Culture Creep: Trans Edition -Submit or you’re a bigot, hater, and all around awful person

Rebecca de Winter

I once had the embarrassing habit of checking WebMD whenever I felt poorly or had odd symptoms. I would inevitably come away thinking I had a rare form of incurable cancer. I’m not alone, as this is so common it has become an internet meme.

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Adolescents today can go to the internet and Google whatever ails them as well, with predictable results. Only instead of thinking they are dying of cancer, they might come away from a frenzied Google session believing they identify as an owl, a squirrel, or as a different gender.

If I had internet access when I was in middle school, I might have been convinced I was gay. A brief but intense crush on what I thought was a gorgeous male movie star was killed off in an instant when I found out that the short-haired Nastassja Kinski was in fact, very much a girl. Oops.

​I have vivid memories of that experience. I was mortified. I was humiliated. I was, most of all, confused. When I discovered that Natassja was a woman – everything went full tilt-a-whirl in my mind. Everything I thought I understood about male/female attractiveness was turned upside down. My shame was deep and painful.

Today, I look back and it’s kind of hilarious. It’s cute and funny, and I know it was harmless. But trust me when I say it did not seem harmless or cute to me when I was 12. I thought that surely there was something wrong with me.

Now of course, I know there was nothing wrong with me. It is perfectly normal for our attraction to others to exist on a spectrum. It didn’t mean I was flawed, or gay, or trans. (Cue Seinfeld: “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”)

Thank God I didn’t have access to the internet, or I might have convinced myself otherwise. See Tumblr if you don’t believe me.

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Most Americans today are aware of the “trans issue.” How can we not be aware of something being shoved in our faces daily by an unrelenting, agenda-pushing media?  We are not only all aware of it, we are being told (over and over and over) that we must conform, we must accept, we must change our lives, our minds and our laws to accommodate it.

We are being told that men who “feel” like women and women who “feel” like men have every right to choose whatever restroom or locker room they “feel” like. I use the scare quotes not to be a jerk, but because, well, science. It’s not about “the feelz.”

I am well aware of the disorder called gender dysphoria. It is a medical/mental health condition and I have sympathy for the mental anguish those who have it must suffer. They are deserving of compassion, counseling, and medical assistance as needed once the raging hormonal storms of adolescence have passed. However, I don’t believe that an infinitesimal percentage of the population (0.03 percent, or roughly 700,000 people out of 319 million) is deserving of a national identity crisis.

In short, I believe we are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Reasonable accommodations have been offered  for the trans community when it comes to bathroom and locker room use, and have been roundly rejected in a snit, saying it was “problematic” and could “hurt their self esteem.” Many say that these accommodations are discriminatory, just like when blacks had to sit at a separate lunch counter.

I have my doubts that Martin Luther King, Jr. and those who marched from Selma with him would agree with that assessment.

Regardless, we have an enormous problem on our hands when Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) and their henchmen in the media are attempting to shove down our throats something that, frankly, just doesn’t make any sense. “Gender is a social construct!” they scream. “Use my preferred pronouns, you cishet bigot!” they screech.

“Validate me, or else!” is the war cry of the faux victim du jour. Today it’s the trans movement. Tomorrow, who knows?

The crybully tactics of progressives have reached fever pitch with all of the recent bathroom law brouhahas, and whether or not their efforts will bear fruit remains to be seen.

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What strikes me as the most abhorrent part of this shrill trans movement is how the SJW and media obsession with it is so astoundingly out of proportion to the extraordinary rarity of the condition. The relentless push to normalize something we instinctively know is not normal is purposeful, do not be deceived.

The SJWs and the radical, progressive left are out to change the very fabric of our culture, and to an alarming extent, have succeeded. As of this writing, Facebook – royalty in social media culture – has 71 gender options. That is not a typo: 71.

They are attempting to force facts to bend and even bow down to feelings. To take subjective experience and make the world accept it the way they want, when they want it, and the specific way they prefer. If this all took place on a field of adults only, it might be distasteful, but perhaps tolerable. However, they are gunning for our children, and that is unacceptable.

When liberals can’t convince enough adults to push their radical agenda, they turn to the next generation. Missionary Francis Xavier once said, “Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.” (Or, maybe in this case, “I will give you the *insert preferred gender here*”)

Children are being forced to confront these issues even in kindergarten, and middle schoolers learn there is “no such thing as boys or girls,” and more and more books that “challenge traditional gender roles” are being targeted and marketed for preschoolers. This is insanity.

Children are among the most vulnerable of our population, and also quite suggestible. The consequences of pushing our youth to embrace whatever they feel in any given moment and run with it can be catastrophic. This is a fight worth having.

If you are an adult over the age of say, 25, raise your hand if you struggled with any embarrassment or confusion during your adolescence over sexual thoughts and fantasies. Keep your hand up if you ever had a terrifying, shame-flooded moment of wondering if something was wrong with you. Don’t worry, nobody can see you, but I’m confident if you’re reading this, your hand is up. You can put it down now, thank you.

Gender dysphoria aside, it is completely, absolutely normal to have bizarre, sexually jarring and confusing thoughts during the hormonal tsunami we call adolescence. There is no need to name it, claim it, label it, fetishize it, and find a support group on Tumblr for it.

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I am convinced that the constant haranguing of SJWs – aided and abetted by the liberal media – is making a psychological impact on the general population. It’s telling us, over and over, that “gender is a social construct,” despite all scientific and medical evidence to the contrary. The more they repeat it, the more likely people will believe it (Big Lie). And the more people believe it, the more our culture creeps leftward, furthering their goals.  

Not everyone is falling for it, however, and we can look to my hometown of Houston (not exactly a bastion of conservative principles) for inspiration, where we resoundingly rejected our far left, openly gay mayor’s attempt to ram the radical LBGQT agenda down our gullets.

This doesn’t have to be a black and white issue. We can have empathy, we can provide supports and reasonable accommodations, we can raise our children to be kind and compassionate to everyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or identity. However, we do not have to cave every time the progressives demand we submit to their wishes or be labeled bigots and haters.