2 weeks Ago By Maud Maron
Should adults tell a little boy who likes pink princess dresses that he “is born in the wrong body” — or that he is just perfect the way he is? Should a “tomboy” who eschews those pink princess dresses to climb trees ever hear she’s not really a girl — or should she be assured it’s perfectly normal for girls to like and do “boy things”? Should girls struggling to adjust to the major body changes of adolescence be counseled to be comfortable in their own female form — or offered a surgeon’s scalpel? The trans movement tells young people there’s a right way and a wrong way to be male or female, and if you miss the mark, you can remedy the mismatch by blocking your puberty with hormones and surgically modifying your body to “fix” it. Schools encourage this extremism with the gateway drug of “social transition”: Kids can change their name and pronouns in school, and many officials and teachers will fight to hide that choice from parents. Supporters call it “gender-affirming” care and have long claimed it to be “life-saving” — asking parents who object the gut-punch question, ”Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?” Trans activists pushed the model of gender affirmation into countless institutions before most Americans had ever heard the word “cisheteronormative.
” We didn’t then know the truth behind benign-sounding but Frankenstein-esque “top surgery” and “bottom surgery” procedures that remove healthy breasts and testicles to “align” the patient’s body with his or her “gender identity.” In 2019, with most parents blissfully unaware, New York City public schools adopted the gender-affirmation model with the passage of “Gender Guidelines” mandating that students have access to sports, bathrooms and locker rooms of the sex they “identify” with — and have the right to change their names and pronouns in school without parental consent or notification. City schools developed and implemented these guidelines without the input of medical professionals, without a commission or blue-ribbon panel reviewing available data and without any public-input session that took testimony from parents or other stakeholders.
One guy from Ohio, Jared Fox, was hired as the Department of Education’s first LGBT liaison so that “all students [would] see LGBT people in the curriculum.” After a few meetings with hand-selected groups that all agreed with each other, including Gender and Sexuality Alliance student clubs — voila — new policy! But what if gender-affirming protocols are actually bad for kids? My objections to gender ideology are often characterized as bigoted or “transphobic” by trans activists and allies — even by the chancellor, David Banks. But they are neither.
My views stem from deep compassion and a heartfelt desire to protect children from irreversible damage and heartache. I think it’s much more compassionate, and in line with what progressive values actually were up until five minutes ago, to push back on regressive gender ideology. Trans allies will often claim that gender-affirmation policies impact only a “small minority” of kids.
That’s not true. From 2017 to 2023, national insurance data show that approximately 6,000 double mastectomies were performed on girls under 18 years old. But even a small minority of kids deserves to be protected from practices that harm them.
Social contagion works like a brushfire — it spreads, especially among young women. Parents and teachers now regularly bear witness to classrooms with multiple young students, mainly girls, identifying as trans, nonbinary and queer. Kids today are relentlessly pressured to be “agents of social change” — it’s even in the state’s official policy of “Culturally Responsive Sustaining Education.
” Naturally kind-hearted young people don’t want to be the bad-guy oppressors, and the LGBTQ umbrella offers many kids automatic credibility in the simplistic narrative that has overwhelmed our curricula and culture. Young people with gender confusion — struggling to figure out where they fit in, yearning to be comfortable in their bodies — need support. And the best support in the world is to back off — what therapists call “watchful waiting.
” Give kids the time and space to grow up with whole, healthy bodies that go through puberty while their brains mature. Research tells us that most of these kids’ gender dysphoria will end in time. Puberty is the cure, not the problem! And the majority of kids who stop claiming to be the opposite sex .
. . are gay.
That’s why more and more lesbians and gay men are standing up to a trans ideology that tells young lesbians they are actually men, and tells young gay men they are women, then promotes “transition” to more convincingly pass as the opposite sex. That is not progressive — it is homophobia on overdrive. It is unreasonable (and unconstitutional!) for government-run schools to shut down this conversation with cries of transphobia or censorious efforts to silence parents who object to gender affirmation in schools.
In March, the Manhattan education council I sit on, CEC District 2, called for a review of the DOE’s gender guidelines that allow female-identifying males in girls’ sports. Parents and students have the right to discuss whether the gender-affirming model is good for kids — and the chancellor has an obligation to listen. True compassion should compel the conversation, not silence it.
Maud Maron is a city public school parent and president of the consulting firm ThirdRail..
