Science or Propaganda? NatGeo Uses 9-Year-Old as Human Shield in War on Gender

Ever on the forefront of reporting scientific breakthroughs, National Geographic’s January 2017 cover features a 9-year-old transgender girl. Though it’s not even hit shelves yet, “The Science of Gender” has already received praise and criticism, prompting a pre-emptive editor’s note.

The editor’s explanation — and the fact that National Geographic already has one for why it put a transgender girl on the cover of its publication — is as revealing about its ideology as the fact that it put one on the cover at all, touting the “science of gender.” Science isn’t at work here, but an ideological movement that attacks intelligence in the name of emotions, rights in the name of inclusivity, and morality in the name of progressivism.

Transgender children

The complete January issue isn’t yet available, save for one article on how marketing toys by gender has a “profound impact on children” and another on how gender among 9-year-olds worldwide shapes children differently, it’s not clear how the cover story and accompanying articles exactly go about making their case. But the editor’s note states gender is rapidly changing. Really?

The transgender movement at large remains small. Numbers range from 0.3-0.6 percent of the U.S. adult population. An even smaller amount is children. What’s more, the “science” behind kids who report gender dysphoria is somewhat complicated though hardly fluctuating. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed originally published in 2014 and updated in 2016, in Dr. Paul McHugh, wrote:

The transgendered suffer a disorder of “assumption” like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature — namely one’s maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.

This also explains a point of inconsistency toward many proponents of the transgender lifestyle, particularly sex changes or transitioning for young people. Why is a homosexual born gay but transgenders can choose their gender based on how they feel? Proponents would say because gender and sex are different: Sex is anatomy; gender is a state of mind. Dr. McHugh debunks this.

With Lawrence S. Mayer, another distinguished doctor at Johns Hopkins, Dr. McHugh published this review in August, stating there was not enough scientific evidence to show transgender people were born that way. Their research showed only biological sex is fixed; behavior and persona shifts.

Gender dysphoria — a sense of incongruence between one’s biological sex and one’s gender, accompanied by clinically significant distress or impairment — is sometimes treated in adults by hormones or surgery, but there is little scientific evidence that these therapeutic interventions have psychological benefits. Science has shown that gender identity issues in children usually do not persist into adolescence or adulthood, and there is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of puberty-delaying treatments. We are concerned by the increasing tendency toward encouraging children with gender identity issues to transition to their preferred gender through medical and then surgical procedures. There is a clear need for more research in these areas.

Yet proponents continue to push for sex-reassignment surgery or, at least, help transitioning to the gender they “identify” themselves to be.

Jazz Jennings, the transgender teen star of TLC’s “I am Jazz,” was prescribed hormone blockers at age 11. Jazz plans to have surgery when he turns 18. Sex-reassignment surgery often fails to help change a child’s mindset, provided he hasn’t already changed his mind, as many do. Dr. McHugh writes again in The Wall Street Journal:

When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned.

McHugh wrote that though Johns Hopkins University was the first American medical center to tiptoe into sex-reassignment surgery, “we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.”

Why is National Geographic featuring this then?

Everyone laughed when Rachel Dolezal identified as black, claiming the obvious: She’s not black, and she can’t claim to be black just because she feels that way or wants to identify as such.

If science demonstrates biology is actually predetermined, why is this issue — which has proven to effect a small number of children, often in an adverse and controversial way — ever at the forefront of political, socioeconomic, and now scientific news? Why is this on the cover of National Geographic? It’s yet another piece of the progressive puzzle to elevate feelings and downplay logic and science; to push a controversial yet somehow also popular, or en vogue, issue.

In a few states, laws prevent psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from treating dysphoria in children without sex-reassignment surgery. Government guidelines and regulations supersede the rights of parents and children when it comes to this issue.

A look at any number of transgender bathroom cases in the news reinforces this. The most notable case right now is that of Gavin Grimm, the Virginia high school student, who began transitioning from female to male after junior high. The Supreme Court will now rule on that case, and its decision could affect which bathrooms transgender kids use — and which bathrooms everyone else uses — in public high schools nationwide.

See how this works? Proponents not only argue the science backs up their claims (actually, the movement began well before they could find any scientific proof), but they also push for the rights of less than one percent of Americans to supersede the rights of the rest of 99.9 percent.

That’s not science. That’s propaganda. (For more from the author of “Science or Propaganda? NatGeo Uses 9-Year-Old as Human Shield in War on Gender” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.