The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Transgender’ as Self-Harm

Posted on | October 17, 2018 | Comments Off on ‘Transgender’ as Self-Harm

 

Maddy is a fat girl with a self-harm problem. You can see on the photo above the scars on her arms from repeatedly cutting herself. While she provides little information on her Tumblr blog that would enable us to understand the sources of her mental health problems, we know that many adolescent girls struggle with body-image issues, including eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, and that there is an epidemic of depression and anxiety among teenage girls and young women. Many observers have noted a correlation between mental illness and excessive use of social media, although we can’t say which of these is cause and which is effect. That is to say, it may be that some kids develop psychiatric problems because they spend too much time on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc., or it may be that kids with psychiatric problems are somehow predisposed to excessive online usage, perhaps as an escape from unpleasant real-world social environments.

Whatever cause-and-effect relationship may exist between these two phenomena, certainly it is not therapeutic for the lonely fat girl to spend all her spare time locked in her room browsing Instagram profiles or reblogging gloom-and-doom messages on Tumblr. There is an observable tendency of young people to form online cliques or “affinity groups” based on shared interests, and the lonely fat girl with suicidal tendencies can easily find similarly situated peers on social media, thus submerging herself in a virtual world where the prevalent attitudes and beliefs are defined by lonely fat girls, where unhealthy minds define the norm.

Toxic environments attract toxic people with toxic ideas. Especially among impressionable and emotionally vulnerable young people, the existence of online communities full of like-minded peers can encourage an echo-chamber effect, a sort of cult mentality, where those who criticize the group consensus are excluded and demonized. This is how online transgender activism fosters Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) in which teenagers — especially girls — who have never previously exhibited gender confusion rather suddenly become obsessed with pursuing “transition,” typically demanding that parents accept their newfound identity and approve them for hormone treatment and/or surgery to “confirm” their identity. This has become alarmingly common.

In November 2014, Maddy created a Tumblr blog announcing that she identified as “genderqueer and pansexual” and would be “getting top surgery” (i.e., double mastectomy) within two months. She was 19 then, and had previously blogged about her depression and self-harm.

WARNING: You cannot unsee this photo.

 

Most people would probably not regard this result (which cost Maddy $6,398.35) as an improvement over her pre-surgical appearance, but two years later, she declared she “could not be more thrilled with my surgery results,” and in another post she wrote: “My body is beautiful. . . . It took me all of my life to feel at home in my body. Many days, it takes constant effort to love myself, but I’ll never stop trying.” That was in June 2017, but Maddy soon relapsed into self-harm. Between October 2017 and April 2018, she was taken to the emergency three times when she cut herself so badly she required stitches, and spent five weeks in psychiatric facilities. She was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Guess what? Getting your breasts amputated at age 19 won’t cure mental illness.

Maddy’s most recent post was hashtagged “suicidal ideation.” You’ll notice I haven’t linked her blog. That’s because it’s full of photos of her lacerated arms and also because I fear that if anyone contacted her, she’d freak out and kill herself. Do her therapists or her family know what she’s posting online? Probably not. If they were smart, they’d take away all her digital devices — her smartphone, her laptop, her tablet — and insist she delete all her social media accounts. She’s at the bottom of a very deep hole, one she’s been digging for years, and her online “friends” in the transgender community are complicit in what’s gone wrong in her life.

Can we stop pretending that the online transgender community is a healthy place for young people? Can we stop ignoring the cult mentality that transgender activism encourages? Can we admit that performing sex-change surgery on emotionally unstable teenagers is a bad idea?

God knows, I hate to recommend expanding the authority of government, but I’m beginning to think that state legislatures need to step in and impose some common-sense regulation on the medical community. Performing mastectomies on mentally ill 19-year-old girls? This is barbaric, a dark stain on the reputation of the medical profession. One of these days — and I hope it’s soon — some cagey lawyer is going to spot the opportunity for malpractice lawsuits against the people involved in this gruesome business, including the peddlers of transgender hormones, and all that will be required is a plaintiff like Maddy getting sane enough to realize that she was a victim of a medical community that is profiting from the delusions promoted by transgender activism.

Guess what? You can’t blame Donald Trump for this. You can’t claim that the “patriarchy” is encouraging teenage girls to amputate their breasts and identify as pansexual nonbinary genderqueers. Feminists who have become concerned about the transgender cult must admit that their existing political theories have failed to account for the psychological influences affecting this generation of young people. Nor have most adults considered how technology — particularly the advent of social media — has given rise to toxic online environments where young people can indulge harmful fantasies and be encouraged in doing so by their peers. Politically correct beliefs about “diversity” and “tolerance,” and fear of being accused of “sexism” or “homophobia,” have had the effect of depriving us of a vocabulary of moral judgment. Young people cannot discern between good and evil if adults are afraid of speaking clearly about these subjects. Many young people are drifting into self-destructive insanity because the voices of reason are silenced or discredited by attacks from the transgender cult, which receives millions of dollars in funding from “philanthropists” like George Soros.

Trying to suggest solutions to tragic cases like Maddy’s is a difficult project, because such people have suffered so much psychological damage that the prognosis for recovery is doubtful. In terms of prevention, however, other young people might be protected if they were clearly warned about the dangers of peer pressure and cult mentalities. Whether you’re talking about transgenderism, heroin addiction, or Scientology, the fact is that adolescents are vulnerable to peer influence, and lack the life experience necessary to discern between harmful and beneficial influences. Young people confronted with a choice between good and evil will often choose evil, if it is presented to them as glamorous and exciting, or as a rebellion against parental authority.

No child is entirely safe from the forces of evil, and it is a dangerous delusion to suppose the apparently happy teenagers you know could not become a victim of these forces. They must be warned.



 

 

RECENTLY: