Does Gender Ideology Harm Children?

By: Alexandria Addesso

The American College of Pediatrics released an eight-point statement entitled Gender Ideology Harms Children. The very timely statement was published on the ACP’s website just before the Federal directive to allow public school children to use the bathrooms associated with their gender identity.

At the top of the statement the ACP “urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.”

The eight points stated as to how and why gender ideology harms children include: the objectivity of genetic markers “XY” and “XX”, the dangers of puberty-blocking hormones, the need to continually use cross-sex hormones into adolescence and later life, and a higher rate of suicide. The eighth and most radical point states “Conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.”



This final point initially may come across as opinionated and harsh as well as less based in science than the others. But the ACP goes on to elaborate that endorsing such policies will lead more parents to bring their children to “gender clinics” for puberty blocking drugs thus leading them to be more apt to continuing formal lifetime on artificial hormones which contain known carcinogens. As well as mutilation of otherwise healthy body parts.

But if a person truly believes they are transgender won’t they pursue these means for the rest of their lives anyway? This leads to the discussion of two of the ACP’s points yet to be mentioned in this article. The fifth point states “According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.”



The DSM-V is an abbreviated form of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, which was published in 2013. The fifth point is used to back up the notion that such childhood gender disorders would be resolved after puberty. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, much of the general populous can identify with such a feeling from their childhood, either in the form of being labeled a tomboy for preferring roughhousing or labeled a sissy for being more of a mild-mannered boy. Will any child that deviates from the “gender norm” now be labelled as transgender and encouraged to take hormones? This takes us to point number two.



The ACP’s second point states “No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a
biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one.”

This harkens back to the last point discussed. In society “gender norms” are so deeply ingrained into the psyche that any deviation is seen as a problem, and problems must be solved. When gender itself is completely a social construct. A person’s XX or XY chromosomes can never change, but how they perceive themselves can. The problem is in the thinking that there is something wrong with Billy liking to play with baby dolls, when wouldn’t we want him to care for babies if he becomes a father? Or that thinking there is something wrong with Suzie wanting short hair and not liking uncomfortable, dressy clothing when, isn’t vanity a major downfall of many women? What is baffling is the immense push to conform by parents that praise their child as being an “individual” while allowing them to take drugs to enable them to conform with a perceived gender ideal.



To be completely fair, many have opposed these statements since they were published. Many counter-articles have been written on how the ACP is full of bigots, and is backed by the Conservative Right. But, ACP did cite 11 independent scientific studies to back its claims. In the “free” world the rights of adults have always been more numerous than those of children. An adult may live their life in any way they chose as long as it is within the bounds of the law. But should a child, whose brain is not yet fully developed until the age of 25 according to modern science, be allowed to the rights to such life-changing decisions? And if not the child, should the guardian be entitled to such rights?

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