By Charlie Jacobs
The transgender ideology is a worldwide cult that has no one leader that can be conquered, prosecuted and jailed. Its methods of obtaining disciples are varied and multiplying. Donning a face mask, keeping a distance of 6 feet apart, or getting a couple jabs in the arm will not prevent this epidemic from invading your neighborhood, family or friends. Gender ideology is the new religion and it is so powerful that it tricks people into paying to remove their own body parts without promises of everlasting life. It’s an insidious brainwashing scheme that kills softly with a tinge of compassion like all successful cults do. The feel good and the wrongness are so intertwined that both the victim and the perpetrator feel euphoric about the harm that is being exacted. Like all cults, youth and the mentally vulnerable people are the initial intended victims, sex – deviant sex – is involved, and of course, money and power.
Let’s meet some of the prey first, shall we? Let’s start with the adolescent girls, who live in modern age of voyeurism. The age where nothing is real unless it is posted. Success is measured by the number of likes, or followers acquired. Have a question, forget your “Ok Boomer” parents, “Karen-moms”, or ill-informed privileged parents – ask the internet people. They are always there when you need them, even if it’s 3:00 a.m. They never say that you are wrong or question any outrageous suppositions. “You be you”, “Be your truth” and “No one can deny your feelings” are the mantras. Their opinions are the ones that matter in this modern age.
It was no shock to parents to learn that the average high school and college student is more anxious than a child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. A 2019 report found that over the period of 2009-2017 (when smart phones became ubiquitous), major depression, suicidal thoughts, suicidal attempts and completed suicides increased by 47% in children ages 12 years old to 13 years old), 60% in the 14-17 year old population and 46% in the 18 to 21 year old group. Many parents already knew firsthand of that harm of Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok before Francis Haugen, the Facebook whistle blower came forward with reports of known mental health harms to kids. Parents knew the unbelievable connection between Tourette’s Syndrome and TikTok.
Despite knowing the insidious pull of online life over reality, I was not prepared for that day in August of 2020 when my daughter announced that “she” was a “he”. I now had another son, she stated.
The Back Story
My husband and I both come from tight and stable families. Both sets of grandparents have been married for over 50 years. My immediate family is Irish Catholic with the typical large sibling pool. I grew up with a mix of liberal and conservative sentiment. My husband’s family, although atheistic, has the same moral fabric shared by all mainstream religions. In the late 1990s, we both left our home states for California to imbibe in the dot-com era, although neither of us are in that field.
By all accounts, we were the stereotypical family – two kids – a boy and a girl – and a dog, living in the suburbs of a large metropolitan area. My advanced degree permitted the flexibility to go and in and out of the workforce so that I could be an involved parent. Our kids went to the local public schools, where I volunteered in the classroom, ran fundraisers, and knew all of the teachers more than just by name. I spent so much time at the school that I received the volunteer of the year award.
Our kids played local sports and did afterschool activities, music lessons, art and alike. From all accounts, we were a pretty perfect family. We held off on purchasing video consoles and smart phones for our kids until age 11 to the chagrin of our kids. We banned Instagram until 8th grade, and checked their phones regularly. We congratulated ourselves in our fortitude. We were blissfully naïve.
We did not know that the cult had already made its way into our school. Heck, we did not know that the cult even existed. We thought that we were well-read but we did not know that we were reading only one side of the story on gender. The New York Times, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Atlantic and the PBS News Hour hid the cult.
The cult obtained my daughter sometime between 7th grade and the winter of 8th grade. It was a slow burn; baby steps towards full blown indoctrination.
If one were to pick a stereotypical girl to describe, my daughter would have fit the bill. She had no desire to share in her brother’s games, trucks, dinosaurs, Legos or any sporty toys despite their closeness in age. Her joy was dressing and undressing her Barbies and dolls, placing her Shopkins™ in little grocery carts, playing tea and dressing up in the most outrageously sparkly attire.
Her collection of Big Eyed stuffed animals was legendary. I was her foil; in that I grew up playing mostly masculine sports with my brothers. I was routinely mistaken for a boy until I was 14. Undoubtedly, my daughter’s girlie-ness was self-created, and her bliss.
