I was a tomboy. I thought I should have been a boy. I looked, dressed, and sounded like a boy. Born in the 1980’s I was accepted for me (minus the attempts to pee standing up, mom and dad weren’t big on that). This issue hit me HARD about 4-5 years ago. By 17 I was athletic with a comically strong yet demanding body rather enjoying the power it had over the boys. 😂. Today I’m an active and very happily married mom of 2. My kids are my world.
Because of that I DID start discussing with my kids young. No one else was going to feed them some crap they or there friends were born in the “wrong body” without them being prepared. I am so glad I did, and do, talk to them about this. They have grown up with repetition of “there is no right way to be a girl, no right way to be a boy, and no possible way to change what you are.” Now that my oldest is 11 she is seeing distant friends believe the lies. A couple have started engaging in self-harm (so young). The other choice we are glad we made as parents is to send our kids to a top ranked (academically, sports, and fine arts) conservative Christian school that overtly rejects gender ideology (race ideology too). While they teach the Christian family structure and sexuality, and openly gay highschooler won the biggest character award the school gives out (and over 1,200 kids attend the school). All the kids know what faces them outside of campus, but these are some of the strongest and most actually loving, mature, intelligent kids I’ve ever seen. Standing together they are strong and preparing for a time they know they may be standing alone physically, but with a giant community that will always have their back.
We need more of these communities for kids to grow and learn and love and gain the strength to end this child gender madness. If you can find one for your kids, take the leap.
How can you block his comments? I want to do that too but I don't know how. I'd like to block him and all the mini-threads responding to him. Not as censorship, of course, but in a life-is-short-and-when-you've-lost-respect-for-someone's-ability-to-think-you-no-longer-want-to-read-his-stuff kind of a way. I really liked your post, by the way.
You can't permanently block someone, but you can hide the annoying and ridiculous comments with the little dots - chose hied comment.
Marek is some kind of troll who is annoyed at not getting fed, though I have discovered is capable of stalking across multiple publishers. That sort of behavior can get them booted if one chooses to report it. Hide and ignore - starve the troll.
😂😂😂😂😂. I’m not censoring you, I’m disregarding you. Free speech means I can’t tell you not to speak, it doesn’t mean I’m compelled to listen to or care about anything you say.
In psychological conceptualization, there is the notion of "anchoring and adjustment". In this idea, due to Tversky and Kahneman (the behavioral economists), an ANCHOR is set by the initial discussion. The ADJUSTMENT is minor changes which occur after the anchor is set. Often these are small.
When you are bargaining, if you are selling, you set a high initial price, and then it is bargained down. You never set the ACTUAL PRICE you wish as the initial - the initial price is always set higher.
In this area, the INITIAL CONCEPTION must be that "SEX IS A BINARY and CANNOT BE CHANGED". Once this anchor is set, the adjustment will be small
Although in this case it remains true that sex is binary and cannot be changed. No amount of bargaining changes that because it is immutable material reality. If the “adjustment” is to understand nobody fits some silly stereotype then that’s good.
That’s where my conversation starts with my kids. There isn’t a right way to be a girl. There isn’t a right way to be a boy. There is no possible way to change what you are. That is followed by the observation that Individuals are unique and nobody fits some silly and constantly changing bubble test style stereotype; the world would be really boring if we did.
Sometimes I go beyond it about how fashion/ clothing/ etc stereotypes change by reminding them when I was born in the 1980’s lots of boys had long hair and girls had short hair. Then they make fun of my obsession with Jon Bon Jovi because he was “old” even when I was a kid and 1980’s hair really makes them laugh. They think everybody’s lungs have permanent damage from inhaling hairspray. 😂.
For 10 years, between 18-28, my hair came to my shoulders. I also had a beard. I was NOT a woman. I was and remain a man. Just with longer hair. I cut it about when I was 28 or so - it's a lot of trouble. Possibly interestingly to you, I was attending UNC-CH at the time.
Aug 29, 2022·edited Aug 29, 2022Liked by Laura Linmar
"In the short run, it may seem easier for parents to keep putting off these oftentimes uncomfortable conversations to an unspecified future date. But remember, your children will encounter these topics and discussions sooner or later..."
Ain't that the truth--and it will almost definitely be "sooner." My preschooler has already been told by a peer that "some girls have penises" (in a conversation about whether dinosaurs are "for boys", no less), and one of the main characters in her new favorite cartoon is a "non-binary bison." Whether one thinks that those are bad things, good things, or neutral, the point is that these subjects will find young children in places and ways you'd never expect, even without help from teachers or social media. I am still working out what balance to strike in discussing these subjects with my kids, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that my window to get in on the ground floor of her ideas about "gender" is rapidly closing, despite her young age.
