy puts them in power in places like Davis. And there they make a mess out of things.
My old Baby Boomer liberal friends have adopted the woke dogma. They are all in on climate change. They support limits on free speech. They have no problem with politicial abuses of power benefitting their politics. And they seem fine with the education system grooming young children into changing their gender.
You cannot really reason with them as their politics seem more important to them than life itself. The only thing we can do is isolate them and make sure we fight against their influence.
I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. Same experience with the unstable Lefties, who wouldn't admit that the SDS trashed our town. Met my now ex-husband, now-"thinks he's a woman" there in 1975. You might like my youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wfqiv54bwRI
Welcome to my community of left insanity.
2023: “What is a woman?”
2028: “What is a child?”
Just watch, They’ve already started. Google “transage”.
It's one thing for a teacher to quietly and informally support a child who is gay, or who identifies as trans; that's been going on forever, and I think it's a good thing. Some parents are assholes, and the children of assholes still need support. So, yay, supportive teachers!
By *requiring* that transgender status be confidential even from parents, however, the school district is putting its faculty and staff in an uncomfortable position of adversity. Parents in that district *know* that teachers will keep secrets from them, which means they can't necessarily trust what those teachers tell them. Foiling of the aforementioned assholes (see previous paragraph) is a good thing, but I have my doubts about a policy that by default treats all parents as the enemy.
I'm horrified by the elimination of family and parents. Curious when a transitioning child becomes ill, or has side effects from the hormones, or an infection from their surgery, will those currently demanding that patents be eliminated from all conversation and decision making, be the ones at their bedside? Will they be just as supportive to the student who changes their mind, and now suddenly is with a " community". In my 40 years in emergency medicine, I've never seen a government person sit at the bedside of an ill child for longer than the time it takes them to drop them off. You know who does, a family member, and usually a parent, or guardian. Years ago, i went to a lecture by a child psychiatrist who made this statement: "show me a child who keeps secrets from those who love them the most, and i'll show you a child who will progress to deep depression and often suicidal ideology." What a tragedy. Parents may be assholes, but this new wave of encouraging children to keep profoundly altering secrets, is most certainly NOT the answer to that.
In what sense should a teacher "support" a child? If you mean to support a child to separate them from the parent, this is grooming. This should put the teacher on the sex-offender list.
I think I was pretty clear in my initial statement that supporting a child does not mean lying to parents. What it CAN mean, however, is choosing not to reveal certain information, or just providing a space that feels safe and judgmental. Teachers have been doing that for gay kids for a long, long time, and it's a good practice.
As far as "grooming", I'm not sure I know what that means.
Grooming in this context means supporting a child to do things which are opposed by the parent. This provides a false and perverted sense of vindication for the trannie delusion.
And as to gay, there is way too much support for gay kids. We need to restore a simple thought: There is normal sexual relations, and there are abnormal ones. Gay, trannie - it's all perverse for kids.
Oh...you're talking bigotry! That makes things clearer, thanks.
The gay agenda is way too well-accepted. Gay kids should be a very small minority. 2-3% is the right level. By encouraging the delusion of gay normality, many are convinced that they are gay, when really they are just confused.
Normality does not include gay nor trans.
Iatrogenesis
Extraordinary evil being practiced in the name of do-gooding. One would think the willingness to sacrifice one's own kids - ah, oh - wait a minute!
We have two school districts in Maine that have made it official policy to help kids transition without informing their parents. School-based mental health professionals are doing the grooming. One district is hiding behind a healthcare consent law that was passed to help emancipated kids get psychotherapy. Please report these professional counselors to their licensure boards for unethical practice. Providing mental health treatment for serious conditions without bringing parents into the treatment is a serious violation of ethics and a clear case of malpractice.
And getting a case going can provide an important "reality check" even if dismissed. If a large number of cases are filed, perhaps people will start paying attention.
This transgender fad, that is what it is, will destroy many. If they decide to transition completely, they will become a slave to the pharmacutical companies. They will have to take hormones for the rest of their lives to maintain the gender that they think they are. This is tragic.
Also they are likely to have sexual dysfunction and major health problems (bone density/heart health/higher risks for cancers, pain conditions etc).
As a trans widow, I have a unique perspective on the medical/mental health malpractice here. The term trans widow means the ex-wife of a man (top executive in his tech firm in this case, now mysteriously slightly demoted) who calls himself the "mother" of our children.
I recently invented "Trans Widow's Days of Girlhood!" Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wfqiv54bwRI
I appreciated this piece re: gender identity trends in Davis, CA. As a parent living in Davis, I have been concerned for awhile. While the trends you document are indeed compelling, I found the following claim quite explosive: "DJUSD students [can directly] access to transition-related medication such as hormones, letters for medical clearance for transition surgeries, and “assistance and advocacy with legal name and gender” change documents. Students as young as 12 can pursue any or all of the above without parental knowledge or consent, as these services fall under the category of “confidential sexual and reproductive health services.”
When I went to the linked Libs of TikTok piece as well as perused the documents linked to in that piece, I couldn't find any convincing evidence of this claim. Rather, it seems that the Libs of TikTok author and you have both made the inference that the parental consent exception for "confidential sexual and reproductive health services" means that 12 year olds could access puberty blockers (or more) without parent consent. Moreover, the exception to parental consent language quoted is from a contract between MLK High School and Communicare, so it's not clear it pertains to younger children, though it might. (Are there other contracts available?) When looking at the section of the contract, it also justifies the exception by stating it is in compliance with the law. What law? Did you dig into this more deeply?
Also, in the letter responding to the FOIA, the DJUSD Public Information Officer basically punts when asked about additional services offered to students with gender identity issues by stating "We do not have enough information..." to speak to this issue. Perhaps this is BS and they are being deliberately misleading, but we don't actually know this. Explosive claims should be well-supported with evidence.
I agree with Jandersca that there needs to be strong evidence this is happening, for two reasons. First, while I do believe it's happening, highly politicized issues tend to lead to exaggerated claims that backfire and weaken the core argument. (e.g. with climate change, the more crazy predictions turn out to be false, the easier it is for skeptics to dismiss the problem.)
Second, and more importantly, the lawsuits from destransitioned children are going to be legion and massive. One pillar of those suits will be that those encouraging transition knew or should have known they were doing harm. Giving hormones to minors without parental consent will fall into that category, so evidence that the schools and providers knew it was happening and took steps to hide the fact will be important. Getting it on the record about Communicare will later be worth a few million dollars to some girl with facial hair.
Well, it is unlikely that mentally ill kids will identify themselves as such, so this trans-trick question is a way to find out just how many sick kids we have on our hands.
Paging Dr. Mengele…
It’s a social contagion caused by predatory quacks, critical race and gender theory.