You’re inadvertently confusing boys — who are then riding roughshod over women’s rights to privacy, safety, dignity, and athletic opportunity.
“I’ve got two trans nieces, and everyone is affirming,” you mention.
“But why is everyone affirming?” I ask.
Or I don’t ask. Because we just ran into each other in the airport and I don’t want to argue all the way to baggage claim. But now that we’ve got more time…
You – and other friends and acquaintances, all of whom seem to have trans nieces and nephews (and doesn’t this trend seem suspicious to you?) – often pledge, unsolicited, that “everyone is affirming,” as if to assure me (or yourself?) that everyone is doing the right thing.
I trust your intent. You want to respect human diversity. You want to extend grace to people who seem different. You want to keep peace in the family. You’ve been told that this is “just like gay rights.” (It’s not.) You’ve been told that some people happen to be born in the wrong body. (They don’t. This is a social contagion.) You’ve been indoctrinated to “support trans kids.” Who doesn’t want to support kids?
But “affirm” is a transitive verb. This means one can’t affirm in a vacuum. One must affirm something. So what exactly is everyone affirming?
Everyone Is Affirming a Delusion.
A delusion. Because girls cannot become boys. Boys cannot become girls.
If you affirm this delusion, you’re inadvertently confusing kids. Kids need information about reality. They do not need adults to silently nod their heads, pretending the kids are something they can never be.
The delusion you’re affirming is also riding roughshod over women’s rights to privacy, safety, dignity, and athletic opportunity. Because the boys who are affirmed as girls take you literally, and come to believe they’re entitled to women’s rights. Policy-makers play along too, and all hell breaks loose. As it has done. And we end up with this guy, Valentina Petrillo, competing in the women’s category of the 2024 Paralympics at age 51. (Fortunately, with the International Olympic Committee’s new female-means-female policy, this will not happen in 2028.)
How This Unfolds
Let’s say a boy announces he is trans. This usually occurs to kids who are lonely, confused; bullied; ostracized; and/or autistic. They prefer “girl things” to “boy things.”
As attractions develop, they’re usually attracted to other boys. Most “transgender” kids turn out to be gay. So to affirm that a “sissy” boy is “really” a girl is to tell a would-be-gay kid that being attracted to boys is so abhorrent that he’d be better off pretending to be female. Is this what you intend by “affirming”?
The ones who are not gay often have autogynephilia, a common fetish involving a male sexual excitement related to cross-dressing or conceiving of themselves as female — and often, according to them, that means sexually and emotionally subordinate.
Now consider that this boy asks you (or, more often, his mother asks you) to refer to him by she/her pronouns and a female-coded name. If you say “okay,” you’re telling the child:
Boys who like stereotypical “girl things” must be girls. By inference, people who like Chinese food and dragons must be Asian.
A boy can know what it feels like to be a girl. But how would he? Female is a fact, not a feeling.
Boys can go wherever they want, regardless of girls’ objections. Is this the message you want to give boys?
When busted, he claimed, “I’m transgender. I’m a woman. I have a right to be here.”
One Delusion Leads to More Delusions
If you affirm, the delusions will multiply over time. A boy will begin to believe his own impending puberty is somehow wrong. He will believe that doctors should inject drugs into his healthy body, compromising or destroying his fertility and lifelong sexual function and triggering other unpleasant and dangerous side effects — even though the Cass Review, the DHHS study, and this month’s 23-year longitudinal Finnish study all found that treating gender-confused children medically has no scientific justification.
The comprehensive Cass Review also warns that even social transition can be dangerous because it can lead to drastic, irreversible, medically unjustifiable decisions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and double mastectomies.
Or, an affirmed boy may choose not to medically transition at all — like 69 percent of trans-identified men — which brings us back to female-as-costume, which will lead to more women’s sports and locker rooms and restrooms and domestic violence refuges and prison cells invaded by fully intact men who believe they have a right to be there, and refuse to admit that they’re actually male, shocking and scaring and sometimes assaulting women — because they’re still men.
