Gender ideology – perilous to parents’ rights, kids’ well-being

Gender ideology, which has infiltrated American medicine, psychology, and public education from preschool forward, teaches children that they may be trapped in the wrong body. Some teachers ask students – without parental knowledge – to choose their name, gender, and preferred pronouns for classroom use. One mother told me her 10-year-old daughter was being addressed with a boy’s name and male pronouns by teachers and classmates, at her daughter’s request after a gender lesson. Only when her daughter announced, “One day I’ll grow a penis,” did her mother discover what was happening in the classroom.

Dr. Michelle Cretella

Biological sex is innate. You either have a Y chromosome at conception, and develop into a male, or you don’t, and develop into a female. There are at least 6,500 genetic differences between men and women. Clothing, name changes, hormones, and surgery cannot change this. An identity, in contrast, involves thoughts and feelings which are not biologically hardwired, and which can be factually wrong.

Ten years ago I had a five-year-old patient, “Andy,” who insisted he was a girl. I referred the family to a therapist. Child abuse, or a parent’s mental illness, may cause gender identity confusion in a child. More commonly, however, the child has misperceived family dynamics and internalized a false belief. The latter was the case for Andy. During one session he said, “Mommy and Daddy, you don’t love me when I’m a boy.” After a year of family therapy, Andy became securely attached to both parents and his false belief was corrected.

Today, Andy’s parents would be told, “This is who Andy really is. Let’s affirm him as a girl, or he will commit suicide.” As Andy approaches puberty, the “experts” would put him on puberty blockers so he can continue to impersonate a girl. It doesn’t matter that we’ve never tested puberty blockers in biologically normal children, or that these drugs cause problems with memory in adults. We need to arrest Andy’s physical development now, or he will kill himself.

But this is not true. In the past, when supported in their biological sex through natural puberty, 80 – 95 percent of genderconfused children got better. Today, rather than help confused children embrace bodily reality, gender-confused children are chemically castrated with puberty blockers, often sterilized by cross-sex hormones, which also put them at risk for heart disease, strokes, diabetes, cancers, and even the very emotional problems gender experts claim to be treating.

Additionally, if a girl who insists she is male has been on daily testosterone for a year, she is cleared to get a bilateral mastectomy at age 16. Mind you, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently released a report urging pediatricians to caution teenagers about tattoos because they are essentially permanent and can cause scarring. But this same AAP is 110 percent in support of 16-year-old girls getting double mastectomies, even without parental consent, if they believe they are boys.

The “trapped in the wrong body” lie disrupts the foundation of children’s reality-testing, and may result in their chemical castration, sterilization, and surgical mutilation. Gender ideology in pediatrics and education is child abuse. It is time for parents and professionals to unite for children’s protection.

DR. MICHELLE CRETELLA is president of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), the natural-law alternative to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). She is also a member of the Catholic Medical Association. Under her leadership, the ACPeds has become the primary medical voice critical oftransgender medicine. https://www.acpeds.org/.Dr. Cretella may be contacted at [email protected]