Mandatory affirmation

Abigail Shrier tells us:

Gender ideologues in California let the mask slip, or perhaps just tossed it away: A new bill, AB 957, directs family court judges to award custody based in part on “a parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity,” which the bill defines as intrinsic to the “health, safety and welfare of the child.”

And what “a child’s gender identity” means in this context “a child’s assertion that she or he is the other sex.” So custody decisions will be based partly on a parent’s “affirmation” of a silly lie, one which could end up prompting the child to make drastic changers to her or his body – irreversible damage in short.

How far must a parent go in pursuit of “affirmation”? The bill doesn’t say. “Affirmation” can include anything from allowing your daughter to adopt a male name and pronouns to commencing a schedule of hormones and surgeries that are variously risky, irreversible, and without proven mental health benefit. Puberty blockers, a staple of so-called “gender-affirming medicine,” can produce permanent sexual dysfunction and infertility, diminish cognitive development, undermine bone density and tooth enamel. How much is custody or visitation of your daughter worth to you, the Gender Thugs want to know. Sterilization and splitting teeth?

Not to mention diminished cognitive development.

Today, the notion that “affirmation” is necessarily in the best interest of every child can no longer seriously be believed. In the last two years, England, Sweden, Finland, France, and Norway have all conducted rigorous scientific reviews of pediatric gender medicine and concluded the opposite. The efficacy, far too doubtful. The harms, too grave. These countries—every one of them liberal—responded to their independent reviews by shuttering pediatric gender clinics, curtailing the availability of these medicines, restricting them to experimental settings, or banning them entirely.

It’s a fad, people, and one with far more dire consequences than most.

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