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Based on the comic book my husband and I are both “transgender”. Everyone I know is apparently secretly “transgender,” because I have yet to meet a human that perfectly fits the left’s caricature of what roles women are “supposed” to perform, and what roles men are “supposed” to perform. My pretty boy went to college on a men’s soccer scholarship 6’ husband who works out and has a 40 year old man’s male hair pattern is not a woman just because he cleans a lot. 😂

Gender ideology is ridiculous. It conflates the caricatures from the imaginations of Hollywood producers and those who actually know almost nothing about the strictness with which gender roles are enforced both today and historically with real life.

While kindness is important, it’s not kind to indulge the delusional theories of ignorant full grown adults, particularly when the observed actual outcome is confusing kids and sterilizing, causing impotence, and genitally mutilating about 1 in 100 kids with rates still rising in the US. Gender theory is bigoted, stupid, misogynistic, and cruel. There is nothing kind or inclusive about it.

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This is so crazy. I grew up knowing that I wasn't limited in my roles at home or at work (or anywhere else) even though (or despite) being female. Why isn't practicing and teaching that concept so much easier than trying to force the body to those limited stereotypes? This is definitely a step backward for men and women.

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theres no money in gay rights or teaching boys and girls to accept their bodys. gender ideology tells tom boys they are actually boys and gender meds will solve every normal teen issue. its snake oil. but dems hv swallowed this fraud and are harming kids worse than any historical tragedy and with similar magical thinking.

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Sep 9, 2022
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This is about gender identity, not whether kids are gay or not. If anything, gender ideology is even more homophobic than you are. And that's saying something!

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Thank you for this excellent article, Laura. I appreciate how you break down each book/website into the categories of "who's recommending it?" and "what does it say?" As a reader trying to keep up with the tsunami of information about the indoctrination in schools, this framing was super helpful for a quick understanding. Gender wheel is particularly mind-boggling. (Dear somebody: please make a scientifically correct one as an alternative!) Your points about the shifts in the ideology (or theory, as you call it) since I am Jazz are important, pointing out that the books now are even worse because the "theory" has morphed. Also appreciate you pointing out three different concepts and how the TRAs use whichever one works to counter opposition. It's all part of the queering mentality.

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It was not “controversial” what Florida passed.

If you try to teach this stuff to children and try and get them to hide it from parents then I’m sorrry but you’re a groomer. End off.

For those that don’t already know them google John Money. He was the beginning of this gender crap. He’s evil.

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I have mentioned this before, but I want to reiterate the second point (that kids who display anything less than stereotypical behavior from decades ago) are explicitly told they are on the spectrum in many 7th grade health textbooks in the US. I know, because I was on the textbook selection committee. The book was otherwise good and well thought out, which makes me think, though I haven't looked it up, that gender ideology is required by some state education agencies. I am guessing California since they (and Texas) have enough purchasing power to influence textbooks sold in other states (it is not required in Texas. Thank you for succinctly explaining why bringing back such backwards, non feminist , antiquated ideas is harmful. I would suggest everyone reading this ask their local school

board if gender identity is in middle or high school health textbooks, then lobby for a review of the sex ed curriculum.

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That is terrifying. Until I was 8 or 9 I was convinced I should have been a boy. I looked like a boy, acted like a boy, played with the boys, and have a gender neutral name. My 1st grade teacher thought I was a boy the first week until she broke us up for some game and asked why I was in the girls’ side. 🤦‍♀️

The reality is I liked to wrestle and play in the dirt, love sports, hate Barbie, despise pink. I couldn’t articulate that because I was a KID. Luckily I was also born in the 1980’s and being a Tom boy was fine.

By 17 I was still very athletic with defined muscles and a size 0 with natural 32D/DDs. I was terrified entering puberty and rather amused by the end at the power my body had over the boys. I was a bit boy crazy too.

Today I’m a happily married mom of 2. I look like a southern soccer mom (long blonde hair, blue eyes, the whole deal). Other than my wedding and formals in high school and college, I didn’t wear dresses until pregnant at 28 with my oldest. I didn’t start wearing skirts until I started playing tennis a few years ago. I still only wear tennis skirts.

If gender ideology would have been pushed when I was little, I would have eaten it up, destroyed my body, and killed myself by now. Instead I grew into a happy and reasonably confident woman with an incredible family and children who are my whole world.

We are robbing children of their future with this crap and it’s evil. It’s cruel. I’m still me. I was an outdoor adventure guide in undergrad and I still love the outdoors. I still love sports and hate pink and Barbie. I love wrestling with my kids and also being their mommy.