My daughter thrived in elementary school. She was well-adjusted, made friends easily, and did well in school. Things started to change in 6th grade. She started having phantom stomach aches. A couple times a month, I would be called to pick her up mid-school day for a clearly feigned illness. Her friend group changed constantly. One day a friend would be in and another day, she would be out. While I was concerned, I remembered that at the same time in my life, my girlfriend groups were often disrupted. There were lots of petty fights, cruel gossiping and meanness.
Heading into 7th grade, my daughter’s friend group continued to be almost entirely girls but the composition of the close friends shifted to be more of the fringe group. Gone were the friends with solid parents with similar parenting styles to ours. Her new posse consisted of girls with estranged relationships with the divorced dad, single parent homes, girls whose parents gave them full reign and permitted them to wear crop tops and cleavage showing shirts. Most of these new friends had therapist or were on some mental health medicine. I shifted how I parented to make sure that my house was the locale for hangouts and sleepovers. I kept tight tabs on my daughter’s social activities, always being the driver especially on weekend nights, unsure of the sobriety of some of the parents.
I eventually banned some of the girls, especially the ones who were a couple years older than my daughter. One was too risqué in dress and I had caught them direct messaging through a google document to obviate my “spying” on my daughter’s texts. They were communicating with some “boy” from another state who was talking about how he raped someone. The other banned friend was clearly in love with my daughter. This one I learned a couple years later had inappropriately touched my daughter without her consent. I knew that there was something wrong with her, but trying not be a snoot, I let the friendship go on too long. I should have barred all of these new alternative kids from my daughter’s life, but I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps and keep an open door for all kids.
Seventh grade was also the year that my daughter copied the style of whoever was her best friend of the moment. If her friend had pink hair, she wanted pink hair. If her friend wore overalls; she wanted overalls. This mimicking is all normal adolescent development.
The indoctrination of the cult begins a hardcourt press.
Sometime in 7th grade the Puberty and Teen Talk occurred at her public school. Thinking that the talk was the basic “bird and the bees” discussion, we did not opt her out of the lessons. Another irreversible parent-mistake. The sex education class was taught by an outside vendor. This company is part of the cult. They have easy marks at the ready, and are even paid for their propaganda. These wolves in sheep clothing, introduce their eager students to made up language and the cute gender breadman or colorful unicorn spewing lies about a separate essence in the brain called “gender” which is different than sex. The instructor uses newly-minted words and mixes the kids up. Nonsensical terms are thrown around. Of course, the 11 and 12-year-old students believe what their teacher is saying. This person is the expert.
Post class, my daughter and her group of girlfriends sat on my front lawn discussing their labels. Each of the five girls chose a moniker other than “cis”. A couple girls stated that they were lesbians. One was agender, deciding that she was not interested in sex as a 12-year-old. My daughter, always an inclusive kid, chose lesbian and pansexual. I was baffled at the discussion that I was hearing.
By viewing my daughter’s text messages, I learned that she was “dating” her best friend. This girlfriend was boy crazy so this confused me.
The kid also had a very checked family life – mom was 10-15 years younger than the average mom of a 7th grader, was living with her boyfriend, had a new job every 4 months or so, and sometimes forgot to pick her daughter up. I did not really believe that they are an item, but decided that after the label discussion and this “girlfriend” status if my daughter was truly same sex-attracted, I better learn how to parent her. I wanted to ensure that she felt loved and supported, regardless of inherent sexual attraction.
Off I went to the school-sponsored parent class on sexuality. I am unsure whether it was the same company as the one who presented Teen Talk but I would wager it was. The first hour was spent listing all of the stereotypical characteristics of men and women. The finale of the discussion was to place Barbie at one end of a line and GI Joe on the other.
The two effeminate men who were teaching the class stated that unless you are a Barbie or a GI Joe, you were on the gender spectrum. Huh? My critical brain went on overdrive.
“But no one is Barbie or GI Joe,” I stated.
“Right, that’s why we are all on the spectrum.”
“So, we are all trans?”
“Well, yes, you could say that. We will answer all of your other question after our presentation.”
We were handed a sheet showing some 46 gender labels.
