Affirming Identity That is Different From Someone’s Birth is Counterproductive
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
Of course, no one should vandalize a restaurant or threaten its proprietors. And, of course, the overwhelming majority of those who make the always-mistaken choice to “embrace LGBTQ+ identity” are not predatory child abusers.
Nonetheless, it is wrong to “affirm” children’s naive desire to escape stresses by claiming to not be of the gender dictated by their genes any more than one’s childish claims to be a dragon or some other species.
We cannot change our reality by imagining things to be different at any age, as ex-President Trump seems about to finally learn to his cost after his constant lies about the 2020 election, his intellect, his competence and his physical fitness.
If young children go beyond healthy questioning of stereotypical sex roles, or place naive over-validation of those roles by thinking of them as defining reality into claiming to actually be of the opposite sex, playing along can doom them to lifelong medicalization while compassionate correction will lead most to outgrow the fantasies.
Longitudinal studies have shown that playing along does not reduce suicide rates, and countries that started doing it before the U.S. have already been abandoning childhood transition treatments as their side effects become clear.
Like many things, people like what’s bad for them; “affirmation” is harmful and uncalled for – as are letter writer Eileen McDermott’s repetitions (as a “local puppet” of the “powers that be” in her community, to use her own parlance) that it’s “hate” to “oppose people’s identities and existence” by insisting that such people actually overestimate the value of certain desires they cherish.
If we were all infallible judges of ourselves and our actions, we would have no need for laws or government, but in the real world we come into conflict and some of us are wrong. People can become very resentful when corrected, but that does not make them evading correction a positive to be sought by everyone.
Allowing only those views that feed the claim that the LGBTQ+ are entitled to and assured of “winning” to be expressed is bad for the community. People who turn their attention aside from an “identity” created to excuse refusal to take a critical view of their desires would spend their time better, and do better, if they abandoned defensive efforts to silence disagreement with their views.
Louis Epstein
Kent Lakes
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