Yet the gender ideologist want to teach my kids I should have been punished with sterilization, and they should have never born, because there is something “wrong” with their mommy. It’s every bit as cruel as telling kids to fit a box or be sterilized, to teach them if their parents don’t fit into incredibly bigoted stereotypes, which I would argue most don’t, than their parents are living a lie.

Fortunately my kids are at a conservative private Christian school so they hear about this a lot from us, and why it’s cruel and insane, while watching it take hold in the lives of not very close friends at different schools and recognizing the cruelty of it. I can protect them, but their generation and the society they will enter as adults is being seriously damaged to appease the mentally ill, big pharma profits, and to pad the pay of the professional activists class. Sad

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I agree with your points but this isn't the first time I've seen the humblebrag about your body type/bra size/hair and eye color. Is that really necessary to make the argument that you are making? Are you more feminine than someone with a B cup who was a size 8 with brown hair and eyes and therefore it would have been a bigger tragedy for you to get a mastectomy than her? That seems to be the implication, and it's as regressive as any of the gender ideology stuff. I'm not trying to be mean, I just don't understand the relevance of your personal appearance to the overall argument. Ostensibly gender ideology harms all women regardless of how many cultural ideals her adult body fits, yes?

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The fact that you are equating superficial feminine physical appearance with “how feminine” someone is or isn’t shows they have at least clouded your view of others. I would not describe myself as particularly feminine, nor would anyone who knows me, despite my physical appearance that I can only control at the edges and for overall health I’m still a Tom boy. That’s the whole point of the details I share. Many women of all shapes and sizes are far more feminine than me. My worth as a woman is not wrapped up in either my body or how typical my personality is of other women, and the women that go down that path will always find themselves feeling inadequate compared to some ridiculous “ideal.”

I’m making the point that the left wants to make “gender” all about behavior AND appearance. As if there is some natural law that looking a certain way demands one behave a certain way. My appearance as a kid was very masculine. Before I was an adult not so much. I really didn’t have much to do with either.

Yet, I didn’t change my choices on likes and dislikes. My interest didn’t change. My choices certainly matured, but interests didn’t change all that much. Does that mean I’m not “allowed” to wear my hair long? I’m not “allowed” to keep my natural body as it developed?

That our society is teaching this nonsense to children when behavior choices and personality are not determined or directed by physical appearance is the problem.

I’m not a feminine woman washing dishes and playing with makeup just because of my body, nor am I a man because of my interests and lifestyle choices just because in some caricature world gender ideologist are trying to impose on our children only “men” are allowed to have my interests.

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I am in complete agreement that gender ideology is toxic. I too rarely wear makeup and generally eschew dresses. My interests as a child were mainly reading and writing, so I wasn't a tomboy per se. I guess I just don't understand what the dress and bra size of one's teenage self have to do with arguing against gender ideology. The whole point is supposed to be that no matter what a natal woman looks like, and what her interests are, she is still a woman, and that less stereotypically feminine women are not lesser and are not "men trapped in women's bodies" because they don't look like Barbie dolls.

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You are the one implying my comment indicates there is a link about “more” or “less” of a man/ woman, not me. Human beings simply are either a girl/ woman or boy/man. The extent to which each person exhibits certain traits that are descriptively used as masculine or feminine has nothing to do with what we simply are. Ignoring that stereotypes exist or saying “gender ideology is toxic” without specifically articulating why it’s wrong and toxic isn’t very effective at combating or discrediting it. It’s up there with parents accurately telling their kids it’s a belief system like a religion then equating it’s value to Christianity or Judaism. Yes, it’s a belief system, but no it’s nothing like mature religious theologies that root people in a solid moral compass.

My experience gives a lot of insight into some of the kids that are vulnerable to this, and also exemplifies how most humans in their own unique way defy the logic of gender ideology but not objectively true biological gender. It also exemplifies how drastically different things turn out when kids are left alone to develop naturally as opposed to having fleeting childhood misconceptions “affirmed.”

You are the one who seems laser focused on my bra size as a fully developed young woman rather than the dramatic change I was straight forward about going through over less than a decade of childhood and the especially high risk it poses to young girls who don’t fit a stereotype. It’s also pretty shallow to see me as only my bra size when there were lots of other aspects presented.

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Okay, well, I'm just saying I have never seen another commenter on any Substack describe their physical appearance in such granular detail. I question why it was necessary to the overall argument, which as I stated, I agree with. That's it. Have a lovely weekend.

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The relevance is that little girls change radically over time and that children should never be indoctrinated with "gender" nonsense.

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Thank goodness the "gender" gestapo wasn't around when you and I were young. I was a feminine little girl but some of my friends were tomboys, and I hate to think what could have happened to them if they were little girls today. We must shut the "gender" crazies down as soon as possible.

