Dr. Jennifer Bauwens | The Dr. J Show
This interview explores the deep connection between childhood trauma and the rise in transgender identification among young people. Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, a clinical social worker specializing in trauma, joins the conversation to explain how unresolved wounds, disrupted attachments, and cultural messaging influence identity formation. Drawing on clinical experience, research, and real-life stories—including the journey of Walt Heyer—she sheds light on why compassion, truth, and proper psychological care are essential for true healing.
Dr. Jennifer Bauwens is the Director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research
Council. She researches and advocates for policies that will best serve the health and well-being
of families and communities.
Jennifer earned her Ph.D. from New York University with an emphasis in trauma studies. She
has worked extensively as a clinician providing trauma-focused treatment to children in foster-
care and behavioral health settings and to adults who’ve experienced interpersonal traumas, such
as sexual abuse and assault.
Her scholarship and publications have focused on the effects of psychological trauma, including
man-made and natural disasters. Additionally, Jennifer has taught on psychological trauma and
research methods in several graduate programs, including Rutgers University and Princeton
Seminary.
https://embracethedesign.com/
Jennifer Bauwens’ Book: https://a.co/d/9yLRZy0
Walt Heyer Interviews:
https://youtu.be/07_JatfRsss
https://youtu.be/0qZpwPtVNcA
https://youtu.be/6K7QgYOKThw
00:00 Understanding Gender Confusion and Its Roots
03:26 Walt Heyer’s Journey: From Trauma to Transformation
07:04 The Clinical Perspective on Gender Affirming Care
23:40 Comparing Experiences: Abuse Survivors and Transgender Individuals
30:54 The Impact of Family Dynamics on Identity
37:01 The Influence of Social Factors on Gender Identity
42:46 Navigating the Complexities of Gender Dysphoria
43:33 Understanding the Trans Movement and Social Contagion
47:18 The Importance of Attachment in Development
52:51 Exploring Attachment Theory and Its Implications
01:03:27 Connecting Attachment Issues to Gender Identity
01:10:51 The Role of Family and History in Identity Formation
01:22:42 Practical Guidance for Supporting Individuals in Transition
01:29:12 Real Estate Commercial
Subscribe to our newsletter to get this amazing report: Refuting the Top 5 Gay Myths https://ruthinstitute.org/refute-the-top-five-myths/
Have a question or a comment? Leave it in the comments, and we’ll get back to you!
Watch the full episode, uncensored, on Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/Theruthinstitute
Subscribe to our YouTube playlist: @RuthInstitute
Follow us on Social Media:
https://www.instagram.com/theruthinstitute
https://twitter.com/RuthInstitute
https://www.facebook.com/TheRuthInstitute/
https://theruthinstitute.locals.com/newsfeed
Press:
NC Register: https://www.ncregister.com/author/jennifer-roback-morse
Catholic Answers: https://www.catholic.com/profile/jennifer-roback-morse
The Stream: https://stream.org/author/jennifer-roback-morse/
Crisis Magazine: https://crisismagazine.com/author/jennifer-roeback-morse
Father Sullins’ Reports on Clergy Sexual Abuse: https://ruthinstitute.org/resource-centers/father-sullins-research/
Buy Dr. Morse’s Books:
The Sexual State: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/the-sexual-state-2/
Love and Economics: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/love-and-economics-it-takes-a-family-to-raise-a-village/
Smart Sex: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/smart-sex-finding-life-long-love-in-a-hook-up-world/
101 Tips for a Happier Marriage: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/101-tips-for-a-happier-marriage/
101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/101-tips-for-marrying-the-right-person/
Listen to our podcast:
Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ruth-institute-podcast/id309797947
Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/1t7mWLRHjrCqNjsbH7zXv1
Subscribe to our newsletter to get this amazing report: Refuting the Top 5 Gay Myths https://ruthinstitute.org/refute-the-top-five-myths/
Get the full interview by joining us for exclusive, uncensored content on Locals: https://theruthinstitute.locals.com/support
Transcript
(Please note the transcript is auto-generated and likely contains errors)
Ruth Institute (00:01)
Perhaps you’re familiar with the idea that some young people who embrace a transgender identity have other psychological issues going on in the background. Looking past the identity labels, it isn’t unusual to find that some of these kids have experienced some serious trauma. And of course, if they embark on a misguided attempt to change the sex of their bodies, they will certainly be traumatized by that.
All this leads me to believe that we have got to grapple with the impact of trauma if we hope to be authentically helpful to these young people and their families. Hi everyone. I’m Dr. Jennifer Roback-Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love. My guest today is Dr. Jennifer Bauwens who holds a PhD in clinical social work from New York University. Dr. Bauwens has worked extensively
providing trauma-focused treatment to children, including kids in foster care. She’s also worked with adults who’ve experienced interpersonal traumas, such as sexual abuse and assault. I’m delighted to have Dr. Bauwens on the show to discuss her new book and to help us understand the complicated cause and effect connections between trauma and a child embracing a transgender identity. I know you’re going to be fascinated by this conversation.
Ruth Institute (01:23)
Dr. Jennifer Bauwens welcome to the Dr. J Show.
Jennifer Bauwens (01:26)
It’s so good to be with you.
Ruth Institute (01:29)
Well, you you and I met at the Speak Out Symposium in Sacramento not too long ago, and it was sponsored by the Changed Movement, the California Family Council, and also us, the Ruth Institute. I was fascinated by the keynote that you gave at that event, and that’s why I wanted to have you on the show. Give people just a highlight of a few of the themes, through the show, we’re gonna dig into each one of those themes a little bit more, but just give people kind of the highlights of what you talked about at the Speak Out Symposium.
Jennifer Bauwens (01:57)
Yeah, so I presented on the idea that gender confusion has other roots than what is termed gender dysphoria, according to the DSM-5 TR. ⁓ That diagnosis doesn’t accurately bring us to a conclusion of what the root issues are, driving someone to have some kind of confusion about their biological sex. So I was really building a case for
and showing what people experience when they’re identifying as transgender. And it’s all done a whole host of other things that have nothing to do with wearing the opposite sexist clothes or going through surgical procedures. ⁓ It’s really, there are deep psychological and spiritual issues driving someone to ⁓ put on a false identity. So that was kind of the premise of what I was talking about.
and what ⁓ traumas manifest and how they manifest and how they could lead someone to identify in a dissociative or a disconnected way from their biological sex.
Ruth Institute (03:12)
So that’s great. And that’s part also part of this new book that you have that you wrote with Walt Heyer. Walt Heyer is a good friend of the Ruth Institute. We’ve had him on this program multiple times. But for the benefit of people who don’t know Walt’s story, why don’t you just give a kind of a brief ⁓ synopsis of his story. And then people can understand he’s got the experience and she’s got the clinical practice. And the two of them came together to
create this book called Embracing God’s Design.
Jennifer Bauwens (03:42)
Yeah, well, Walt and I, we have so much fun working together. Who knew you could have fun talking about this issue? But ⁓ he often says he has the street cred and I have the clinical cred. his credentials really came from starting at a young age. His grandmother cross dressed him. She made a dress for him and ⁓ it was kind of like their alone time and their private time.
she would dress him in this little girl’s dress. And she affirmed him and gave him attention that he didn’t receive from the rest of his family. So, you he was treated in a very special way with this dress. So all of his ⁓ value and worth came from the idea that when I put on this dress, I’m loved, I’m accepted, et cetera. Well,
later on, one of his family members ended up sexually abusing him. And his father also got wind of this dress that his grandmother had put him in and thought, you know, I need him to man up. So he was physically abusive towards him and rough with him trying to quote unquote, make a man out of him. Well, fast forward years later, know, Walt has this underlying trauma that he’s been walking around
with, unhealed, and he gets married, has kids, and ⁓ is miserable. And he looks for solace in, you know, alcohol, you know, he’s later, he goes to therapist, and actually someone of a Christian faith told him, why don’t you curse Walt and embrace Laura, who was the, ⁓ this false identity.
or this trauma identity that I would call it that he had taken on. And so ⁓ Walt went through all of the ⁓ physiological procedures that go along with ⁓ the what’s called gender affirming care. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a whole set of procedures that involves a social identification and also cross-sex hormones and surgical procedures.
that ⁓ are supposed to align a person’s physical outward appearance with their inward experience, their inward distress really. And so Walt went through all of those procedures and at the end of the day, he found that it was not helpful. It just only served to exacerbate the trauma that he already had that now was
continued to be unresolved and now he had another layer of trauma to deal with because his body was marred, his family was ⁓ destroyed. ⁓ But the good news with Walt’s story is that he had a spiritual experience and really became a person of faith and he found hope in his faith ⁓ in God. And he has since helped many other people avoid
going down that path as well as helping those who’ve already gone down that path and come back to who God created them to be. so that’s, it’s, yeah.