If you can stand it, check out this video revealing a man’s shadow as he masturbates in a women’s restroom stall. When busted, he claims, “I’m transgender. I’m a woman. I have a right to be here.” This is what you’re (accidentally, with all good intention) contributing to if you agree to refer to a boy as she/her/Suzie.
Boys whose delusions were affirmed grow up to be men who sue for the right to strip naked in front of naked women, as happened in what became known as the “swinging dicks” case because a dissenting appeals court judge used that phrase. The all-female nude spa in Seattle, Washington, lost the appeal and must now allow men, swinging dicks and all, access to its naked female clientele – or shut down.
This is what you support – legal voyeurism and exposure – when you “affirm” boys’ delusion that they can magically or medically become girls.
Please think about this — or share this story with someone who needs to think about it. You don’t want to exacerbate these invasions of women’s sports and intimate spaces, do you?
You don’t want to give girls the impression that whatever boys want is more important than what girls want, do you?
No one will commit suicide if not affirmed at the other sex. The ACLU’s trans-identified attorney, Chase Strangio, admitted to the Supreme Court that this is a myth.
Affirming Girls as Trans Is Not the Same
Does the opposite — affirming that girls can be boys — lead to the similar harms? No. Different harms. Teenage girls affirmed as non-binary (the most popular new identity) are more vulnerable than boys. The most common pediatric “gender-affirming” surgery is double mastectomy, which results in no breastfeeding ever and countless lifelong regrets. Detransitioners by the dozens are now testifying (in permanently deepened voices) to this unique form of permanent sexual abuse after having their healthy breasts removed at thirteen (Layla Jane), fifteen (Chloe Cole), fifteen (Claire), nineteen (Soren Aldaco), and, in the case of Varian Fox, sixteen years old.
In January, Fox won a landmark $2 million malpractice suit against a psychologist and plastic surgeon who were held liable for ignoring her underlying issues (autism, depression, anorexia) and failing to obtain proper consent to remove her healthy breasts for no good reason except that she “identified as a man.” How many adults had mistakenly affirmed this girl as male?
What to Do Instead
What’s a loving relative or friend to do? When a nephew tells you he’s a girl, provide him with information. Tell him that female playmates and dresses and long hair are not “girl things” - just human choices. Tell him that he’ll always be male. And tell him that girls need privacy, dignity, safety from male nudity and violence. Teach him to respect girls and women.
Teach your niece about feminism. Empower her to stand up to boys who mock her developing body. Explain that her budding breasts are not the problem; sexism is. Explain how to set boundaries, and that she has a right to all-female sports and spaces. Introduce her to strong women who defy sex-role stereotypes. Help her heal from sexual harassment or abuse.
Explain that kids cannot change sexes.
Explain that fantasies and dress-up are fine, but that kids cannot control the speech of kids, teachers, adults by forcing them to play along.
Affirm kids’ strengths and resilience. Affirm your support for them as people.
Explain that everyone needs to belong. Tell vulnerable kids that they might get invited into special trans communities, as one mother I know has successfully done with her long-haired, autistic, socially awkward son.
“I’m so glad you warned me about this,” he recently told his mother sincerely. He now refuses to write his pronouns on every school worksheet, as required by his Virginia teachers, and instead defiantly scrawls, “male, obviously!”
Help kids resist the attractive delusion that they can be someone else.
Teach them to love themselves as they are.
As always, I welcome your thoughts. With love and courage, Mariah
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Wonderfully written.
I’ve sometimes wondered (but never had occasion to try it) whether a Socratic approach to an “affirmer” or “ally” would work?
“Oh, so your niece [whom I’ve always known as your nephew] is trans? Tell me more! I’ve always wondered how that works.”
“So, little Jojo likes to wear long hair and dresses, and play with dolls? And this shows that Jojo is a girl?”
“Oh, Jojo doesn’t ’feel like’ a boy? What does it feel like to be a boy? How would Jojo know how it feels to be a boy — or a girl for that matter? How can any of us know how it feels to be anything other than ourselves?”
But I’m pretty sure this would not go over well.
👏👏👏
I can't wait until people start to wake up to this. The longer it continues on, the more broken adults we're going to see the future.