How many actual gay people do you know? Because I know a fair number, and nothing you’ve said here rings true. There are gay people who have deeply disordered, unhealthy lifestyles, but there are straight people who have grossly unhealthy sex lives as well. I’ll teach my kids to exercise common sense, caution, and self-respect. None of that requires me to single out any specific demographic as dangerous or evil.
I can see that this has all the makings of an extraordinarily tedious semantic debate about what you or I did or didn’t say and what kind of broad-brush statements do or don’t count as demonizing people or singling them out, with little chance of either of us changing anyone’s mind. I’ll pass; I have better ways to spend my Saturday and I would hope you do as well. God bless.
as a parent facing this, I found this rather abstract -- could use a bit more insight on the specifics of how to talk about the gender stuff. Especially for kids in blue areas who will have to deal with other trans and non-binary kids at school and be civil to them.
Hi, I understand your point. I will have a post out soon in my newsletter just covering practical and specific steps to take to address this with young kids and older kids. Stay tuned!
I'm no expert but I have been approaching it as though it's a religion we don't follow.
Some people believe x,y,z - we don't because there's no evidence for it. But they can believe what they like and no one should be mean to them about it.
Nothing too heavy and hopefully getting in a bit about ^real^ tolerance and acceptance too!
I’m glad you said that! That’s basically been my approach as well. It’s the only thing I could think of.
And to be quite honest that’s exactly what this seems like.
There are people who believe that Jesus came to America (Mormons), there are people who believe that we are the descendants of aliens (scientologists). And there are now people who think that being a man or a woman is an option. Everyone is free to have their own beliefs. But we are also free to not believe them. That part seems to have been forgotten!
I have always been honest with my kids. It’s important to be kind, but it’s also important to be honest. People too often mistake what seems easy in the moment for what is truly kind.
For girls especially there is also a safety aspect. The reality is we have sex based spaces because of our immutable biological differences. Teaching daughters in particular to be too kind about men and boys in private spaces - school bathrooms, changing facilities, overnight camp cabins, dorm rooms, overnight field trips, etc puts them at greater risk.
It might not a be a little kid conversation, but for my family it was an elementary school conversation (my daughter is 11 and just started 6th grade. We started the safety conversations just before Covid shutdowns).
It is one thing to be kind. It is another to sacrifice bodily safety at the alter of kindness.
I tell my daughter "You will never be a true lady until you are brave enough to make people mad by saying what needs to be said. Because a grown woman has to be strong enough to protect people who are vulnerable." I think she listens to me.
And I think kids grasp that very well, it's just a carry forward from having Muslim friends for example, even though we don't follow the Koran ourselves.
I was thinking this myself. I have 4 young children ages 8 years to 6 months old. What is the best way to talk to inoculate our children and prepare them for the inevitable attempt at indoctrination in their school or amongst their friends?
We all understand the danger of this ideology and that we have to prepare our children. But there is little to no info on specific strategies for how to do that. I know there are a number of books like the Brave books which are great for kids that you can use to help them understand this ideology. But we need very specific strategies of how to talk to our children at the various different ages.
How do they spot ideology masquerading as “inclusivity“? How do they know what are obvious falsehoods? And how do they know what exactly they are required to say and do when they find themselves inevitably in the situation at school or with friends?
It’s frustrating that there is so much information and books targeted towards young people on how to indoctrinate kids into this ideology and yet there’s almost nothing on how to save kids from it.
I agree, besides a couple of books, there are not a lot of resources for parents to present and explain this to kids. I will have an article out soon on my newsletter to give parents exactly those resources and practical ways to approach it.
yeah. This is particularly intense when you have kids going to public schools in blue areas, where some of their fellow students will be at least non-binary and possibly want to be referred to by opposite sex pronouns. If you don't want to or can't home-school your kids, how do you prepare them to participate in this world while making them secure in the reality of their own physical bodies and not vulnerable to having that core identity undermined?
Exactly! How do we protect them? It’s not that easy for parents to homeschool their kids. I personally am not able to do that. So what are our options?