Ruth Institute (07:15)
Right, right. And
And so like you said, Walt has street cred. He’s now in his 80s, if I’m not mistaken. And so he was one of the earliest people to do this, you know. And so that also, I think, gives him a certain credibility that he was doing it before it was cool. You know, there wasn’t the internet and all the affirmation and support for it the way there is now. But he’s done the whole circuit to change the identity and then to
and then to change it back. So that’s history cred. What’s your experience and credentials and educational background and so on that qualify you to write a book like this?
Jennifer Bauwens (07:56)
Yeah, well, first of all, I think it’s important for people
to know that I wasn’t looking to go into ⁓ transgender policy work or write a book on the transgender issue. ⁓ That said, I was aware of this kind of movement in the academic setting from the time that I got my master’s degree. So I got my master’s in social work and in clinical social work.
And I practiced in ⁓ a women’s clinic for women who had been sexually assaulted, raped, domestic violence, all kinds of different abuse experiences. ⁓ From there though, ⁓ I had only, let me back up. So in the 90s, ⁓ that’s when I did my masters. And there was one of my peers who was going through the transition process.
And at that time I thought, what on earth is this? This is very, you know, this is different, you know? And I also had worked on a suicide hotline and I had heard one of the callers was talking about going through procedures the next morning and he was suicidal even as he was getting ready to go through these procedures. So, you know, we’re talking late nineties, this is all very new.
but I’m hearing little smatterings of it and I’m thinking, what is this? But I didn’t really encounter a lot of it in my practice until, ⁓ fast forward, I did foster care work. So I went from working in that women’s clinic and learning a lot about adult experiences of abuse, then going more into the foster care setting.
and hearing some of the confusion that was coming from children who had experienced abuse. But again, not a lot because it wasn’t so popular. Just hearing kids not liking their body, not wanting to be vulnerable. Those are very common experiences for those who survive sexual abuse. So I worked in that setting. And then ⁓ a little bit later on, I was a part of some relief work in ⁓
Kosovo and that was my first time experiencing children who had ⁓ been orphaned because of war and I my career slightly changed but it was still in the field of trauma abuse and understanding how to help children specific specifically children ⁓ work through these issues and so from there I ended up doing my PhD
and getting into more disaster type of research to help those who were ⁓ living in environments like the Middle East where you’re in a traumatological environment all the time because you’re just constantly facing these things. So I worked with families of 9-11. Little did I know how apropos the experiences that I had with all these different types of traumas and that
that there was a direct application to this issue. Because really what I’ve observed over the years is it doesn’t matter the type of trauma that I’ve witnessed people grappling with, all of them kind of lead to the similar expression of trying to deal with your identity, trying to ⁓ work through ⁓
lots of pain and finding different ways that some productive, some not productive. And what we find with the transgender expression is that instead of, you know, there being recognition of that being rooted in trauma, what we see as people in the profession who are actually leading these folks down the further trauma ⁓ path.
because now they have issues with their body instead of, because trauma is also, it’s rooted in the body, it’s rooted in the emotions and in the spirit. And when you have practitioners who are further traumatizing the body ⁓ through these acts that evoke a traumatic response, we’re actually layering the experience rather than resolving the trauma. ⁓
So, ⁓ say to people all the time, I haven’t changed my profession. I’m still working in the field of trauma and I’m still working in the field of child protection because I want to see children and adults safe from these types of procedures because it’s not care at all. It’s actually malpractice.
Ruth Institute (13:02)
Yes.
Yes, and this was what was so striking to me about your presentation ⁓ back there in Sacramento was that because of hearing Walt’s story, I was not surprised to learn that a lot of transgender kids have some trauma in their background and some kind of rejection of the body, ⁓ some kind of rejection of their existing identity is wrapped up in the experience. That part didn’t surprise me. But what did surprise me was what you kind of went
through some of the traits and some of the behaviors and some of the symptoms. And my gosh, there’s a very close parallel between survivors of trauma and people who are embracing a transgender identity. And so it seems to me, well, actually, there’s so many places we could go with this, but I mean, one aspect of it is that the very first problem is that the…
mental health profession is not addressing the first problem, which is that the child has already experienced trauma. And then they’re layering, know, they’re neglecting the first problem. And so if they did nothing, that would still be bad because some of the kids need help dealing with it. But now in addition to that, they’re layering another whole layer of self rejection and identity confusion and stuff like that, ⁓ that I was very struck by the way you presented it.
Take it from there.
Jennifer Bauwens (14:28)
Yeah, that’s right. ⁓ You were talking about a population that’s probably the most traumatized. ⁓ And instead of helping resolve that, ⁓ just for example, one of the characteristics that we know is quite common among ⁓ specifically sexual abuse survivors is self-mutilation.
when somebody self mutilates it’s often there are a number of reasons so I don’t want to pigeonhole and say make a claim that I know every single one of them but some of the most common ones are you know it’s a it’s a nonverbal expression of the type of internal pain that’s going on so it’s a symbol right and sometimes people will also say I can’t feel anything because the
The dissociative experience, the need to disconnect from what’s happening, the pain of what’s happening in a moment will, I mean, it can be an adaptive experience where somebody disconnects from their body while an abusive situation is going on, right? I mean, we can all see that that’s actually, that could be very helpful, but it becomes problematic when someone’s disconnecting and when there’s no longer a threat.
Ruth Institute (15:50)
Right.
Jennifer Bauwens (15:56)
So they’re living in a disconnected state. So some people will report a type of numbness that they ⁓ experience on a daily basis. And so they may self-harm just so that they can feel. So now instead of actually doing a proper assessment, somebody comes into a clinic and we evaluate what’s going on with the person. Why do they want to alter their body? Why do they?
Ruth Institute (16:09)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Jennifer Bauwens (16:26)
want to remove parts of their body. These questions aren’t asked in a gender clinic or in any kind of hint that there’s, you know, quote unquote gender dysphoria going on. So what should happen is a proper assessment, but it’s not happening. And we should be asking these questions, but instead the self harm is then put into the hands of the physician or the person dispensing drugs, et cetera.
So, you I no longer am just self harming myself. I’m now giving permission to someone else. Now, if you think about that, the person who’s already been victimized is now saying, yes, please, somebody else victimized me again in a socially acceptable way. So who are these people?
I think that’s another question we have to ask. There’s so many research questions that we don’t have answers to in this regard because there’s been no curiosity from the clinical community. And this will be an important question. How are these people different from even those who would self-harm themselves versus those who are saying, it’s okay for you to do it to me? Because that’s essentially what gender affirming care is. ⁓
Ruth Institute (17:35)
.
Right.
Jennifer Bauwens (17:52)
having
somebody else do the job of self-harm.
Ruth Institute (17:58)
And so the ideology, your problem is you were born in the wrong body. That ideology precludes the curiosity about the other issues that really should be addressed.
Jennifer Bauwens (18:10)
Yeah, that’s right. Because it takes all the other questions off the table because it’s not quote unquote socially just. It’s a civil rights issue and we can’t ask those types of research questions.
Ruth Institute (18:15)
Correct.
Right, right. And that same pattern has taken place around the whole idea that people are born gay. Once the community, once the therapeutic community lined up in lockstep behind the idea that people were born gay, that precluded asking any questions about, why is this particular person gay? What might have happened to them to lead them to have this kind of disassociation between the well-ordered use of the sexual function?
and other things.
