Parents packed the Dec. 15 school board meeting in Salinas, California, over the revelation that two middle school teachers were coaching students into gender confusion and into an LGBTQ+ support club, also known as Genders and Sexualities Alliances, or GSA, clubs, without parents’ knowledge.
One mother testified that the teacher gave a boy’s name to her daughter without the mother’s knowledge. Then when she met with the teacher to protest, the school called child protective services on her.
The same two teachers held a workshop in October called “How We Run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities,” and recordings reveal they were coaching colleagues in how to hide the true nature of such clubs from parents. This example illustrates several tactics of cultural Marxism examined in my January 2021 article “It’s Not Just ‘Gender Dysphoria.’ It’s Now ‘Rapid Onset Marxism.’”
Hundreds of parents have written me about their school-aged and college-aged children suddenly announcing trans identities. As a man who identified as a woman for eight years, I know trans identities intimately. Urging children along this path is child abuse.
The transgender indoctrination starts young. Trans-affirming curriculum and storybooks plant seeds of gender confusion in children (aka “grooming”) as early as kindergarten by pushing the bogus idea that children can choose their gender. Many school policies require aiding and abetting children who think they may be the opposite sex.
As seen in the Salinas, California, example, many teacher associations, teachers, and school boards are all-in. Willing counselors quickly diagnose young people with “gender dysphoria” and start (push) them down the disastrous path of erasing their identity.
The so-called treatments gender professionals recommend for children are hideous and barbaric: disrupt normal adolescent development with puberty-blocking drugs, inject anabolic steroids (cross-sex hormones), and finally, butcher healthy body parts—genital removal for boys and mastectomies for girls. Most of the damage is irreversible and all of it is unnecessary.
It’s vital to stand up for parental rights, to question indoctrination in schools, and to protect children. We’ll see examples of courageous people saying “enough,” fighting back and winning. But first, a look at how transgender identity activists employ cultural Marxist strategies.
Marxist Goals: Devalue, Dehumanize, and Destroy
The cultural Marxist goals are to devalue, dehumanize, and destroy. The trans ideology advances these goals in several ways:
Devalue women—Suggesting men become women by a verbal declaration, “I feel like a woman,” cheapens the inherent, exquisite differences between men and women. Honoring men who “identify as women” with women’s milestone designations, such as “first female four-star admiral,” devalues women and their accomplishments.
Devalue precious children—Affirming children as the opposite sex devalues who they genuinely are. Telling a child they should adopt a “new identity” in the opposite gender sends a message that something is wrong with their innate identity, that it is so terrible that it needs to be eradicated.
Dehumanize, punish, silence—The woke mob dehumanizes and viciously attacks those who break the ever-shifting rules, and demands harsh punishment to ruin the offenders. Questioning that men can become women or that men can give birth, for example, triggers the mob and name-calling ensues. Parents who speak up in defense of their children are labeled “domestic terrorists.” Women who speak up in defense of women’s spaces are demeaned as “TERFs,” a derogatory term meaning “trans-exclusionary radical feminists.”
Destroy parental rights and student safety—Schools and school boards keep information from parents, such as allowing children to use different names and pronouns, wear different clothing, and use restrooms of the opposite sex without alerting their parents. In Loudoun County, Virginia, a male who identified as female assaulted a female student and the school district covered it up.
Destroy women’s sports—Men identifying as women compete in female athletics and due to their superior strength unjustly steal opportunities that rightfully belong to women.
Showing Up and Speaking Out
Many are speaking out against the devalue, dehumanize, and destroy tactics.
Former USA Swimming official Cynthia Millen resigned in protest to a biological male swimmer dominating the women’s competition and boldly stated the simple biological truth: “Bodies swim against bodies. Gender identities don’t swim. [He] is a man who is swimming against women.” Teammates have complained privately to the coach. Parents have written a letter urging the National Collegiate Athletic Association to change its rules on transgender athletes.
In Loudoun County, Virginia, parents have banded together and filed Freedom of Information requests to unearth what the school board did to cover up the student’s assault. Across the country, parents are showing up to school board meetings to hold schools accountable.
Celebrities are taking heat, too. J. K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series, pointed out the Orwellian absurdity of incarcerating a sex offender with intact male genitalia in a women’s prison simply because he identifies as a woman. For that, she said in a recent post on Twitter, “I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them, and I haven’t stopped speaking out.”
The Marxist tactics disguised as transgender policies are a cancer infecting our entire culture, with schoolchildren as the prime targets. Thank goodness that concerned parents and celebrities are speaking out against the damage being done.
Bravo to the brave souls willing to go against the mob. Their selfless example is an inspiration to all and deserves to be imitated. Every voice matters.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
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