As the ex-wife of a man who identifies as a woman, and refuses to be accurately identified as the father of our two sons AND as a retired Kindergarten teacher who has had students desist a few weeks after claiming to be the opposite sex, I attest to the truth of Laura Linner's writing. I argued with my then-husband, to no avail. I told him he has no way to experience my kind of orgasm. But with the help of a groomer, a PhD psychologist "sexologist" who, according to her own sworn affidavit, diagnosed him in one first appointment, he kept a secret "true life test" identity far from us, his little kids and wife. She was the wizard, the puppet-master, pulling all the strings. When the 4 children I taught over 2 decades ideated to be the opposite sex, I gave them attention for their thoughts on our learning, for what they'd contributed in the past, and I did not have any boys in the girls bathroom! It dissipated. The first one, a girl and non-identical twin sister, was so grateful to me for affirming her as Sarah when she stopped, I will never forget.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
Laura, I have some tips to share after getting two at-risk kids through adolescence without falling too deeply into gender woo. I’m not sure how to contact you though. It’s a rough road.
It is probably better to think in terms of cultural secession, teaching our children that we are not them. This trend will need to move beyond the religious to the non-religious/common sense folk. We give it a go at www.livingagoodlifechurch.org.
Gender stuff seems new to a lot of people, but you have to understand that gender ideology has been the air we breath. I am sure you are busy, but if you can take a moment to grab a torrent you can watch Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib 1949.
The movie advocates the idea that 'female' is a developmental disorder caused by abuse, the root of all this trouble. This was 1949, behaviorism had a stranglehold on the university, just as it does now, and, like now, hollywood was mobilized to indoctrinate the masses. Particularly stark in the courtroom scene we see that 'women aren't real' Hepburn tells of the south american tribe where the genders are reversed, where men are small and week because women oppress them - this imaginary tribe has been shifted all over the globe in the decades before and since. She brings out 'role models' for the young girls in the audience, a woman (age 36) with more degrees than a man could earn in a lifetime, and a circus strongwoman who can easily lift a full grown man with one hand - these characters and their sisters are found in every blockbuster to this day.
I was a tomboy. I thought I should have been a boy. I looked, dressed, and sounded like a boy. Born in the 1980’s I was accepted for me (minus the attempts to pee standing up, mom and dad weren’t big on that). This issue hit me HARD about 4-5 years ago. By 17 I was athletic with a comically strong yet demanding body rather enjoying the power it had over the boys. 😂. Today I’m an active and very happily married mom of 2. My kids are my world.
Because of that I DID start discussing with my kids young. No one else was going to feed them some crap they or there friends were born in the “wrong body” without them being prepared. I am so glad I did, and do, talk to them about this. They have grown up with repetition of “there is no right way to be a girl, no right way to be a boy, and no possible way to change what you are.” Now that my oldest is 11 she is seeing distant friends believe the lies. A couple have started engaging in self-harm (so young). The other choice we are glad we made as parents is to send our kids to a top ranked (academically, sports, and fine arts) conservative Christian school that overtly rejects gender ideology (race ideology too). While they teach the Christian family structure and sexuality, and openly gay highschooler won the biggest character award the school gives out (and over 1,200 kids attend the school). All the kids know what faces them outside of campus, but these are some of the strongest and most actually loving, mature, intelligent kids I’ve ever seen. Standing together they are strong and preparing for a time they know they may be standing alone physically, but with a giant community that will always have their back.
We need more of these communities for kids to grow and learn and love and gain the strength to end this child gender madness. If you can find one for your kids, take the leap.
I’m not “offended.” I’m blocking your ignorant comments. This comment is you projecting.
How can you block his comments? I want to do that too but I don't know how. I'd like to block him and all the mini-threads responding to him. Not as censorship, of course, but in a life-is-short-and-when-you've-lost-respect-for-someone's-ability-to-think-you-no-longer-want-to-read-his-stuff kind of a way. I really liked your post, by the way.
You can't permanently block someone, but you can hide the annoying and ridiculous comments with the little dots - chose hied comment.
Marek is some kind of troll who is annoyed at not getting fed, though I have discovered is capable of stalking across multiple publishers. That sort of behavior can get them booted if one chooses to report it. Hide and ignore - starve the troll.
😂😂😂😂😂. I’m not censoring you, I’m disregarding you. Free speech means I can’t tell you not to speak, it doesn’t mean I’m compelled to listen to or care about anything you say.
You have no idea what you are talking about. I am hiding all of your ignorant comments.