One of the things that you have in your book, are two charts in this book. First of all, I want to just hold up the book for people to see, Embracing God’s Design with the subtitle, Addressing the Spiritual and Psychological Crisis Behind Transgender Identity. Who did you write this book for? Who did you have in mind when you guys wrote this book?
Jennifer Bauwens (19:14)
Yeah, in the most simple terms, ⁓ we wrote this book to equip the lay person. ⁓ I wanted to make the concepts of trauma and the understanding of transgender ideology accessible to anyone who had a compassionate and interested heart, ⁓ knowing that
The problem that we’re facing in the clinical community right now is that ⁓ all of our continuing education credits, ⁓ our licensure, all of that is still buying into this whole idea of gender affirming care being a just and good approach to treatment. So it’s gonna take some time for the clinical community to make that shift.
Thankfully, we’re seeing a shift in the policy space. We’re seeing executive orders, are, those are all great things. Popular opinion, ⁓ polling opinion is on the side of sanity. But it’s gonna take time for the clinical community to turn. So where do people go? As more and more, especially young people,
realized that they were sold a bill of goods and that gender affirming care never touched their real issues. Where do they go? so Walt and I ⁓ recognize that we want to see people able to, at whatever level they want to engage, whether it’s talking about the issue and a compassionate and understanding some of these basic clinical ideas.
or you’re someone who you’re in the church and you want to help people avoid this path or you want to help people who’ve already gone down the path, the process of coming back to who God made them to be. And I think if anybody’s going to be equipped, it’s going to be the church. The church is, I think, the best place to receive hope and healing. ⁓
Ruth Institute (21:12)
Right.
Jennifer Bauwens (21:29)
And I believe on this issue, we really are the right people for the hour. It’s not going to come from my profession, unfortunately, but fortunately.
Ruth Institute (21:38)
Well, and
you know, it’s interesting that you say that exactly that way that the church, it’s kind of the, church is going to be the institution, the social institution that’s best equipped to do it. Because the church has an understanding of the human person that is much more nuanced than people realize. I mean, the psychology profession is if you feel bad, we’re going to make you feel better. And when you feel better, that will solve your problems. Well, the church is not so naive.
⁓ Every single soul is troubled by original sin and its consequences. ⁓ And so we expect a certain amount of trouble, you know, and yet to see that I have this trouble and you have that trouble, that doesn’t separate us, it actually can unite us. And my observation with this particular issue is that the people who have been through these things really truly need friendship. You know, they need compassionate friendship.
not somebody who’s going to affirm whatever comes into their mind, because a lot of what comes into their mind is not correct and not helpful. So unadulterated affirmation is not the right answer, right? Even though that might be what you’re seeking. You need friends who will stay in reality and keep you in reality, and at the same time love you while you’re struggling. And so, okay, well, the church has been doing that since like 33 AD, so I think we should be able to handle this, right? So.
I do want to go to a couple of these very striking tables that you have in here. So let me just reiterate what she said. This is if you are a detransitioner, if you are considering transitioning, if you have a loved one who’s going through this or has been through it in some way, this is a very accessible book. It’s very easy to read. the laying out of the information about trauma is extremely helpful. We have a number of resources that we recommend to people. And this is filling a gap that I haven’t.
I haven’t seen anybody else do quite this. So I want to just put that into everybody’s mind if you know anybody who’s dealing with it. This is going to be helpful to you. I want to go first of all to page 77. ⁓ Because this is what we were talking about. And we’ll show the chart there on the screen. On page 77, you’ve got a chart here that talks about people who have survived abuse of whatever kind, and then transgender identified people. ⁓ And the heading on the table is,
social and psychological experiences common to both of these groups. And when I saw you put this up on the screen, you know, at that conference, I’m like, oh my gosh, you know, that makes it very clear what’s going on. So walk people through this chart, which compares the experience of abuse survivors, whether it’s sexual abuse or any kind of child abuse, anything like that, abuse survivors in the one column, and then transgender self-identified people.
Jennifer Bauwens (24:12)
you
Ruth Institute (24:30)
walk people through how these symptoms and behaviors align.
Jennifer Bauwens (24:34)
Yeah, so on the right side of the table, I’m sorry, the left side of the table are abuse survivors experiences. And I draw this from what’s called disorders of extreme stress, not otherwise specified. It was supposed to be, well, the idea was that it might be in DSM-5. And it didn’t make it in, what we…
refer to ⁓ something of that idea is complex trauma. And essentially complex trauma is this ongoing trauma, ⁓ particularly traumas that happen in early childhood. There’s a different experience than someone who goes through a single incident of trauma, let’s say in adulthood.
So the people that I worked with ⁓ who went through September 11th, it was horrific. They had trauma responses. Some had dissociative responses, but that experience and the resolution of it was very different than someone who went through ongoing childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse.
And what you see, the major difference that you see is character logical. So at the person’s very essence of their identity is where you see this kind of disruption versus someone who again went through like a 9 11. They may feel hyper vigilant. They may have flashbacks from the event. They may like one of the things that
Ruth Institute (26:17)
Yes.
Jennifer Bauwens (26:25)
A lot of my friends report ⁓ in New York on 9-11 is that the sky was this really crystal blue. So some days that on a fall day, if the sky is really blue, they may have a kind of a hypervigilant alert, like they just feel on edge. ⁓ But by and large, a lot of those folks, ⁓ barring other issues, they may have, you know, unless they lost someone, you know, so forth.
they may have worked through that and they’re not still living with that, ⁓ the intensity of that traumatic response. Those who had this ongoing experience, they may not even realize or connect why it is that they feel unsettled, anxious, depressed, et cetera, because the trauma was really embedded in their identity and their ⁓
even neurologically, they may have more significant changes to their brain because of this ongoing exposure. So let me go ahead and go through this chart and just kind of ⁓ parse some of these ideas out.
Ruth Institute (27:40)
Before you do though, let me just comment that the Ruth Institute over the past few years has interviewed a number of people who in one way or another have been affected by clergy sex abuse. And we have quite a, for an organization that is not focused on sex abuse, we actually have a pretty good footprint in this area because we’ve interviewed therapists. You we had a team of therapists talk about it. We’ve talked to survivors. We’ve talked to siblings of survivors, right? And so the thing that you just said is, I want to just pause and call attention to it.
that if you are being abused by somebody you live with or somebody you see on a regular basis, ⁓ that is a very different experience from a one and done type of thing, right? Because, okay, father did this to me in the back of the church or the priest did this to me or my stepfather did this to me. You don’t know every time they come through the door, you don’t know whether they’re going to do it or not. And so that is part of
the ongoing part of the trauma. That’s why it’s hard for it to ever get completely processed, right? ⁓ And the other incident has to do with natural disasters because we experienced back-to-back natural disasters here in Lake Charles. And I remember by that time I was already tuned into trauma because I had done a number of these interviews by 2020, you know? And I remember watching my own trauma response after Hurricane Laura. ⁓
And eventually it dissipated. But the element that was similar was that while it’s going on, what actually was the flood, Jen, it was the flood that came later. You’re sitting there and the water goes up to six inches and the whole house is six inches. But you don’t know that it’s only going to be six inches. In your mind, you’re up on that roof waiting for somebody to come get you in a canoe or a helicopter, you know? And so that process is at work.
So somebody says, well, all he did was push you against the wall and grab your boobs. What do mean that’s all he did? You don’t know that’s all it’s going to be, you know? And if that’s part of your ongoing experience, then people aren’t going to recover from it. They’re going to need to deal with that complex trauma. Yeah, those three therapists, if you want to go back and look at that video from several years ago, we had a team of three therapists and they made exactly this point, Jennifer, about complex trauma.
the repeated and uncertain nature of it and how unsettling that is. So anyway, let’s do go through the chart though. And then I’m going to ask you, what do we do with this chart? Why is it significant? But first make the case on page 77.
