Transgender is everywhere. During the Emmy awards Sunday night, actor Jeffrey Tambor made history winning an Emmy for playing the first transgender character, in the show “Transparent.” Recently, Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the season premiere of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
Despite serious, indelible problems plaguing our national welfare—like economic recovery, ISIS threats, and an unpredictable Iran—center-left thinkers and activists disregard those issues and continue in subtle and direct ways to spearhead movements that further their agenda.
Transgender Must Be Primetime
When Tambor won the Emmy, DeGeneres tweeted:
I love when TV makes a difference. Grateful to @JeffreyTambor & Transparent for breaking ground and so happy for their win. #Emmys
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) September 21, 2015
But when the topic of same-sex marriage surfaced on her show, DeGeneres reacted with less enthusiasm. Jenner said he was a “traditionalist” who had been originally against same-sex marriage, but is now “okay with it.” While that admittance does seem ironic, given Jenner’s transition this year, DeGeneres thought Jenner’s statements were confusing.
The media appears to also be confused, or at least fickle. First they’re making Jenner a star, parading him on the front of Vanity Fair, a veritable queen of transgenders, the main character in his own reality show, “I Am Cait.” Now, when he maintains he’s traditional in some cultural views, he gets attacked.
But the media is not as fickle as its leaders are purposeful. After all, regardless of Jenner’s somewhat diametrical views on same-sex marriage, the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” episode featuring a transgender man aired on the season premiere and matched its all-time ratings high for an opening frame.
Transgenders Must Be Everywhere
The push to make transgenderism mainstream, a part of regularly accepted culture—especially when only 0.3 to 0.5 percent of the population identifies as transgender (the numbers are difficult to calculate still)—is being pushed on both ends of influential America. Those are Hollywood and kids. Make no mistake: Left-center elitists will not rest until transgenderism is not only accepted but transcends the rights of cis-gender people (people who do not call themselves transgender).
What better way to make transgenderism seem like a movement everyone must accept than to encourage someone who claims to be a Republican and conservative to admit he actually sides with some conservatives on the issue? The push to get Republicans on board with transgenderism is taking many different forms.
Now there are commercials and interviews and documentaries and op-eds always circulating, always prevalent, always persuading. Ice-cream companies are using the trans meme, for heaven’s sakes. It isn’t enough for the center-left to let kids “feel” or even “decide” to be transgender. They must walk through life accompanied by the propaganda machine assuring them this new lifestyle choice is fantastic for them and everyone around them.
Many have heard about Caitlyn Jenner, but have you heard about Jazz Jennings? Jazz is a 14-year-old transgender who has become somewhat of a transgender child phenomenon. Interviewed first at just six years-old, he’s lived most of his elementary and middle school years in the spotlight to some extent, often giving interviews along with his family members.
Jazz stars on TLC in his own docu-series, not ironically titled “I Am Jazz.” He’s in a Clean & Clear commercial, #SeetheRealMe. Clean & Clear is a major beauty brand whose target audience is those less than 20 years old. Given the amount of publicity he has received, one would never realize transgender youths are a remarkably small minority.
More Mixed Messages
Of course, transgender kids and their advocates would say they only seem like the minority because they haven’t been accepted yet; they haven’t been allowed to come out. While that might be true to some extent—expect transgender claims to increase in popularity, if only because it’s en vogue—the center-left, transgender lobby remains a more influential Big Brother than most people realize.
For example, in general, Jazz seems like a happy transgender kid, if uncharacteristic for similar youths. He has published a children’s book, and he runs TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation, a nonprofit organization. During interviews, he and his family seem to genuinely enjoy and support one another. (This is a good thing. I’m not hoping for discord or unhappiness in some schadenfreude kind of way.)
But Jazz’s story doesn’t seem to represent most transgender kids. The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health says, in this recent study,“Transgender youth are more at risk for mental illness, including depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and attempts, and self-harm than their non-transgender peers.”
In a recent NBC News interview, a 10-year-old transgender seems to vacillate between whether he wants to “be” a boy or girl. When he says he’s having second thoughts, his mom corrects him that “only he can decide” his gender. The clip ends with him crying as the doctor implants hormone blockers into his arm. There are dozens of stories like this.
Transgender advocates—such as those in the study cited above—would suggest this highlights the “need for gender-affirming mental health services and interventions to support transgender youth.” But others, even doctors, suggest different methods. Debra W. Soh, a sex researcher and neuroscientist at York University in Toronto, wrote recently about her personal experiments with being transgender. She cautions parents and doctors against using medical methods to promote gender dysphoria. “[R]esearch has shown that most gender dysphoric children outgrow their dysphoria, and do so by adolescence: Most will grow up to be happy, gay adults, and some, like myself, to be happy, straight adults.”
In general, we on the center-right do not target any one person, regardless of whether he or she calls himself or herself a man, woman, or vegetable. We oppose the confusing body image that’s harmful to youths during a time when they are experiencing incredible changes, psychologically and physiologically. We oppose the message that traditional, healthy body images are so passe. We oppose the lies that transgender children will be happy if only they are allowed to be accepted after having attempted to convert into their biological opposite.
The center-left propagandist machine hardly allows for—and in reality ignores—typical adolescent struggles, the viewpoint of doctors who suggest waiting out gender dysphoria, or stories of kids struggling or unhappy with “becoming” transgender. It’s a shame. By proliferating the relentless, flawed, mixed messages that health and happiness only await a youth on the “other side” of his transgender story, it’s our youths—and ultimately society—who end up confused, unhealthy, and wondering why they were told so many lies.