In psychological conceptualization, there is the notion of "anchoring and adjustment". In this idea, due to Tversky and Kahneman (the behavioral economists), an ANCHOR is set by the initial discussion. The ADJUSTMENT is minor changes which occur after the anchor is set. Often these are small.
When you are bargaining, if you are selling, you set a high initial price, and then it is bargained down. You never set the ACTUAL PRICE you wish as the initial - the initial price is always set higher.
In this area, the INITIAL CONCEPTION must be that "SEX IS A BINARY and CANNOT BE CHANGED". Once this anchor is set, the adjustment will be small
But the parent needs to set the anchor.
Although in this case it remains true that sex is binary and cannot be changed. No amount of bargaining changes that because it is immutable material reality. If the “adjustment” is to understand nobody fits some silly stereotype then that’s good.
That’s where my conversation starts with my kids. There isn’t a right way to be a girl. There isn’t a right way to be a boy. There is no possible way to change what you are. That is followed by the observation that Individuals are unique and nobody fits some silly and constantly changing bubble test style stereotype; the world would be really boring if we did.
Sometimes I go beyond it about how fashion/ clothing/ etc stereotypes change by reminding them when I was born in the 1980’s lots of boys had long hair and girls had short hair. Then they make fun of my obsession with Jon Bon Jovi because he was “old” even when I was a kid and 1980’s hair really makes them laugh. They think everybody’s lungs have permanent damage from inhaling hairspray. 😂.
For 10 years, between 18-28, my hair came to my shoulders. I also had a beard. I was NOT a woman. I was and remain a man. Just with longer hair. I cut it about when I was 28 or so - it's a lot of trouble. Possibly interestingly to you, I was attending UNC-CH at the time.
"In the short run, it may seem easier for parents to keep putting off these oftentimes uncomfortable conversations to an unspecified future date. But remember, your children will encounter these topics and discussions sooner or later..."
Ain't that the truth--and it will almost definitely be "sooner." My preschooler has already been told by a peer that "some girls have penises" (in a conversation about whether dinosaurs are "for boys", no less), and one of the main characters in her new favorite cartoon is a "non-binary bison." Whether one thinks that those are bad things, good things, or neutral, the point is that these subjects will find young children in places and ways you'd never expect, even without help from teachers or social media. I am still working out what balance to strike in discussing these subjects with my kids, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that my window to get in on the ground floor of her ideas about "gender" is rapidly closing, despite her young age.
How many actual gay people do you know? Because I know a fair number, and nothing you’ve said here rings true. There are gay people who have deeply disordered, unhealthy lifestyles, but there are straight people who have grossly unhealthy sex lives as well. I’ll teach my kids to exercise common sense, caution, and self-respect. None of that requires me to single out any specific demographic as dangerous or evil.
I can see that this has all the makings of an extraordinarily tedious semantic debate about what you or I did or didn’t say and what kind of broad-brush statements do or don’t count as demonizing people or singling them out, with little chance of either of us changing anyone’s mind. I’ll pass; I have better ways to spend my Saturday and I would hope you do as well. God bless.
as a parent facing this, I found this rather abstract -- could use a bit more insight on the specifics of how to talk about the gender stuff. Especially for kids in blue areas who will have to deal with other trans and non-binary kids at school and be civil to them.
Hi, I understand your point. I will have a post out soon in my newsletter just covering practical and specific steps to take to address this with young kids and older kids. Stay tuned!
I'm no expert but I have been approaching it as though it's a religion we don't follow.
Some people believe x,y,z - we don't because there's no evidence for it. But they can believe what they like and no one should be mean to them about it.
Nothing too heavy and hopefully getting in a bit about ^real^ tolerance and acceptance too!
I’m glad you said that! That’s basically been my approach as well. It’s the only thing I could think of.
And to be quite honest that’s exactly what this seems like.
There are people who believe that Jesus came to America (Mormons), there are people who believe that we are the descendants of aliens (scientologists). And there are now people who think that being a man or a woman is an option. Everyone is free to have their own beliefs. But we are also free to not believe them. That part seems to have been forgotten!
I have always been honest with my kids. It’s important to be kind, but it’s also important to be honest. People too often mistake what seems easy in the moment for what is truly kind.
For girls especially there is also a safety aspect. The reality is we have sex based spaces because of our immutable biological differences. Teaching daughters in particular to be too kind about men and boys in private spaces - school bathrooms, changing facilities, overnight camp cabins, dorm rooms, overnight field trips, etc puts them at greater risk.