Jennifer Bauwens (30:20)
Sure. Okay. So
when we look at experiences of those who’ve had that complex trauma, often we’re talking about really core identity issues, disruptions, deep questions of who am I and no sense of like a core self. It’s a person’s identity is malleable. It’s it’s I mean, fluid is probably a good word. You know,
barring how it’s been used in the trans experience, ⁓ just being a fluid identity is very common. Because think about this, ⁓ our identity is formed with having that secure connection to a parent or a caregiver. And if that household was very unknown, what’s going to happen next?
Ruth Institute (30:54)
Right, right.
Jennifer Bauwens (31:20)
⁓ Is there abuse? I going to be yelled at? ⁓ Then it’s really hard to find out who oneself is in reflection to an ever-changing environment. So that’s just one example. ⁓ I already mentioned self-hatred. That’s very common. And of course, if you don’t have a core sense of self and like that,
person because you don’t even know who it is. Of course there’s going to be self-hatred. ⁓ That’s not an unusual response. ⁓ Is there something wrong with me? That would be, ⁓ especially if there’s been abuse, why is this happening to me? Even if abuse has been the norm and it’s accepted somewhere inside of that person is the knowledge that this is wrong. This is harmful.
⁓ And did I do something depending on the developmental age? Did I do something? It’s gonna be even more prominent given that developmental age because you know, You know, like if a five-year-old believes that the world revolves around them So if the world’s revolving around you then what did you do to create whatever’s happening?
Ruth Institute (32:23)
Yes. Yes.
Right.
I want to pause right on that because I was a foster mom for a few years, three or four years, and you dealt with a lot of foster kids. I remember that exact thing. You know, I had a little boy and I said, for some reason, I said, whose fault do you think it is that your mom and dad left? And he said, it was my fault.
And I’m thinking, you try to assure him, you’re seven years old and this happened when you were even younger than that. You try to assure them, honey, no, it was not your fault. But in, think you tell me if this is right, in their little minds, if they think it’s their fault, then somehow that’s empowering for them. Like they’re more in control with that thought than they are with the idea that it’s completely random and their parents are just off the.
off the charts crazy, you know, that that’s more managerial. You’ve talked to a lot of foster kids. Is that?
Jennifer Bauwens (33:34)
Yeah, yes,
that can be the case. If I own it, then I do control it. ⁓ And some of it can just be simply a developmental process ⁓ because they don’t know anything else. The world is all about them. And it should be because that’s where they’re at in their age. They’re not as aware of the other. ⁓
Ruth Institute (33:40)
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Right.
Jennifer Bauwens (34:03)
that’s problematic when you become an adult and you’re not aware of other, but yeah, we’ve seen enough of that, right? But I think that can certainly be a process of wanting, needing control in an out of control situation. And if I can take responsibility, then I can actually do something about it to change it.
Ruth Institute (34:08)
Right. Right, right. Right, right.
Right, right, right, right. So you’ve got this whole list of traits that one sometimes sees among abuse survivors. then you’ve got, on the next column, you’ve got the transgender presenting person and what’s going on with them. Walk us through that a little bit.
Jennifer Bauwens (34:47)
Right. Right. So I mean,
I in this chart, I basically you could just see it’s a mirror reflection. So, you know, we’ve we talked about identity disruptions. That’s certainly common to the transgender experience because it’s all about it. To me, it’s an identity disorder. It’s not a gender disorder. It’s an identity disorder. ⁓ You have self-hatred. That’s what this
Ruth Institute (35:06)
Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Bauwens (35:16)
ideology embraces, the transgender ideology embraces that I don’t want to be who I am. I don’t want to be who God made me to be. I want to be something else. I don’t like who I am. And of course, self-injurious behaviors. ⁓ When you’re engaging in gender-affirming care, you’re destroying your body. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. These procedures harm the body.
So you are involved in a self-injurious practice. ⁓ Suicidal ideation and attempts, those are common amongst abuse survivors. They’re also very common amongst transgender identified people. In fact, that’s the reason that everyone uses to say, if we don’t go down this gender affirming path, then the person’s gonna commit suicide. Well, that’s the same.
population that we’re talking about with abuse. So who has done the assessment to understand what’s driving the abuse? Is it really care?
Ruth Institute (36:24)
Right, right.
And so this is where I would like you to clarify for us now. What do we conclude from this comparison? Do we conclude that if a young person shows up and says, I want cross-sex hormones, do we start asking questions about prior abuse or what? I mean, what exactly do you conclude from this?
Jennifer Bauwens (36:44)
Yeah,
yeah, and I think what this table tells us and any, especially those in the trauma field should be asking right off the bat, what else is going on with this person? If they’re showing up saying, I don’t like my body, I think about harming myself, I have addiction issues, relational issues, to me, if,
Ruth Institute (37:01)
Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Bauwens (37:14)
If I took the gender issue off the table entirely, my red flags would be going off saying, what’s going on with this person’s in this person’s life? Has there been abuse? ⁓ Are they in a domestic violence relationship? And I would also say, you know, this would be to me, this chart would be the biggest red flags because this is an indication of complex trauma.
but it doesn’t always have to be a complex trauma background that’s driving gender, a transgender identity. It can also be these little things that come into a person’s life and by little, I mean, it could be things like divorce. It could be ⁓ the loss or grief of a parent. It may not qualify as
Ruth Institute (37:41)
Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Bauwens (38:10)
a ⁓ PTSD response or a complex trauma response. can be something that’s happened to a person. ⁓ I’ll give you a case example ⁓ or two case examples. Yeah.
Ruth Institute (38:23)
Before you do though, I want
to go back to the first thing you said. In my opinion, divorce is not a small thing. Divorce is a huge trauma. And I have interviewed on this program a couple of detransitioners who told me, were they same sex attracted persons? Yeah, one was a same sex attracted person, one was a same sex attracted plus trans leaning person. Both of them said in no uncertain terms, my parents’ divorce shattered my sense of identity.
They don’t know who they are anymore because their family has fallen apart. And you and I are familiar with the adverse childhood experiences, that whole list of them. And right at the top is the loss of a parent. So I don’t want to let that go by
Jennifer Bauwens (39:11)
you’re absolutely right.
And I think it’s one of those things that we do tend to minimize in our culture because we’re so accustomed to hearing about it. So that’s actually why I’m bringing it out is to say, this is very harmful. And there are, mean, just as you’re saying there, you’ve interviewed people and I certainly know people that
that is the reason that they identified is because of a divorce or these things that we tend to dismiss that we may not say, that created post-traumatic stress. Well, it may not have created post-traumatic stress, but it was a type of trauma. It may not have qualified for that diagnostic category.
Ruth Institute (39:43)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer Bauwens (40:00)
You know, I can think of a situation where a mother worked in another state or ⁓ was basically distant from the child because that’s where the employment was so that ⁓ they weren’t around very much. And, you know, it wasn’t until later on in life that this adult male
realized that he was identifying as a woman because he wanted to be close to his mom. He lacked that basic connection and he just wasn’t aware and nobody took the time. That’s what’s, I think that’s what’s so sad is that nobody took the time to work through and sift through with him. What was driving him? What did he really want? It wasn’t that he really wanted to
Ruth Institute (40:32)
Well…
Jennifer Bauwens (40:54)
to identify as a woman, he wanted his mom. He wanted his mom. Right?
Ruth Institute (40:59)
Yeah, yeah, which is pretty normal, which is totally normal. That’s a totally normal,
yeah. Now, you know, the other set of things that we’ve normalized is ⁓ sexual education, which in many cases is kind of pornified. ⁓ I mean, maybe kind of, I shouldn’t be saying maybe, I shouldn’t be saying kind of. Children are being exposed to sexual material that is not age appropriate for them in many school districts across the country.
And so what I wonder in my mind is whether that is itself its own kind of trauma, ⁓ that you’re disrupting the child’s normal development by showing them stuff they shouldn’t be seeing when they’re five years old or putting the idea in their mind that you can grow up to be a girl or a boy, that that is itself, that’s its own kind of trauma. Would you comment on that, Jen?
