In the 1950s, effeminate men who demonstrated any hint of same-sex attraction were often referred for conversion therapy, where they underwent a series of pseudoscientific “treatments” — from nausea-inducing drugs to brain surgeries and ice baths — designed to rid them of their homosexual urges.
While I’m a theologically orthodox Protestant who believes in my faith’s historic teaching on marriage and sexual ethics, I hope we can all agree that prescribing bodily harm as any kind of “solution” for someone’s failure to conform to sex roles or stereotypes is wrong. Coercing people, under duress, to manufacture attraction that doesn’t exist is equally problematic.
But nearly a century later, this is all still happening, only this time it’s the transgender lobby that’s perpetuating it. Just look at this illustration I tweeted from a friend’s lesbian dating app a few days ago:
The backlash to my post was as swift as it was fierce: “You’re just jealous because these women are more beautiful than you’ll ever be.” “Eat a bullet, bigot!” It’s like 1950s-style aversion therapy all over again, only the conditioning isn’t limited to a clinical office; it’s completely consumed every corner of society. “You will be attracted to the people we have chosen for you, or else!”
The trans lobby is waging a full-on war against sexual orientation and “genital preferences,” which are now deemed “transphobic.”
Accusations of Bigotry
My friend’s experience isn’t an isolated incident. Last week, a heated panel discussion went viral in which a young woman unleashed on a man who said he would never date a “transwoman” because he’s not attracted to males. In the video, you can see the woman storm off the stage, assassinate the young man’s character, and refuse to further engage in the discussion, citing his “bigotry.”
The young man calmly tried to explain that he was not physically attracted to males, and she would hear nothing of it. “Shut the f-ck up, bigot,” was her impassioned response.
Similarly, Bill Maher recently hosted a gay man on his show who said, “Gay men are being told, if you do not want to have sex with a vagina, you’re actually a bigot.”
Lesbians have been bemoaning a similar reality for years, documenting the misogynistic entitlement they routinely encounter from men in dresses. Social media is awash with lesbians lamenting the state of their lesbian dating sites, which are now cluttered with the profiles of porn-sick straight men pretending to be women. If the actual lesbians complain, they get kicked off the sites for their bigotry against these entitled men. (If you really want to dive deep down this rabbit hole, you should research “the cotton ceiling,” but you should prepare yourself to be really disturbed by what you learn.)
It would be bad enough if the punishment for resistance were only social stigma, but it’s not. Aversion therapy is Big Pharma’s newest cash cow, generating millions of dollars off the insecurity of a whole new generation of quirky gender-nonconforming kids, most of them young girls, and many of them on the autism spectrum. It has been a horrifying month of revelations about the dark underbelly of the transgender industry, with unearthed emails from U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine even confirming his knowledge of revenue opportunities inherent in the transing of children.
Odious Stereotypes
Whereas the feminine boys of the ’50s (the ones who loved dolls and art and pink and theater) got funneled into aversion therapy facilities, young girls who hate dresses and love tech are being funneled into gender facilities for a “treatment plan” of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and elective double mastectomies. These are interventions that will render most of these kids permanently sterile before they’re even old enough to pierce their ears without parental consent.
If you listen to virtually any of the attention-seeking Munchausen moms pushing their way to the limelight with claims of their “transgender preschoolers,” the story is always the same: “My 3-year-old wanted to wear dresses, so I knew that Johnny was actually supposed to be Luna.” Or “My preschooler wanted to play basketball instead of Barbie, so I knew she was transgender.” It’s a movement anchored to odious sex stereotypes weaponized against people’s core concepts of themselves.
The militant sexism would be laughable if it weren’t so inextricably tied to instances of chemical castration and abuse that are eerily similar to historical harms the same people once condemned. For a group of people so rabidly committed to denouncing Nazis, there seems to be a startling lack of concern about the medical experimentation on children.
A Clown World
The conversation around so-called “conversion therapy” is among the most manipulative and fraught topics. Today, LGBT activists frame even any kind of talk therapy about sexual confusion as tantamount to the legitimate horrors of the past. These things are not remotely comparable.
Thank God so many people who identify as LGB are speaking up, pushing back, and saying, “no more.” And the voices of the so-called “detransitioners” are starting to emerge to challenge the dystopian nightmare that’s left them mangled, scarred, and wondering why the harm they’ve suffered was ever allowed.
We are expected to believe that “genital preferences” are transphobic. A woman’s “no” means no — unless and until a man in a dress decides it’s invalid.
As a society, we champion rape survivors while placing their male rapists in women’s prisons. We condemn therapists who help children make peace with the material reality of their sex while celebrating those who destroy children’s healthy body parts. We denounce the chemical castration of historical victims while encouraging the chemical castration of confused teenagers.
None of it makes sense, of course. We’re down the gender rabbit hole, and everyone is mad here.
