Table of Contents
Miriam Grossman
This is an excerpt from the introduction to Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness, the latest book by American psychiatrist Miriam Grossman.
When I graduated from medical school, I took an oath. I stood up, raised my right hand, and vowed to prevent disease whenever I could. At the time, I expected to go to war against cancer and schizophrenia. But after forty years, I’ve realized my most challenging fight is not against dangerous diseases, but dangerous ideas.
The beliefs that man and woman are human inventions, that the sex of a healthy newborn is arbitrarily and often incorrectly “assigned,” and that as a result the child requires “affirmation” through risky medical interventions—these ideas are divorced from reality and therefore hazardous, especially to children. They are, in fact, a mockery of twenty-first-century science and cause immeasurable harm to young people and their families. I know, because I’m a psychiatrist and they’re my patients.
I don’t have the words to describe the sorrow of parents I know whose young daughter was removed by a government agency, placed in foster care, and started on testosterone. Their crime? Insisting she’s a girl. Or the anguish of a young man I see, who sought castration to become his “authentic self” and now, after the fact, regrets it. Or the rage of a twenty-something woman going through menopause due to “gender-affirming” removal of her reproductive organs.
Are these atrocities really happening in our country? They sure are, and you must protect your loved ones from joining the multitude of victims.
I discovered how children were being indoctrinated with gender ideology while writing my 2009 book You’re Teaching My Child WHAT? I wanted parents to know that the powerful sex ed industry has agendas that undermine the health and safety of children. Widely used curricula and teen-friendly websites promoted sexual freedom, not sexual health, placing students’ well-being at risk.
In the final chapter, I cautioned parents about “Genderland,” comparing it to the upside-down world of Alice in Wonderland:
Parents, fasten your seatbelts. If what you’ve learned so far about sex education horrifies you, and you believe it can’t get any worse, I caution you: it can and it does…. Welcome to Genderland, where the madness of sex education reaches a peak, and everything you know is turned on its head.
The disaster is here. We are in a freefall down a black hole, with no landing in sight. Girls who claim to be boys and boys girls are almost as common, it seems, as teenagers with acne. But it should come as no surprise: after years of bombardment with the notion that the “gender binary” is false and oppressive, and encouragement to explore whether they’re male, female, both, or neither, lo and behold, the number of teens with recent-onset discomfort with their sex is up 4,000 per cent.
In 2004, there were two clinics in the entire world for these exceedingly rare cases. Now there are at least one hundred clinics in the US alone, and preteen girls learn from American Girl’s Guide Body Image, “If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity.”
And how does a girl do that? She might flatten her developing breasts with a tight elastic binder she can easily find—at Walmart, Target, or at school.’ She goes through the day in pain, feeling lightheaded and short of breath. She may “pack” her underwear to create a bulge emulating the look of a penis. A boy might shave his arms, legs, and chest to erase signs of masculinity. To achieve a flat, feminine crotch he’ll push his testicles into his inguinal canals, then tape his penis and scrotum together behind his legs.” This manoeuvre can cause severe pain, infection, and testicular torsion-an acute condition requiring emergency surgery.
I know, it’s hard to believe, but that’s what’s going on. The gender utopians have colonized not only super-liberal Berkeley, but Knoxville and Plano. I know the devastation that results and consider it a duty to warn and educate parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles—anyone with a child in their lives-about the mess we are in.
I want the following truths—recognized by everyone on the planet aside from gender studies professors and grad students until about two weeks ago–to be acknowledged in the first pages of this book: Sex is not assigned at birth; it’s established at conception. Brains always match the bodies to which they are attached; we are not Legos or Mr. Potato Heads that might be improperly assembled. Sex is binary. Sex is permanent. Males cannot become females and females cannot become males.
Doctors, therapists, and others who lead young people to believe otherwise are guilty of malfeasance. They must be stopped and held responsible for the damage inflicted on children and families.
Having said that, I will also state outright that there are individuals for whom living a life consistent with their biology is a life of torture. We do not understand the condition from which they suffer, but it is real and unrelenting. I firmly believe their chronic disembodiment is a disorder of the mind and that they deserve our compassion and respect. Hormones and surgery? Maybe, but we cannot predict with accuracy in whom the benefit will outweigh the harm.
My book is not about those extraordinarily rare people, who have been written about for almost 100 years. It is about the kids whose new identities are the result of a hysteria fueled by the Internet, social media, Hollywood, and the gender medical and government establishment that mushroomed out of the ideology I discovered in sex education fifteen years ago.
For me, this is a black-and-white issue. Most things in life are nuanced, but this is not one of them. This is—and here’s a word you don’t expect from a doctor–evil. It’s evil to indoctrinate children and young adults with falsehoods and to drive a wedge between them and their loving parents. It’s evil to encourage them on a path that leads to harm. And it’s evil to describe it all as a journey to authenticity, and to entice children with glitter and rainbows.
We are a nation lost in trans madness; the price we are paying is staggering. This is a guide out of the madness. If you’re a parent, you needed it yesterday, because the crusaders are at your door, they’ve already conquered Disney and Target, your kids’ school, camp, and paediatrician.
I wrote this book to arm you for battle against the blitz of transgenderism, because no family is immune. Yes, “battle” and “blitz”: I use military terms intentionally. The trans issue is not a debate with reasonable and moral people on both sides, it’s a war. It’s a destructive, cult-like crusade that targets your children 24/7; there’s hardly a place that’s free from indoctrination, slogans, flags, and emojis. You must gird yourselves with knowledge, confidence, and support and oppose the onslaught as much as possible.
A mother consulted with me about her twelve-year-old daughter. She told me when she goes to websites to learn more about her daughter’s struggles, she feels physically ill. “I can’t go on,” she told me, “I have to stop. Reading about what they do to kids, sterilizing them, I feel sick.”
“That’s a fitting response,” I told her. “You should feel sick. I do, too.”
Decent people have a visceral reaction when they learn children are being harmed. You will be troubled by what you read in the pages ahead; you will probably need to take a break. Well, join the club. Take care of yourself, then come back and do what you must to protect your child, all children, from a perilous social movement that erases “male” and “female” and aims to revolutionize what it means to be human.
This is an edited extract from the recently published book Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness by Miriam Grossman MD, with a foreword by Jordan B. Peterson, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. Dr Grossman’s website is here. Her Twitter handle is @Miriam_Grossman