Jennifer Bauwens (41:49)
Yeah,
absolutely. It is, it’s a traumatic exposure. You know, in our, the brain was not meant to deal, the young mind was not meant or has the capacity to deal with that type of information. ⁓ know, exposing children to that kind of material so early on makes a mark.
and it sexualizes and it embeds into their very identity at a young age that they are a sexual being. that’s not, mean, Freud even warned against those prepubescent experiences as traumatic. I mean, I’m not a huge fan of Freud, but sometimes he got it right. ⁓ But children are not supposed to be exposed
to material like that. we’ve seen some of the books that children have seen at age five. First of all, they don’t even have a concept for some kids. They don’t even have a concept of what they’re looking at. But it’s just there are automatically being exposed and indoctrinated into.
Ruth Institute (43:05)
Right. Right.
Jennifer Bauwens (43:12)
these ideas at such an early age and it’s ⁓ abusive in my opinion.
Ruth Institute (43:17)
Yeah, right. And it’s carrying over into some of these things that we’re seeing. So not every child who shows up at the gender clinic and says, I want cross-sex hormones, they haven’t all been experienced what Walt Heyer experienced. They haven’t all had that kind of experience. But there are other kinds of things that could lead to that. There’s this whole new category called rapid onset gender dysphoria. I’m sure you’ve heard about that. That is, in a sense, a kind of social contagion.
Jennifer Bauwens (43:33)
That’s right.
Ruth Institute (43:46)
How does that social contagion corner of the trans movement? I don’t quite know how to put it. One of the problems we have, I think, is that the term transgender refers to so many different kind of people. So the kids we’re talking about here, the young people have nothing in common with a guy who’s a mediocre athlete and wants to win girls’ trophies. That’s something else, I think. Right? ⁓
The label becomes confusing, but with the rapid onset gender dysphoria kids who seem to have an element of social contagion, do you think they also may have some of abuse stuff going on in the background? What do you think of that?
Jennifer Bauwens (44:56)
I think it’s possible, but I think, ⁓ you know, the other thing is what we talked about with divorce. ⁓ There’s so many things going on with our society. We have so much brokenness, broken homes, and the family really is the building block of our society. And when we have so many… ⁓
homes where there aren’t there isn’t a covenant relationship. There isn’t a mother and father in the home that love each other. I mean, that’s that’s issue of number one in my book, because one of the things that we’re seeing since I know we might talk about this a little bit, but the idea of attachment ⁓ is it has to do with the the strength or the quality of our connection with our
our primary caregivers and we translate that early relationship with our caregivers to certainly the divine, but also with our other relationships. And one of the things that has been observed over time is that our society has a downward curve.
Ruth Institute (46:06)
Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Bauwens (46:22)
a downward trajectory of those who are among us who have a secure connection, grew up in a secure home. And every sort of social ill that we want to deal with through policy and legislation, it all stems back to the quality of connection that we had from our early caregivers.
You know, and we’re trying to throw all kinds of money at things that, you know, at the end of the day, it comes back to that quality connection. And really, so much of the transgender movement is also wrapped up in this issue because people are looking for connection, they’re looking for identity, and those are the things that are missing from a lack of secure connection.
Ruth Institute (47:15)
Yes.
Yes, yes. So let’s, now’s a good time. Let’s go ahead and talk about attachment, you know? I mean, because I’ve been interested in that topic that really the very first book I ever wrote was called Love and Economics. ⁓ And it was about secure attachments. It was about attachment disorder. ⁓ And that if moms and dads aren’t there, ⁓ make an eye contact with the baby and attaching with the baby, you could end up with an attachment disorder child.
Jennifer Bauwens (47:21)
Okay. Okay.
Ruth Institute (47:46)
who cannot use freedom. At that time I was a free market economist and all of a sudden, because of the experiences that we had in our own family, I’m like, whoa, if you have very many kids who are literally attachment disordered and they do anything they can get away with, you can’t really have a very free society because you’ve to have a cop on every corner if you don’t have the interior conscience, ⁓ which is developed by…
in the process of attaching to your mother. That’s the foundation of the conscience, you know? And so I was freaked out by that whole thing, and that’s why I wrote that book. But you now have another whole aspect of attachment that has to do with the healing process for the people who have been through this whole gender identity confusion. how do you want to start? How do you want to start the conversation about attachment, Jen? You’ve laid out a few breadcrumbs here. Where do you want to go with this? ⁓
Jennifer Bauwens (48:34)
Yeah. Yeah, there’s so much we could
say on this. I, you know, let me start by saying one of the reasons why I think talking about attachment, that quality of relationship from our early caregivers is so important is because
Ruth Institute (48:42)
Yeah!
Jennifer Bauwens (49:00)
⁓ from us, you know, my, this book that I wrote with Walt, it’s called, you know, embracing God’s design, addressing the spiritual and the psychological ⁓ crisis behind the transgender identity. ⁓ so I, I view this whole movement, this transgender movement is as something that affects every aspect of a person’s being both. I mean, we didn’t say physical, but it affects the physical. know that.
⁓ It certainly affects the psychological but there’s also a spiritual element to this whole ideology and You know the the way I see it and You know, I’m open to your listeners opinions, but you know, I I view that we are in a spiritual battle of good and evil and part of that battle entails ⁓
The force of evil, if you will, is to disconnect us from our Creator and to disconnect us from who our Creator has made us to be. And so to do that, I mean, I think the transgender ideology is ⁓ a great example, honestly, and it’s an unfortunate example.
of what that that the evil forces are working to do is, you know, change if we are in the made in the image of God male and female, then what am I going to do? The first thing out of the gate is I want you to have you as the child to have a distorted image of who God is as as male and female representing God. So
I think right off the bat, I’m seeing the battle for us to bear God’s image in the earth is being attacked through abortion, it’s being attacked through the ideology, et cetera. So the answer to that is through that, the answer to that battle is one of representing God well. So.
One is to distort, the other is to represent. And so when we represent God well through family, through ⁓ expression, then we are ⁓ a good reflection of God, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that I, you know, I would argue that, you know, the mother has certain aspects of God, the Holy Spirit that we embrace. ⁓
that we represent to the child. And the father certainly has aspects of the father that are represented. And Jesus is often called our elder brother. So, you know, that’s a loose example. ⁓ But at the end of the day, we are the family as a collective representing God.
as well as individually as male or female representing an aspect of God. So I see the transgender movement as not just erasing male or female, but erasing the very image of family, which is so foundational to our society. So how that plays out, it brings us to this idea of attachment and… ⁓
I can share a little bit about that now if you’re ready for that. okay. So how did this whole theory come about? Around World War II, you have the first real formulation of attachment ideas through the likes of John Bowlby. And John Bowlby, what he did is he just observed children who had been sent away for safety. ⁓
Ruth Institute (52:55)
Yeah, please, please, yeah.
Jennifer Bauwens (53:19)
in England, they were sent away from their families, the London bombings were happening and so forth. children were sent for protective purposes. It wasn’t malicious, but it was to keep them safe. when these children returned, they had all kinds of behavioral disruptions. And so John Bowlby noticed that. And so he began to formulate his ideas about attachment.
⁓ One of the things that he said is that attachment behavior characterizes our lives from cradle to grave. So he was noting that those early ⁓ patterns of attachment will carry it through in our adult relationships as well. Then you have ⁓ other theorists that come along. One of the more famous ones happens to be Mary Ainsworth.
and she created an observational experiment called the strange situation. And I would encourage you, you can look at this online, they have YouTube videos of how the strange situation plays out. But basically, it’s this ⁓ mother-infant dyad, talking infants like one to two years old. And what… ⁓
you know, there’s a, Ainsworth is observing behind glass so she can see what’s going on with the mother and child. And so they start off, they’re playing together and then ⁓ the mother, a stranger enters the room basically and the mother quietly leaves and there’s that observation time and then the mother,
returns and then there’s this back and forth, but that’s in essence what’s happening in this strange situation protocol. Well, Ainsworth began to categorize these responses between the mother and child of what it was like while the stranger was present, what it was like after ⁓ they were reunited ⁓ before and after ⁓ the stranger experience.
⁓ She found three patterns ⁓ that she characterized and ⁓ later theorists came up with another one, which I’ll tell you about in a moment. But the first one that she noticed was the most prominent. Now, ⁓ in the book, I talk about a meta-analysis that was done with a number of studies ⁓ across time. can’t remember exactly how many studies were included in that meta-analysis.
