by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse. Originally published in the National Catholic Register.
American Girl, the company known for wholesome dolls representing U.S. history, has climbed aboard the gender bandwagon. The company has published a new book, A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image, which promotes transgenderism. The gender madness is no longer confined to government and the medical establishment. Now corporate America is promoting chemical poisoning and surgical mutilation so it can be seen as cool and compassionate.
You may be exhausted by yet another example of the establishment promoting gender ideology at the expense of science and common sense. I get it. The larger point here is for all of us to become more alert to just how pervasive the propaganda war really is. We need to learn to guard our minds against the subtle and not-so-subtle manipulation of language.
Let’s start with the most obvious fact: This particular book is directed at children. American Girl says the target audience for its product is girls 8 to 11 years old. Honestly, how many 8-year-olds think about changing the sex of their bodies, unless an adult puts the idea in their heads? The 96-page book encourages girls to explore their “gender identity” because the gender they were born with might not be their authentic selves.
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Do I really have to explain this? Kids are vulnerable to suggestion from adults. Kids are especially likely to trust the suggestions of adults who treat them to something they really like. Girls really like American Girl dolls.
The book advises: “Parts of your body may make you feel uncomfortable, and you may want to change the way you look. … That’s totally OK!”
This benign-sounding language is a smoke screen. Of course, “you may want to change the way you look.” A little girl certainly can change her hair style and her clothes, as well as her behavior and her friend group. None of this has anything to do with what the Trans-Medical-Media Complex has in mind for your daughters and granddaughters: Girls should remove healthy breasts; boys should remove their testes; boys and girls alike should ingest powerful hormones to disrupt their normally functioning endocrine systems and to block the normal maturation process of going through puberty. That is not how normal, adult, sane people respond to “parts of their body that make them uncomfortable.”
The book also advises, “If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity.”
This, too, is a smoke screen. Calling puberty blockers “medicine” is extremely misleading, under the circumstances. Puberty blockers were developed to help precocious puberty. A girl with precocious puberty might get her periods at age 3 or 4 or 5 or 6. Six-year-old boys with adult levels of testosterone are going to have serious social difficulties. The FDA-approved use of these drugs is that when these kids turn 10 or 12, they cease taking the puberty blockers. They go on to have a normal developmental process. Let me be clear: Using these drugs for girls who are developing on a normal schedule is an off-label, unapproved, unstudied use of these drugs. (Pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Quentin Van Meter explains on this video, around the 29-minute mark.)
Saying that “your doctor might offer medicine,” as if puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones are as harmless as penicillin or an aspirin, is completely misleading.
But it gets worse: American Girl’s new book doesn’t mention the possibility that these procedures may not resolve their discomfort with their bodies. Nor do they mention that some people who go this route figure out later that they have made a wrong turn and want to turn back. They find, to their regret, that this is not possible.
The girls who undergo these procedures will never again have a feminine voice. They will never be able to nurse their own children. In some cases, they will be sterile. In some cases, they develop osteoporosis, ordinarily a disease of old women, while still in their teens.
Many young women who’ve gone through “transitioning” have come to regret it. All too often, the damage done to their adolescent bodies is irreversible. Chloe Cole, a California teen who formerly identified as “transgender,” underwent a double mastectomy at 15. She recently testified before a Florida hearing: “I was unknowingly physically cutting off my true self from my body, irreversibly and painfully.”
Worst of all, the American Girl’s book undermines children’s trust in the adults in their lives. The book tells girls that “if you don’t have an adult you trust, there are organizations across the country that can help you. Turn to the resources on page 95 for more information.” Somehow, I doubt that the Catholic Church or the American College of Pediatricians (the alternative to the deeply compromised, activist-dominated American Academy of Pediatricians) is on the list of “helpful resources.” As Anne Young put it, writing in the The Christian Post, “This sickening ideology undermines the most important relationships in a child’s life.” Many people agree, as the American Girl book has so far garnered a plethora of negative reviews and one-star ratings.
A girl cannot become a boy, no matter how many puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones she ingests, no matter how many surgeries she has. In reality, the sex you’re born with is the one you’ll have until the day you die. So-called gender identity is an ideological construct. Do not call this “medical care.” Do not call these interventions “medical procedures.” Yes, doctors create these disruptions of normal development. But these interventions have nothing to do with medicine.
The sex of the body is real and tangible and unchangeable. “Gender identity” is a mere social construct. It needs continual reinforcement with ever-shifting terminology, lots of propaganda and the active support of the power of the government. The concept of “gender identity” is stupid and destructive. The sooner we cease using it, the better off we are going to be.
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.
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