‘Gender Hybrid’ Children?
Originally published at National ReviewGender ideology is growing increasingly extreme, particularly as it applies to children. Now, we are being told that children can identify as one gender on “top” and another on the “bottom,” or can be half boy and half girl. Worse, this clear break from biological reality is being supported by adult mental-health professionals steeped in gender ideology. From the Fox News story:
A California hospital executive and professor claimed children can identify as a mythology-inspired creature and claimed that this category of children love mermaids, according to a presentation reviewed by Fox News Digital. . . .
Ehrensaft [the director of mental health and chief psychologist at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital’s gender-development center] made what some may consider fringe claims about gender ideology, including that kids can identify as “gender hybrids” which include a mythology-inspired creature called a “gender Minotaur,” and that kids can change their genders by season and can have different identities depending on their location.
What are the supposed hybrids?
- Gender Prius: Half girl and half boy
- Gender Minotaur: One gender on top and a different one on the bottom
- Gender by Season: One gender during the school year and another over the summer
- Gender by Location: At home, one gender, elsewhere another
Contrary to the story, readers should resist the temptation to dismiss these views as fringe. “Fringe” today in America is holding to the view that children are of the sex in which they have been born and that the proper approach to treating gender confusion is to conduct an in-depth and at-length mental-health exploration of the child’s emotional state (as some European countries now insist). Indeed, expressing such opinions can be dangerous and could cause a parent to lose custody of their gender-dysphoric child or medical professionals to be branded “transphobic” and have their careers threatened.
But on the gender-ideological left, there is no longer such a thing as “fringe.” After all, ten years ago, who would have thought that we would allow doctors to cut off the breasts of 14-year-old girls who feel they are boys — and that showing images of teenagers with two scars on their chests would become a celebrated phenomenon? Who would have thought that doctors would perform facial-reconstruction surgeries on teenagers to masculinize or feminize their appearances? Who would have thought that one of the highest officials at HHS would praise a “gender inclusive biology curriculum” for children that eliminates the word “mother” and replaces it with “gestational parent” or “egg carrier”?
No, Ehrensaft — the official at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital mentioned in the Fox News story — is not fringe. She is very credentialed, frequently published in medical journals, and holds a position of great power and influence. She is also a professor at UCSF School of Medicine, specializing in pediatric “gender-affirmative care for transgender and gender-expansive patients.” I suspect she received these high-prestige positions because of her no-longer-fringe opinions, not in spite of them.
“Gender Minotaur.” “Gender Prius.” Our poor children.