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| The transgender Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine |
In June 2021, two mothers launched a Substack called Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT). Here, parents of trans-identifying children could tell their stories and voice their opposition to the greatest medical scandal of our time. Within a year, the project became famous in the “parent underground,” with over 250 stories published and more pouring in from around the world…
As I have said many times - on the one hand I cannot imagine the emotional pain suffered by those that have this issue. Especially children and their families. I have consistently felt that we cannot dismiss this phenomenon as in some way immoral just because they believe they are a different sex than the one they were born with. On the other hand I will never understand how it is even possible for someone born a man to think he is a woman and vice versa.
The question is, what does an observant Jewish parent do about it when that is expressed by their child?
The Torah is very clear. It is forbidden to mutilate oneself. It is also forbidden to cross dress. Where that leaves a transgender child is a subject that has yet to be fully addressed by the major Poskim. Especially if that child is suicidal because of it.
LGBTQ activists do not have this problem. They are unconcerned with the moral implications of transgenderism. They see it as a matter of choice. If a boy thinks he’s a girl and there is due diligence by expert medical professionals, then changing a child’s sex is to be acted upon and then celebrated . If cross dressing suffices, why not if it will make them mentally whole?
I cannot accept the idea that one can simply choose what sex they want to be. Nor do I believe it is even possible to change one’s sex entirely. It isn’t just about genitalia. There are other physical differences that cannot be changed. To mention just a few - a man is far more muscular, has more upper body strength… a woman’s torso is shorter; her hips wider; her internal reproductive organs are different. A woman generally has smaller hands, slender arms, and more delicate longer fingers… the list goes on.
Hormone injections can change some of those things, but not all of them.
Although I can’t exactly explain it (and it is not always the case) I can almost always tell when a man transitions into a woman.. A man’s face just looks different than a woman’s face. Wearing one’s hair long like a woman does not change that for me.
Transgenderism is an abnormal mental condition and not something to celebrate. .I part company with LGBTQ advocates who feel that it is.
Van Marenin points to another less focused upon (if at all) problem to think about. The effect it has on family members when a child tells them they think they are not the sex they were born with. I cannot imagine what it must be like for a parent to hear that. I realize that there are parents that are eventually accepting of it and happy to see the change in the improved mental health of a child who has undergone a sex change. But what about the following:
The essays are full of rage and despair. Many of the children encouraged to “transition” are autistic. Tomboys are put on drugs; sensitive boys are put on puberty blockers. Parents cannot believe that they—who adore their children, have snuggled with them and sacrificed for them and would die for them—are accused of being the enemy simply for questioning the idea that their children can change their sex. As one mother wrote:
When this nightmare ends, and it will, how will you get those years back? How will you ever trust again? How will you ever feel emotionally safe in your home, in your community? Will your friends and family apologize and admit they were wrong? Will the doctors and schools apologize and admit their mistakes? . . . This has changed me forever. Part of my heart has been taken from me, and my anger is unbearable. But what have I learned? Only one lesson: I will never trust those same people ever again.
Many of the parents mourn the loss of their children. Their once-beautiful teen daughters, who now have beards and gravelly voices and ugly chest scars. Their sons, now with long hair and makeup, desperate to “pass” as female but fooling nobody.
I am convinced that there are a lot of parents like that. I have no idea what statistics are. But that there has been a virtual explosion of transgender people in the world tells me that there is something off about this. It can’t just be that - in the not so distant past - there were so many people like that in the closet suffering in silence. I have to believe that cultural influences have something to do with it.
This makes me wonder just how many people that have undergone sex reassignment surgery regret it. Not having solved the underlying mental condition that made them do it in the first place.
It is for this reason, that at the very least a child confused about their gender should never be greenlighted to have surgery before adulthood. Children are too easily swayed by cultural attitudes. Parents ought to have a right to wait until their child reaches a level of maturity where they might rethink and reconsider an irreversible operation that could ruin their lives if done too hastily. It makes a lot more sense to me to wait until they are at least 18 before being able to make that decision on their own. I don’t know if that it the law in every state. But it ought to be.