There they was: gayboy, demiboy, pansexual, non-binary, cis normative, gaygirl, lesbian, agender, …
The instructors picked a few easy ones to define. What was the difference between gaygirl and lesbian I asked myself. Is anybody buying this bs? I looked around. The audience was riveted.
The instructors told us to introduce ourselves to the people around us using our preferred pronouns. We were told that this should be repeated whenever we introduce ourselves to a child regardless of age, and we should ask for theirs.
My hand shot up. I didn’t wait to be called on. “But wait a second, I spent the most part of my children’s lives teaching them to just ‘be’ – be themselves, accept themselves, what they like and don’t like, why are we labeling kids? This does not make sense, and second, why on earth would we out a kid? No one needs to know what sex I find attractive at introduction. They just need my name”.
Dagger eyes shot at me from all directions. I was persona non grata. I was told no more questions until the end of the presentation. Not surprisingly, time ran out for questions and the two scurried out of there before I could get any answers.
This presentation was so stupid no one in the audience, the teachers, girl scout troop leaders, coaches and other parents could buy this. But I was the insipid one. The groundwork for the cult was being laid down in plain sight by a California public school presentation.
During the spring of 7th grade, my daughter’s girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend, introduced my daughter to cutting. My daughter tried it, was caught by another friend who reported to the school. We retained a therapist. This therapist concluded after three 45-minute sessions that my daughter had ADHD, and of course, told her that.
No assessment was performed, no interviews with her teachers occurred and no discussion with me was had before this diagnosis. When queried about how she reached that diagnosis, the social worker stated that my daughter was sitting upside on her chair and super amped during the last session. Ah, you mean the Valentine’s Day session before which the school delivered to the students all of the candygrams which consisted of pixie sticks. Might the fact that she ate pure sugar before her session have affected your visual diagnosis. We fired her.
Our daughter was angry, not because of the termination, since she said that she cut once and only did to be like her friend. Our daughter was angry because we didn’t believe the diagnosis. You see, her friend group all had mental health diagnosis and she wanted one too, to go along with the pansexual label. The more labels one has, the higher one is in the cult.
The rest of 7th grade was filled with an obsession with Anime and Cosplaying. She had voraciously read Anime graphic books. I read some of them and did not understand the attraction. She moved between sewing female anime character’s costumes to sewing ultra-feminine male anime character’s costumes. She asked for a breast binder to more accurately portray her characters. I thought nothing of it. I was naïve.
I took her to a mid-day Anime convention on an old naval ship. She and her friend spent hours getting ready. To me, it was an absolute nerd-fest, tantamount to the Trekkie conventions of my generation. She spent most of her free time creating costumes. I thought her skill and creativity was amazing. Little did I know that I was pushing her towards the cult.
The summer between 7th and 8th grade was filled with incongruent behavior. She would wear a string bikini and makeup one day, and then next wear ripped black jeans and a boy’s oversized sweatshirt with military boots, dependent entirely on which friend she was with. She was obviously deciding who she wanted to be – Emo – or pretty young girl. One thing was sure though, she became sullen and hard to be around. She started cursing and talking back, breaking every family rule with abandon. I chalked it up to puberty.
For Christmas, I gave her a weekend at the SacAnime convention. She and two friends, who were sisters, would share an adjoining hotel room with me. The morning of the first day, the girls spent close to four hours getting ready. False eye lashes, knee socks, brushing out wigs. The three girls were all female characters and looked stunningly adorable. I dropped them at the convention, stayed a while to watch all of the creatively costumed people walk by. The Incredibles were there, a person with a TV for a head, and Star War characters. It all looked harmless. I was naïve.
The girls made a new friend and invited her to dinner with us. I asked to confirm that her mom was ok with this plan. She complied. This 16-year-old girl was engaging and one of the few of my daughter’s friends who looked into my eyes when she spoke. She was clearly highly intelligent and confident. She was quirky. She went by “they”. I let her stay overnight with the other three girls. I replay that night like a broken record in my head with a different response. She was the salesperson – the hook – for the cult.
My daughter’s introduction to the cult was complete.
[…. to be continued. Readers comments are welcome.]