It might not a be a little kid conversation, but for my family it was an elementary school conversation (my daughter is 11 and just started 6th grade. We started the safety conversations just before Covid shutdowns).
It is one thing to be kind. It is another to sacrifice bodily safety at the alter of kindness.
Excellent point! I wish women would stop throwing away their safety for “kindness “. It’s ultimately not kind!
I tell my daughter "You will never be a true lady until you are brave enough to make people mad by saying what needs to be said. Because a grown woman has to be strong enough to protect people who are vulnerable." I think she listens to me.
Absolutely.
And I think kids grasp that very well, it's just a carry forward from having Muslim friends for example, even though we don't follow the Koran ourselves.
Brilliant 👌🏾 And I agree 100%, this ideology is basically a modern type of religion, lol.
I was thinking this myself. I have 4 young children ages 8 years to 6 months old. What is the best way to talk to inoculate our children and prepare them for the inevitable attempt at indoctrination in their school or amongst their friends?
We all understand the danger of this ideology and that we have to prepare our children. But there is little to no info on specific strategies for how to do that. I know there are a number of books like the Brave books which are great for kids that you can use to help them understand this ideology. But we need very specific strategies of how to talk to our children at the various different ages.
How do they spot ideology masquerading as “inclusivity“? How do they know what are obvious falsehoods? And how do they know what exactly they are required to say and do when they find themselves inevitably in the situation at school or with friends?
It’s frustrating that there is so much information and books targeted towards young people on how to indoctrinate kids into this ideology and yet there’s almost nothing on how to save kids from it.
I agree, besides a couple of books, there are not a lot of resources for parents to present and explain this to kids. I will have an article out soon on my newsletter to give parents exactly those resources and practical ways to approach it.
I’ll look forward to reading it! Thanks!
yeah. This is particularly intense when you have kids going to public schools in blue areas, where some of their fellow students will be at least non-binary and possibly want to be referred to by opposite sex pronouns. If you don't want to or can't home-school your kids, how do you prepare them to participate in this world while making them secure in the reality of their own physical bodies and not vulnerable to having that core identity undermined?
Exactly! How do we protect them? It’s not that easy for parents to homeschool their kids. I personally am not able to do that. So what are our options?
Yay!! I was just thinking I hadn't seen you post in a while. :-)
Was waiting until I got back on Twitter so I could properly advertise for them on social media! Regular articles will now commence!
As the ex-wife of a man who identifies as a woman, and refuses to be accurately identified as the father of our two sons AND as a retired Kindergarten teacher who has had students desist a few weeks after claiming to be the opposite sex, I attest to the truth of Laura Linner's writing. I argued with my then-husband, to no avail. I told him he has no way to experience my kind of orgasm. But with the help of a groomer, a PhD psychologist "sexologist" who, according to her own sworn affidavit, diagnosed him in one first appointment, he kept a secret "true life test" identity far from us, his little kids and wife. She was the wizard, the puppet-master, pulling all the strings. When the 4 children I taught over 2 decades ideated to be the opposite sex, I gave them attention for their thoughts on our learning, for what they'd contributed in the past, and I did not have any boys in the girls bathroom! It dissipated. The first one, a girl and non-identical twin sister, was so grateful to me for affirming her as Sarah when she stopped, I will never forget.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com for references to debunked studies, detransitioner info, etc.
Laura, I have some tips to share after getting two at-risk kids through adolescence without falling too deeply into gender woo. I’m not sure how to contact you though. It’s a rough road.
It is probably better to think in terms of cultural secession, teaching our children that we are not them. This trend will need to move beyond the religious to the non-religious/common sense folk. We give it a go at www.livingagoodlifechurch.org.
Gender stuff seems new to a lot of people, but you have to understand that gender ideology has been the air we breath. I am sure you are busy, but if you can take a moment to grab a torrent you can watch Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib 1949.
The movie advocates the idea that 'female' is a developmental disorder caused by abuse, the root of all this trouble. This was 1949, behaviorism had a stranglehold on the university, just as it does now, and, like now, hollywood was mobilized to indoctrinate the masses. Particularly stark in the courtroom scene we see that 'women aren't real' Hepburn tells of the south american tribe where the genders are reversed, where men are small and week because women oppress them - this imaginary tribe has been shifted all over the globe in the decades before and since. She brings out 'role models' for the young girls in the audience, a woman (age 36) with more degrees than a man could earn in a lifetime, and a circus strongwoman who can easily lift a full grown man with one hand - these characters and their sisters are found in every blockbuster to this day.