About half in recent days, about 52 % of those in this across these studies, these infants found that, you know, when the mother was gone, they missed the mother, right? And when the mother returned, her behavior was embracing, she responded appropriately. And so, you know, she
Ainsworth said that this is is secure attachment. This is what this is what a relationship should look like. Right. And this is. Yeah.
Ruth Institute (56:45)
Yes, and that’s what was key about Mary Ainsworth is that she was not looking at the characteristic of a person. She was looking, she’s measuring the relationship really. The observation was about how did the child seem to behave in the absence of the mom and how did the mom behave? So it was really looking at the two of them as a, that was the unit of observation, not one person, but the relationship. anyway, and so roughly half of them had this secure.
Jennifer Bauwens (57:09)
Yes, that’s right.
Ruth Institute (57:13)
this pattern of secure attachment. Go ahead.
Jennifer Bauwens (57:16)
Yes, and she was looking at it as a dyad, as one.
⁓ So as adults, these folks tend to be secure. They are able to develop a relationship with others in an ongoing fashion, and they feel secure with intimacy. They’re ⁓ not afraid of intimacy, ⁓ but they’re able to maintain an ongoing relationship, and they’re comfortable with
emotional intimacy. Okay. Another category that Ainsworth found was what she referred to as the insecure avoidant. in, and again, in this meta analysis, these were about 15 % of the samples across samples. In this experience, these children tended to have a lot of anxiety and anger.
And they also didn’t show a lot of signs of missing the mom when she was away. ⁓ Conversely, the mothers tended to ignore the child. They were often cold or distant. They were adverse to touch, so they didn’t tend to hold their children. ⁓ And what that looked like, how that translated to the adult ⁓ experience.
is that these people often have trouble trusting others. They have trouble being dependent on others. ⁓ They may be able to elicit, quickly elicit relationships, but then they have trouble sustaining them. They’re uncomfortable with intimacy. As you can imagine, if that relationship is cold early on, translating that to a more intimate relationship would be difficult without
some kind of intervention. Okay, our next category from Ainsworth was the insecure ambivalent. again, across meta-analysis, ⁓ across these studies, it was about 10 % of those samples ⁓ who had this type of style. They were, ⁓ when the mother left, they were preoccupied with the mother’s whereabouts.
They couldn’t really play. They were thinking about what happened to her, where did she go? They weren’t interested in doing anything really other than thinking about what happened to the mom. Now, when the mom returned, she tended to have one or two responses. One, ⁓ she either ignored the child, kind of passively ignored them, or she would be overly engaged and not really encourage autonomy. She didn’t want the child to play by themselves.
She wanted to be involved with what they were doing. Now, this translates in adult life to the person looking for people who are unemotionally available, right? So they’re looking for that challenging relationship. Again, this is not, I think it’s important to say, this is not always at a conscious level. This is just happening because,
this is what’s been hardwired into the child. And we’re not without hope because there are, there are actually people developing interventions to address these types of disruptions. And, you know, through therapy and through, you know, connection with God, these things can change. So this isn’t just, even though we’re saying it’s part of the template, it’s part of the working model of
of someone’s being, everything is subject to change, right? So that’s important to note. The last one that I’ll mention was later developed by Maine and Solomon. And this particular style, the disorganized style is around 23 % across this meta-analysis.
And this is one that we would see more in foster care or in settings where there is more trauma going on. And here what happens is that the parent isn’t stable. They’re not emotionally stable. So they may have all kinds of emotions and frightening emotions that aren’t always clear where they’re coming from. So think about the person who has maybe a pervasive anxiety.
or pervasive ⁓ emotional disruptions, but it’s not clear where is that coming from? Why are they feeling this? So then the child, like we were talking about before, they may interpret that as that’s my fault, I did something wrong. ⁓ My parent is frightened or upset because of something that I did. So. ⁓
Yeah, so how this manifests in the child is that sometimes they’ll have very conflicting behavioral responses that on the outside, if you didn’t know that history, you’d think what is wrong with this person. So they may, ⁓ they may smile while they’re clawing at you. ⁓ They may have behaviors where they’re just walking around in circles, just some strange looking confused behavioral patterns. But it’s because of the
confusion of that early on, early attachment. In adulthood, a lot of times these kids will deal with incarceration, they’ll have behavioral issues, they may have trouble with school. You know, again, a lot of the things that we might ⁓ want to throw money at social issues when we have ⁓ much deeper issues going on here.
Ruth Institute (1:03:27)
Mm-hmm. And so connect this, the attachment issues, how does this connect to the transgender issue? Either leading up to it or helping people get out of it. How is it connected?
Jennifer Bauwens (1:03:39)
Yeah, it’s connected with, you know, that chart that we were talking about earlier. it’s so much of the attachment issue is promoting the identity disruptions. It’s promoting all of the experiences that some of these transgender folks are dealing with. And also, this is important to understand when you’re helping someone or when you have someone, you know, that’s in your social space or your your church.
Ruth Institute (1:03:43)
Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:04:08)
who is presenting with these types of patterns and you think, why are they behaving this way? And now, you can kind of look across and see, well, maybe in myself, maybe I need to work on some connection issues. Maybe I need to have some healing in a particular area. So this has wide application.
It has wide application for us as the helper, but it also has wide application for understanding what ⁓ are going to be the needs of the folks that you’re going to encounter, because most of them will not have a secure attachment. And most of them will present with different behaviors that follow the avoidant, ambivalent, disorganized styles.
Ruth Institute (1:04:52)
Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:05:04)
And so learning to dance with those styles, not learning not to be controlled by them, but learning to dance with them and engage where you can engage and back up where you can, where you know you need to back up. This is going to become a very important ⁓ tool for us to, to bring, to bring healing and just that at the relational level, but also the next piece of it is
Ultimately, we want people to connect with God because God is the source of healing. And if we can help people identify those places where there’s a wounding, you know, if you had an avoidant family member, then you’re needing comfort. You’re needing closeness. You’re needing to learn intimacy. Well, let’s apply that.
Ruth Institute (1:05:37)
Mm.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:06:01)
over here in your relationship with God. Let’s talk to God about this and let’s practice listening and practice receiving that comfort from God and from each other. You know, so I think that’s that’s where this becomes useful, not as a diagnostic tool so much, but as as a, ⁓ I understand a little bit more of what’s going on with myself or with this person.
Ruth Institute (1:06:07)
Yes.
Yes.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:06:30)
And now I actually, instead of going down the route of gender affirming care, I actually understand what’s driving this need for a false identity and all of this other stuff.
Ruth Institute (1:06:30)
Yes.
And you know, a child has been traumatized, a lot of times they transfer it to God in some way. So if your mother and father are kind of your first image of the divine, because they procreated you, they didn’t create you, but they procreated you, they’re like little gods in your little mind, know? ⁓ When that relationship is damaged, then it’s often hard for a person to grow up and say, I trust God.
⁓ You don’t want to trust God or you’re mad at him, you and you’ve got anger issues with God, you know, that you need to deal with or that it would be helpful if you would deal with. I always hesitate to say you need it because people don’t have to do anything I say, you know, but I think it would be helpful for the person to have some healing in that area. And as you say, it’s helpful for us to realize that this is part of what’s at stake. ⁓
I get, you know, another thing that we might bring up in this regard though, is that if you’re the parent of a child who’s going through this, you may be thinking, they’re blaming me for this. They’re blaming us. They’re blaming our family. And obviously we’re in no position to do that because I don’t know your family. Every possible person who could be watching this show, I don’t really know what’s going on in your family. But I think it does give you a place to look. It gives you something to be looking for, if not your immediate family.
maybe some things that happened that you don’t know about. Sometimes the young people will report that something happened at school or there was some abuse that went on or they never told anyone, they had these traumatic experiences that they never shared with anybody. So that’s an aspect for people to be on the lookout for and to not feel like we’re piling on when you’re already in agony over this situation because we’re in no position to know the answer to that. Anyway.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:08:40)
Yeah, I’m so glad you said that because I think if anything, just let this be a affirmation to you that there is something else other than gender ideology ⁓ as the answer. There’s something else that happened and it may not be as complicated as, you know, severe abuse. could be just
a little seed that was planted in someone’s thought process, ⁓ and that could be the major driver. It doesn’t have to always be something huge. But the point is, there’s something that happened. There’s something that is growing in that child’s heart. And the good news is, if we look for it and we ask God to help us reveal it, then it will come forth.
