Should our children be able to decide for themselves they have gender dysphoria and what gender they want to be?

Despite biology at birth, many of our youth are being encouraged to question how they feel rather than accepting what they are as a human. Base gender is becoming something like a watch to wear in public. A watch that anyone can take off and replace if they decide they don’t like how it looks or feels.

It’s one thing for a grown adult with life experience to make that decision for themselves. But it’s another thing entirely to impose these sort of decisions over the youth that fill our everyday school systems. But even with adults, many are coming out to speak against their own changes. They are revealing the harm that it has done to them personally with depression, anxiety and even suicide. 

In a special that aired this week on 60 Minutes, people who experience gender dysphoria were interviewed.

They reflected on their own choices through the process of going through sex changes and hormone therapy. Despite mainstream media support of the movement and seemingly endless promotion of those who wish to change themselves, the episode itself seemed to stand as a warning to others that going down this road may not be the best idea.

Interviewer Lesley Stahl asked Dr. Laura Edwards Leeper, “Do you have conversations with your colleagues about this whole area of accepting what young people are saying too readily?” To which the doctor replied, “Yes. Everyone is very scared to speak up because we’re afraid of not being seen as being affirming or being supportive of these young people or doing something to hurt the Trans community. But even some of the providers are Trans themselves and share these concerns”.

Of the four people interviewed on 60 minutes, all of them agreed and shared the same experience. They learned about what it was to transition with gender dysphoria through influencer videos on Youtube and Facebook.

Tucker Carlson had a segment last night reflecting on the interview. He shared one of the quotations from the 60 Minutes interview from a transgender person named Grace Lidinsky Smith. “I can’t believe that I transitioned and detransitioned, including hormones and surgery, in the course of, like, less than one year. It’s completely crazy,” Grace said.

Tucker responded, “Yes it is. It is completely crazy. It is also reckless and cruel and totally unethical. Yet, in the newly politicized atmosphere of American medicine, it is routine.”

More than ever, children and adults alike are being motivated to diagnose themselves with gender dysphoria.

Most see no resistance through the process. Doctors, teachers and friends alike fear questioning or offering alternative solutions. 

Lesley Stahl asked the group together, “how many of you feel like you were blindly affirmed?”, to which all four of those being interviewed raised their hands. 

A 2016 document called, “Proposed Decision Memo for Gender Dysphoria and Gender Reassignment Surgery” from the Obama administration concluded that, “Based on a thorough review of the clinical evidence available at this time, there is not enough evidence to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with gender dysphoria.” Researchers in a study from Sweden found that those who do end up having the sex change experience a 19% increase in the potential for killing themselves by suicide.

Still, with all of this, Biden believes that our children, no matter the age, should make these decisions for themselves.

He said, “The idea that an eight year old child or a 10 year old child decides, ‘You know, I decided I want to be transgender. That’s what I think I’d like to be. It would make my life a lot easier.’ There should be zero discrimination.”

After a recent Arkansas state ban on treatments and surgery for youth who want to transgender, 28 other states are preparing and implementing legislation to do the same in an attempt to protect our children from outside influences and from themselves. For adults, the decision will still be for them to decide what is best for them personally. Still, looking at the evidence and speech of personal experience, all considering should take a deep look at themselves and make sure that radical life long change is worth the potential damage done. 

There is nothing wrong with accepting who you are and just deciding to be yourself in its natural state. If you do choose to change your gender as an adult, it may be best just to not go out promoting your change to our children like they should feel empowered to do it as well.  Let the kids be kids. No child should ever be thinking about a sex change and if they are, there’s a problem.