Nasty Truths About the Treatment of Gender Confusion

Introduction: What is the Source of Confusion?

I believe confusion about one’s gender ultimately has demonic roots.  Our God is Truth Itself!

We can benefit from “road maps” to navigate the serpentine travels of gender confusion.  Male, Female, Other?: A Catholic Guide to Understanding Gender (Jason Evert, 2023) addresses 18 untruths derailing appreciation for the pinnacle of God’s creation.  Tragically, it has become common for people – especially young people – to tolerate these lies:

1. Each person has their own gender identity.
2. Gender is a social construct.
3. Some people are trans.
4. Sex is assigned at birth.
5. Intersex people prove that sex is not binary.
6. Some people have the brain of one sex but the body of the other.
7. The idea of a rigid gender binary is the result of Western colonialism.
8. More people are coming out as trans only because society has become more accepting.
9. Puberty blockers are a safe, effective, and reversible way to pause puberty.
10. Cross-sex hormones are beneficial for people who experience gender dysphoria.
11. Gender-affirming surgery is a life-saving intervention.
12. People who transition rarely express regret.
13. Refusing to affirm a person’s gender identity leads to suicide.
14. Gender identity is innate.
15. You should use whatever pronoun a person prefers.
16. Trans people should be free to compete in sports, use restrooms, and enter public spaces that align with their gender identity.

17. Parents and educators ought to affirm any child who identifies as trans.
18. If you struggle with gender dysphoria, you should accept that God made you trans.

Trying to Escape Infestations of Gender Confusion

In Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult (Margaret Mary Olohan, 2024), we are told of horrific abuses and mutilations – often to children, behind parents’ backs – related to acceptance of untruths,

• Disability-related vulnerability is seemingly disregarded: “Children and adolescents on the autism spectrum are ‘disproportionately represented among the large, newly emerging cohort of young people self-identifying as transgender’….undiagnosed autism, particularly in girls, is contributing to the rise in transgender youth” (p. 34).
• “‘ever-increasing normalization of pornography usage’ by children and young people [correlates] with an ‘unprecedented explosion in the number of children and teenagers identifying as transgender….'” (p. 41).
• “It was the medical professionals who, she felt, had betrayed them. ‘A doctor doesn’t say “Do this or your kid’s going to kill themselves,”‘….’That’s not what a doctor should be saying. That’s what an activist says'” (p. 112).
• “”But in the trans community, people cope with the inherent doubts and cognitive dissonance of pretending to be someone they are not by encouraging others to do the same. This is also why so many adult trans people advocate for child transition’” (p. 152).
• There is an oft-repeated, manipulative and misleading rhetorical question put to parents: “’Would you rather have a dead daughter, or a live son?’” (p. 210)

The Church and the Treatment of So-Called Transgenderism

As per a very able critique from a group of doctrinally orthodox Catholic physicians::

The present “treatment” of GD [gender dysphoria] is contrary to the nature of medicine. It denies the very essence of the human person who is an integrated entity of body and soul. Such a denial is perpetuated by language that negates this reality by the erroneous use of pronouns, and the fostering of dress and behaviors that are intended to affirm this denial. New developments in addressing gender dysphoria in children are concerning in terms of violating fundamental parental rights and upending long standing jurisprudence. Policies to undermine the rights and obligations of parents or guardians, particularly in the public-school systems, in no way are to be endorsed. Children lack the full decisional capacity for such serious issues and are dependent upon engaged parents/guardians to consent or refuse potentially life-altering psychological, medical, or surgical actions. (The Ideology of Gender Harms Children, Catholic Medical Association, 9/8/2023)

In June 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops indicated that it would update its Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services with its own Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body.  In a 7/10/24 phone conversation with Joe Zalot, PhD, of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, I confirmed that the update has not yet happened.

There has been some abundantly clear and recent guidance from the Vatican on these matters:

57….Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.58….In the male-female couple [is achieved]…the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world….

60….any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception. This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities. However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Infinita, 3/25/2024).

Conclusion

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops appears to be negligently failing to outright condemn  these practices in clear and timely manners.