Ruth Institute (1:09:15)
Right. Right.
then you can deal with it. If it’s on the table, you can deal with it. Well, when the child does have something happen, it may be that there’s a small thing like you say, but that small thing doesn’t remain small in part because it’s not addressed, but also because the gender ideology attaches itself to it and inflames it in certain ways.
puts fuel onto that particular fire and steers that event and gives it more different kind of significance than it would have had if it hadn’t been for that. I have heard from some of the people I’ve interviewed that just exposure to pornography, you one guy told me he was exposed to homosexual porn when he was like eight years old and it, you know, it just kind of scrambled his developmental process, you could say. ⁓ You know, the other thing that we should probably mention is that the…
And this is where I, this is when I first read your book, this is what I thought you were going to do. The child who is saying they need to transition, they are symbolically detaching from themselves. They’re, they’re, there is a, they’re creating an attachment disruption or attachment disorder because they’re rejecting their past. They’re rejecting their family. They’re rejecting their name, you know? So they’re doing a kind of detachment.
And in each case, I’m not sure exactly what the family would do with that truth, you know, but, you know, there may be some way that that thought can be helpful to people. What do you think? How can a family, can that thought be helpful to the family in trying to understand what’s going on with their loved one?
Jennifer Bauwens (1:11:10)
Yeah, I think one of the things that we were asking about is that the idea of lost history. And one of the things I write in the book is as a process that when someone’s coming back to their identity is often they’ll recognize their how much history their life that they’ve lost, that they’ve
that the ideology has ⁓ promoted a disconnection from their identity. ⁓ By that I mean, so one of things that Walt talks about is that he, in order to embrace that false identity, he had to get rid of the pictures that showed him as a man. He had to,
get rid of any kind of scent of his past because if he’s going to present as a woman and live as a woman, then he can’t let anybody else know that he was a man or he is a man. And so you automatically enter into a dissociative process. ⁓ that, mean, talk about an attachment disruption. I mean, that is essentially cutting off.
attachment with your whole being to embrace this new identity. ⁓
Ruth Institute (1:12:42)
Right. So
all the pictures of your childhood, you can’t go look at those pictures in the same frame of mind that you would have if that’s, that’s what I looked like when I was three years old, or there’s me with my big brother, or whatever. All of that has to be kind of censored for yourself, maybe, but for sure for the people you’re trying to present to. You know, I’ve also heard people who’ve been through family divorces
issue of losing history is a big part of that because oftentimes the person who initiated the divorce wants to rewrite the family history and they can’t let the kids remember that there were ever good times, for example. And so if some of the kids will go along with the rewrite of the history and other kids in their family are like, well, no, that’s not how I remember it. And they want to hang on to their memories, causes a lot of problems ⁓ going forward because that
the fundamental bond of the family, the mother and the father from whom the family was born, that breaks down and that causes this disruption and lost history. And you do hear, sometimes the detransitioners will talk about it. I can’t remember who I heard this from, but there’s a lot of stress associated with censoring all that out. Do you see that as well, Jen?
Jennifer Bauwens (1:14:04)
Yeah, yeah,
yeah, I do. And, and, you know, I think, I think the other point of where I think this is where you may have been going is, you know, that’s, that’s a lot of stress also on the family, because, you know, I try and this is where it does get back to trauma, because trauma is involved so much shame.
And shame is one of the most insidious emotions. And when we’re talking about, you know, getting rid of our life and erasing as we know it, it’s actually, it’s shame. I’m shamed of who I was. I’m ashamed of my biological sex. I’m ashamed of, you know, looking this way or, you know, identifying as this. ⁓ And so, you know, in order for me to feel safe,
in order for me to ⁓ hold it together in this new identity, I have to force you to be a manager of my internal shame because I need you to reflect back to me what I believe. This is true, this is who I am. And if you don’t reflect my fragile identity to me, then it’s gonna crumble. I, you know.
because, and that’s, you do see how fragile these identities are because, you know, somebody who’s secure in their identity, you can call me names, you know, like we get all kinds of, you know, things said about us and so forth, but I’m not shaken. You’re not shaken because we know who we are and whose we are, ⁓ But when your identity is so fragile,
and you don’t really know who you are and you’re presenting that if you don’t reflect my presentation then I’m gonna have a meltdown.
Ruth Institute (1:16:07)
Right, right, right. it’s not a sign of mental health, let’s put it that way, that kind of fragility. And that brings me to one final point that I want to make sure we cover because I found it very striking in your book and in your presentation. And that is we’ve been taught by the Guild, the Psychological Guild, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the whole, and the social workers and now even the librarians, everybody is on about how
Jennifer Bauwens (1:16:11)
No.
Ruth Institute (1:16:36)
People are born gay, people are born trans. It’s a normal variation of healthy human sexuality. That’s what we’ve been told. But at the same time, the people who have some kind of sexual minority status, whether they’re same-sex attracted or transgender, they have a lot of mental health problems. And so the explanation for that is we’re all being mean to them. If society would stop discriminating, they’d be fine.
Well, every time that theory goes out for a test, it fails. mean, that theory has never been, ⁓ even when you find something that’s consistent with it, you don’t find nearly enough to explain away the very big gaps in mental health, whether within the population or across time. ⁓ You would think by now, after all of the increased affirmation and acceptance of homosexuality,
that the mental health numbers would be improving and they are not improving. And that’s the sad truth. They are not improving. And we should be concerned about that. I want to look at your chart on page 69. Okay. Because you’ve got this chart blew me away when I saw it on the screen in Sacramento. You’ve got, you label this queer spectrum students, which I assume includes anybody who’s not strictly heterosexual. Okay. Or sexual minorities. Who does that include? It’s a chart that compares queer spectrum
Jennifer Bauwens (1:17:59)
So it’s
Ruth Institute (1:18:01)
and heterosexual students. Who’s in that category of queer spectrum?
Jennifer Bauwens (1:18:02)
Yeah. It’s, ⁓
so the study identifies it as ⁓ the LGBT. So the T is included. It’s not parsed out from ⁓ the LGB. And ⁓ this is a study of incoming freshmen students. It was done around 2019. And
I believe the sample size was around 95,000 students and from, I want to say 148 colleges and universities. All right, so pretty, yeah.
Ruth Institute (1:18:42)
Okay, so this is college freshmen. You’re
asking kids, they’re roughly 18 or 19 years old, something like that, entering college. Okay, and what does the chart say?
Jennifer Bauwens (1:18:48)
That’s right.
So it is profound. Just one of the first points on the chart is asking about those who report having a psychological disorder from those who identify as on the queer spectrum, 37 % said that they have a psychological disorder versus 9 % of those who say that they’re heterosexual.
Don’t know if you want me to go through this whole chart. Okay Okay, okay, LGBT 35 % reported feeling depressed 10 % of heterosexuals reported depression 24 % of the LGBT seriously commit considered committing suicide and 8 % of those who are heterosexual
Ruth Institute (1:19:23)
right ahead. Read them up. Read them in weep as they say.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:19:50)
had those thoughts. 18 % reported engaging of the LGBT and reported engaging in serious or sorry, self-injurious behaviors. 5 % of those heterosexual. ⁓ In terms of those who felt so depressed that they couldn’t function over sometime over the past 12 months, 59 % of those on the LGBT spectrum
versus 34 % of the heterosexual students felt that way. So you can see right off the bat, there are some really stark differences between those who are identifying as LGBT versus those who are identifying as heterosexual. And the theory would be that this distress is as a result of minority stress framework.
