NYT Columnist: Please Stop Calling My Tomboy Daughter ‘Transgender’

Transgenderism is the new quack medical craze: the 21st century lobotomy.

By Liberty McArtor Published on April 22, 2017

Just because a little girl wears short hair and athletic clothing, it doesn’t mean she’s actually a boy. That’s what author Lisa Selin Davis wrote for a column in The New York Times this week on the transgender craze.

To some this seems obvious. But to others, like many of Davis’ acquaintances, it isn’t. Davis is so tired of people doubting whether her 7-year-old daughter (who wears “track pants and T-shirts” and “has shaggy short hair”) is in fact female that she felt the need remind them of a basic truth: Little girls can be tomboys without being transgender.

“I want her to be proud to be a girl,” regardless of how she looks, Davis writes.

Transgenderism Pushed by Pop Culture

Davis is on to something. Namely, how the transgender fad has pushed people to assume someone is transgender when she doesn’t fit certain stereotypes.

Recently Australian child psychologist Stephen Stathis addressed this very topic. Stathis said that many children are brought to his gender clinic who are not actually gender dysphoric, but “gender variant.” And the cases of actual gender dysphoria in children seem to be much more rare than popular culture lets on. 

Seventy-five percent of Stathis’ child patients who take temporary puberty blockers forgo the later cross-sex hormones. In other words, they change their minds. Stathis told the Brisbane Times:

You might get a six or seven-year-old girl wanting to dress as a boy. She may even say she wants to be a boy. When she hits puberty, she says ‘no, I’m just a girl who likes to do boy things’.

Other studies have also confirmed that most children who identify as transgender end up growing out of it. 

A generation ago, would these kids have assumed they were transgender simply because they didn’t fit certain stereotypes? No way. Because the idea of being transgender wasn’t a fad relentlessly pushed on them by adults, culture, and media

Transgenderism Reinforces Gender Stereotypes

What Stathis calls “gender variant” is what Davis calls “gender role nonconforming.” They both mean people who don’t embody stereotypes.

Modern society likes to criticize gender stereotypes. But ironically when it comes to transgenderism, society reinforces them.

Modern society likes to criticize traditional gender roles. But ironically when it comes to transgenderism, society reinforces them. Little boy picks up a doll? Must be a little girl. Little girl wants short hair? Must be a boy. This results in endless hypocrisy. (For instance, skirt suits are sexist for women, but wearing a dress is enough to make a little boy or grown man female.)

Davis recognizes this hypocrisy because of her own daughter’s experience. And yet she still affirms the transgender lifestyle; she is quick to note that if her daughter did want to become a boy, she would “research puberty blockers and hormones.” 

What about the studies showing that her 7-year-old girl would likely grow out of her transgender identity? What about the fact that many who don’t abandon their transgender identity before it’s too late live to regret it? This is what Davis and popular culture want us to ignore.

Transgender Regret

Author and speaker Walt Heyer regularly writes about transgender regret. A man who formerly identified as a transgender woman, Heyer recently reported that studies cited to justify sex-change surgeries are based on “junk science” and “biased toward reporting success.” 

Until society recognizes rejects transgenderism for faddish craze that it is, more people get hurt as they search for an identity where it doesn’t exist.

In addition, the notion of transitioning was first popularized by “falsified evidence,” Heyer writes. This “evidence” came from a pedophile doctor who recommended one family raise their son as a girl after his genitalia were destroyed during a failed circumcision. The son later committed suicide. 

This is the kind of information on which adults are allowing children to base life-changing decisions. And in the long run, it doesn’t help. While it may provide temporary relief for some, abandoning reality can only result in deeper pain and confusion later.

Freedom in Truth, Not Transition

Davis has landed on a half truth. She’s peeled back one layer of the illogic of the transgender movements. 

Here’s the full truth: Every human being is created in the image of God.

Human beings are either male or female.

God created every person for a purpose. Because of this, each person, regardless of their gender, can reflect God’s nature in unique ways.

That’s why it’s okay for little girls like Davis’ to wear short hair and sweat pants. It’s okay if a little boy prefers knitting to sports. It’s okay for women to be natural leaders and it’s okay for men to be emotionally sensitive. We can embrace our unique characteristics and personality traits without wondering if God made a mistake. 

After all, we aren’t men or women because we like and do certain things. We’re men and women because we were created as such. Our culture is quickly forgetting this. Many thousands, misled, will suffer.

Davis’s column is a step in the right direction. But until society rejects transgenderism for the dangerous craze that it is, more people will suffer in body and soul.

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