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Agree 100%%%. Just let kids be kids. It would be so dull if we were all the same. Humans are unique. We aren’t boxes on a bubble test.

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Yes. Let children grow up free from the intense and offensive "transgender" indoctrination program in the schools and in popular culture.

My husband who has Alzheimer's watches a lot of TV. This afternoon he was watching a game show, probably Family Feud. One contestant who was jumping up and down and shrieking like an idiot was, you guessed it, a "female" impersonator in full drag queen regalia. I'm sure the producers put this individual on to meet some type of diversity/equity/inclusion quota.

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Thank you for laying out these books so clearly and showing how much of this stuff is not only nonsense, but confusing, self-fulfilling and dangerous. We are, on purpose, confusing the heck out of our kids under the pretense of inclusion. All we are doing is creating a generation of kiddos who are unmoored from reality and science. Crazy to think that this is what we want for their future.

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The gender charlatans peddle nonsense and lies. Reject their sophistry. And shut them down.

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I just can’t buy into “think yourself a different sex”. The horrifying part of this article is the complicity of the adults in this grim *experiment*. Teachers are neither doctors nor psychiatrists. Surgeons that experiment on children should have their licenses revoked.

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And what's even worse is that the doctors and psychiatrists have also been captured.

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Since antiquated and really rather silly "gender stereotypes" seem to be integral to this ideology, what to make of the recent California law that stores stop segregating toys into girl's and boy's toys, but to put them all together? If gender stereotypes are so important, why is it bad to have dolls in one aisle and tonka trucks in the next?

I too am not interested in dresses, makeup, or jewelry, and have been that way all my life. I am a horsewoman and all my horsey friends have similar interests. Are we all trans? NO!

What has happened to the feminists here? For decades they have been pushing to end female stereotypes and tell women (XX women) they could do anything a man could do. So now are they actually all men? The ones who didn't do what the feminists said are the only remaining women?

This entire ideology is completely incoherent and would be ridiculous except that it is so dangerous.

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I've always been quite comfortable with people who don't want to fit in the comic book's boxes. Tomboys and gentle men. But being a tomboy doesn't mean you must cut your breasts off and have a floppy tube of skin grafted onto your perineum! And boys who like sewing, cooking and domesticity need not castrate themselves. If you want to make a big deal out of gender then feel free. All the trouble starts when you either confuse it with sex or claim that sex doesn't exist.

And to the point of the article, I believe children know without being taught that some of them are boys and some are girls. And frankly, that's all small children need to know. Introducing sexual and gender teachings at that age is icky, wrong and suggestive of sinister motives. Leave kids to enjoy what they can of childhood innocence: they'll run all too soon into the complications of growing up and adulthood.

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According to "Trans 101", trans/non-binary people are those who feel certain ways, but might not feel certain ways. They might make physical changes to their bodies, or they might not. They might honor gender stereotypes, or they might defy them. So, this video takes eight minutes to convey no significant information, except that I'd better watch how I speak. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't typically appreciate being told what words I can and cannot use.

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These books are trite drivel and can't be read with any genuine sincerity. I am so glad they weren't part of the picture when my sons were 5 & 8, and their father went down this rabbit hole. I had to straighten out a lot of his false claims that he was actually biologically female, when our sons came back from over there. I was so cowed by the court experience that I wasn't able to call it out as a load of bull, for fear of getting hauled back. However, the entire schema involves alienation of affection towards the mother, which is supposed to be actionable. I've heard many older teachers say they throw this material out or in a dark, dark place, as soon as it arrives in their school mailbox.

Unfortunately, parens must forewarn their young children that some people in school will promote religious beliefs in direct contradiction to "our family's mindset." Then teach them how to be quiet about it, sorry to say. Brave parents can challenge any book in a school library, and at least have the right to say their child does not have permission to check it out.

From 1992, I was rowing this trans widow boat all on my own--now it feels like millions of parents are realizing how the cross-sex (aka synthetic sex) ideology has snuck into schools, tech firms, corporate communication standards and etc. One look at the webpage, Trans Journalists Association Style Guide online, and you'll see the indoctrination and brainwashing. I thought I'd outrun it, darn it all!

Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)

uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com

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Laura, you have done a very thorough deconstruction of the under age sexual grooming/indoctrination material that in more normal times would have been regarded as a shocking example of perverted psychopathy that one would ordinarily have only been articulated in mental asylums and by more foolhardy soapbox cranks who were prepared to risk being jeered and things being thrown at them by appalled bystanders.

https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2180479-Transgenderspeak-The-ITVs-Butterfly

https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2188652-Transgender-Inc-Kafkas-Children

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