In other words, being a minority. And I just think that’s a very intellectually lazy explanation because clearly there’s something else going on here. Maybe that’s a factor, that feeling like you’re a minority. ⁓ But certainly, you know, this whole population, there are studies that have looked at the fact that there’s a priming going on that
Ruth Institute (1:21:05)
Right. Right.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:21:16)
⁓ Certainly those in the T ⁓ category, but I would argue that the LGB as well are told that they are going to feel more depressed. going to, they are a minority. They’re going to feel suicidal. ⁓ We see this a lot with the transgender identifying community. We’re told that, you know, if you don’t get hormones, you’ll probably commit suicide. So there’s that priming. ⁓
before anything even happens with them, they’re told this is who you are, this is a part of your identity. So there’s that aspect, there’s no research that really looks at the depths of that effect. But also, I would argue that it’s quite possible from other studies that have shown that this population, the LGBT as a whole has
a lot of childhood trauma.
Ruth Institute (1:22:14)
Yes, yes, yes, it’s the same problem.
It is exactly the same problem. They affirm the gay identity and everything will be fine. But in fact, they’ve got 37 % of them have been through sexual abuse or something like that. I don’t have those numbers in front of me, but it’s striking again, the difference between the rates of childhood sexual abuse and the rates of other kinds of abuse and stuff like that. They have a lot more.
adverse childhood events, period. And Father Sullins has found that in some of his research, you know. And that is not getting addressed because we’re so busy affirming their gay identity that we’re not paying attention to the other things that need to be addressed.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:22:59)
And what a disservice to this population. What an absolute disservice.
Ruth Institute (1:23:02)
Exactly, exactly. Yeah,
yeah. So we’re coming to the end of our time here. So you and Walt have some interesting advice ⁓ for church communities and for family members. Why don’t you wrap up by giving people a few pointers about how they can best be helpful ⁓ to young people who are dealing with these kinds of, actually not just young people, people of any age, because people walk away from these experiences and these identities.
all kinds of ages. know, sometimes they walk away from it. Walt lived it for, I don’t know, 12 or 15 years, something like that. You know, so it doesn’t have to be a young person.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:23:40)
Yes. Yeah, I would just say, I mean, I also want to refer you to some of the content in the book and also that we’re going to have videos that we put out that also will go into more detail on these things. ⁓ You know, there are a number of needs that people have when they’re coming back to God’s identity for their lives.
Ruth Institute (1:23:40)
Give people some pointers.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:24:05)
I mean, they may have to go through legal changes because they’ve changed their documents. ⁓ There may be a process of getting haircuts and getting new clothes. You might be the one taking a person shopping to get new clothing. ⁓ But you may also be the person that is just a supportive other that’s helping form that new secure attachment that they didn’t have before and show them
you know, the love of God that how would God love them? I’ve tell you another thing that’s probably going to be a task at some point, you’d never want to force this on someone. But there’s going to be a lot of need for forgiveness, because this they’ve been this is a population that would have been ⁓ maybe had a pre existing abuse, but certainly they’ve been abused.
by authority figures in the medical profession and maybe in other types of figures that that’s not helping the the attachment relationship either because you have another layering of abuse. ⁓ you know, helping that person just sit with God and, you know, ask you can ask simple questions like is there anybody I need to forgive? I used to do seminars in churches and ⁓
and just talk about trauma and so forth. And it was always amazing how many people when I would say, let’s just ask God, let’s just talk to God, sit with him and ask him to show you if there’s anybody that you need to forgive. And it’s amazing how many times things start emerging. And it’s great because it’s an opportunity for freedom and for us as people carrying stuff to release it, but also
that God has a chance to move on our behalf because we’re not trying to hold onto it anymore. He’s like, thank you for releasing that to me. ⁓ Right. Right. So.
Ruth Institute (1:26:07)
Right. Right. You stop arm wrestling with God, you might have a chance. Making some progress. Right. Right. And
you know what I’m hearing from you, throughout our conversation really is that this is an area where there are certain principles that you can see that are applicable pretty widely, but every case is different. And every
If you have any kind of encounter with anybody across this spectrum, what you call the queer spectrum, what that study called the queer spectrum students, ⁓ it’s going to take some intuition on your part to work out where is this person in this process. And it’s not like we can give you a script or a formula or something like that. It’s not that kind of a problem. And I know a lot of times ⁓ those of us who are
analytically minded, you know, by golly, we want a formula. We want to get this right. We want to appeal, you know, and it’s not that kind of thing. ⁓ And it takes time and it takes intuition. And be gentle with yourself because you’re probably going to fumble the ball a few times, maybe more than a few times. Maybe you’re going, my gosh, I already fumbled the ball a bunch of times. Forgive yourself, too, while you’re going through this. So what what what final words do you have for our people? you know what? I keep forgetting to ask you.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:27:02)
you
Ruth Institute (1:27:28)
Where can people get this book and how can people connect with Jennifer Bauwens and her work?
Jennifer Bauwens (1:27:34)
Yeah, well, you can go to Amazon. That’s a great place to get it. ⁓ Fidelis Publisher is another place, but I think Amazon’s probably the easiest for most folks. for now, that’s ⁓ also Family Research Council website. You can just go to our general website. we have a site that we’ve devoted to this content, and we’re going to keep developing it. ⁓
putting out ⁓ video resources and interviews, et cetera. And that site is called embracethedesign.com. ⁓ Embracethedesign.com is, ⁓ it’s gonna be for ⁓ legislative talking points as well, because we want legislators to be able to take hold of these ideas, to be able to articulate the problem well, and to understand the root issues.
but we also want people, just anybody who wants to be of help or to be able to talk about the issue compassionately to grab hold of these resources. So that’s a great place. ⁓ You can find me on the Family Research Council website too. Just go to familyresearch.council.com.
Ruth Institute (1:28:50)
Very good. Well, Jennifer Bauwens, I want to thank you so much for being my guest on today’s episode of The Dr. J Show. I’m sure many people are going to be blessed by this material that you’ve presented. And I do encourage people to find the book that Jennifer has written with our good friend, Walt Heyer. Thank you so much for being my guest on today’s episode of The Dr. J Show.
Jennifer Bauwens (1:29:10)
Glad to be here.
👉 Watch the full uncensored video on Rumble or on Locals
Know someone who needs to hear this? Share this post. The truth heals.
Have a question or a comment? Leave it in the comments, and we’ll get back to you!
Subscribe to our YouTube playlist: @RuthInstitute
Follow us on Social Media:
https://www.instagram.com/theruthinstitute
https://www.facebook.com/TheRuthInstitute
https://theruthinstitute.locals.com/newsfeed
Press:
NC Register: https://www.ncregister.com/author/jennifer-roback-morse
Catholic Answers: https://www.catholic.com/profile/jennifer-roback-morse
The Stream: https://stream.org/author/jennifer-roback-morse/
Crisis Magazine: https://crisismagazine.com/author/jennifer-roeback-morse
Father Sullins’ Reports on Clergy Sexual Abuse: https://ruthinstitute.org/resource-centers/father-sullins-research/
Buy Dr. Morse’s Books:
The Sexual State: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/the-sexual-state-2/
Love and Economics: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/love-and-economics-it-takes-a-family-to-raise-a-village/
Smart Sex: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/smart-sex-finding-life-long-love-in-a-hook-up-world/
101 Tips for a Happier Marriage: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/101-tips-for-a-happier-marriage/
101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person: https://ruthinstitute.org/product/101-tips-for-marrying-the-right-person/
Listen to our podcast:
Apple Podcasts – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ruth-institute-podcast/id309797947
Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/1t7mWLRHjrCqNjsbH7zXv1
Subscribe to our newsletter to get this amazing report: Refute the Top 5 Gay Myths https://ruthinstitute.org/refute-the-top-five-myths/
Get the full interview by joining us for exclusive, uncensored content on Locals: https://theruthinstitute.locals.com/support
About the Ruth Institute
The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.
Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
To get more information or schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.
Refute the top 5 Gay Myths With Our Ebook & Get Our Newsletter
Join us on Locals for exclusive content*!
*Censorship free!
Get all of our video content on Rumble*
*Also censorship free
