Gender ideologies work by confusing people about reality while pushing confused kids into becoming customers of the transitioning industry, according to authors Dr. Jeff Myers and Brandon Showalter.

Transgenderism is “an ideology that came out of the postmodern movement in the 1980s that is attempting to gain power by confusing people about the nature of reality. There’s a medical industry that comes along and says that if children are confused, they’ll use our products, and then, they stand to make tens of billions of dollars. The ideology and the industry fuels a problem and actually makes children double victims,” Myers said in a May 2 interview with Jan Jekielek on “American Thought Leaders.”

Myers and Showalter are authors of the book, “Exposing the Gender Lie: How to Protect Children and Teens From the Transgender Industry’s False Ideology,” published in March by Summit Ministries.

Showalter criticizes social media and influencers for trying to convince young people—many of whom are on the autism spectrum and suffer from mental health issues—to believe that they were born in the wrong body.

“It is physiologically impossible to become the opposite sex. We’ve seen this happen with previous social contagions, like anorexia, cutting, and other modes of self-harm that spread by social contagion. The same thing is happening with this situation,” he said in the interview. “What happens with autistic people, however severe or moderate or mild their autism, […] is they become enmeshed in a culture where their issues can be explained away by way of gender identity ideology.”

Myers points out that they have looked into supposed studies that claim that children who don’t get transgender procedures will commit suicide. He calls such studies “dead wrong” and the media interpretation of these studies a “lie.”

“When you look back at them, you realize, at very best, those studies show that people who go through these medical procedures see no improvement,” he said. “In my experience, young people who experience gender dysphoria, and I work with several thousand young people every year, always have comorbidities such as anxiety, depression, and unresolved childhood trauma. It’s all of these things all mixed together.”

According to Showalter, the reason why institutions are pushing gender agenda onto kids has to do with “institutional capture.”

Professional societies like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, and other therapy organizations are “completely buying in with brutal speed” the idea that the approach to treat gender disorder is to “only affirm whatever the child or the young person says that they are.”

“You are to immediately and unquestionably say that is correct and never, ever challenge it,” Showalter stated.

In March last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs released a document titled, “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People.” It endorsed that minors be subjected to hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery.

On the same day, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network also released a document promoting surgical procedures on minors.

Standards of Care, Legal Issues

Myers notes that the standards of care regarding transgender medicine have been developed by the World Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

“They specifically state that there is a highly choreographed way to handle transgender medicine. This is the only way, and it is recommended by the WPATH. It is that you start with social transition and refer to someone by their new chosen name and change pronouns, then alert their teachers and their parents that they must use these new pronouns.”

“Then, to the level of comfort of the patient, you move toward puberty blockers, you move toward cross-sex hormones, and you move toward surgery. This is not a radical step. It’s the natural choreographed path outlined by the standards of care that doctors are given.”

Showalter pointed out that the vast majority of doctors do not support such treatments. However, they “keep their heads down” if they are working for large, corporatized institutions saying that “this is the dogma that rules the day.”

According to Myers, one of the reasons why doctors do not speak up about the issue is due to a legal groundwork being developed right now.

“If you don’t follow the standards of care, which are ordinarily taken by doctors as recommendations … then you might open yourself up to a lawsuit by someone who didn’t want to go through puberty as a male or a female,” he said. “Now, your refusal to treat them is medical neglect. A lot of doctors, just for malpractice reasons, are following the standards of care, or recommending the standards of care, even though they don’t personally buy into them.”

Epistemological Manipulation, Suppressing Studies

Myers highlighted the manipulation of epistemology in pushing the transgender agenda: “The gender ideology approach says there aren’t two spectrums. There’s one spectrum with extreme masculinity on one end and extreme femininity on the other.”

“Our students are regularly told: ‘You’re a girl who doesn’t really enjoy girly things. Maybe you’re actually a boy. Maybe you’re born in the wrong body.’ People slide back and forth along that spectrum, and it’s very confusing. What ideology do they take? What box are they in today?” he asked. “That’s at the core of what’s really going on. It’s actually an attack on language, then, because at what point do you stop calling someone a he, and start calling them a she? Who decides that if everything is on one spectrum?”

According to Showalter, studies that do not align with the promotion of transgender ideologies are suppressed. He said: “There was a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine where the whole cast of characters, the who’s who of gender doctors, analyzed psychosocial outcomes of 315 non-binary or trans-identified young people, ages 12 to 20.

“Two of those young people involved in the study took their own lives by suicide, but the gender doctors breezily dismissed that as adverse events. That’s how they do it. They paper over the disastrous outcomes, and they spin the narrative that this is actually a positive development.”

In February, the advocacy group Gender Dysphoria Alliance (GDA) wrote an open letter to over 30 medical institutions, criticizing them for allowing ideology rather than science to drive health care for individuals suffering from gender-related stress.

“It’s institutionalized medical negligence,” the GDA said in its Feb. 18 statement. “We are asking for quality, honesty, and safety.”

GDA called for thorough psychological assessments to be done on individuals before they are subjected to hormonal treatments and surgeries. The group expressed worries about children being vulnerable to “unnecessary harm.”

Business Interests

The transgender agenda is also being promoted out of business interests. The health industry spends $750 million annually on lobbying at the federal level.

“The puberty-blocking drugs that are given to children to stop puberty, which have irreversible effects, damaging their ability to develop as their bodies naturally would, with bone density loss, brain swelling, vision loss, and all kinds of things might cost a parent between $5,000 and $30,000 a year. If the parents don’t pay, then of course, Medicare or Medicaid or the insurance company might have to pay,” Myers said.

“A child who gets a $30,000 puberty-blocking implant is not just going to be a medical patient for one year,” he continued. “They’re essentially going to be a medical patient at $30,000 a year or more for the rest of their lives, as long as they don’t want the onset of puberty. Then, there are cross-sex hormones and surgery. A lot of people are looking at the bottom line dollars.”

Myers notes that the decline in communication between adults and children can also be a factor as to why many kids today feel confused about their gender.

“There once was an idea that adolescence can be very confusing and there was an adult who you could trust, who would guide you into becoming a strong young man who stands for truth and fights against evil injustice, or who would guide you into becoming a strong young woman who stands for truth and breathes life into others,” he said. “That missing thing between the generations, added to the idea that everything is psychological, has made this a social contagion. It is to the point now where in some cases, almost half of the young people in a given school will say they identify as transgender.”

Reprinted with Permission from – The Epoch Times by – Jan Jekielek and Naveen Athrappully