Transgender ideology is “deeply misogynistic” and Christians must work to guard the preciousness of girls and femininity, a conference has heard.
Glenn Stanton, of Focus on the Family, told a gathering of Christian therapists in Poland that the LGBTQ+ movement had evolved to such an extent that it was now “anti-woman”.
Furthermore, it’s “cannibalising itself” resulting from the “internal logical incoherence of gender identity” and deep divisions over transgenderism which have led to a split between the LGBs and the TQs.
“And women are the victims here,” Stanton said.
“Trans politics is the brand new patriarchy. It is men telling women how it is going to be. It’s the brand new misogyny. And in actual fact it’s misogyny on steroids since it erases the female in any meaningful sense.”
He continued, “When an embodied male goes right into a female space, whether it is a sports gym or a lesbian bar, the whole lot changes for ladies and that is because femininity is a really special human quality that have to be protected and cared for and cherished and nurtured.”
Stanton expressed disbelief at the extent of violent threats openly directed at feminists and girls who dare to challenge transgender ideology or harmful policies like the position of ‘trans women’ in female prisons. Men claiming to be women just in order that they could be placed in female prisons are “gaming the system”, he said.
“They’re men and we just have to say that … And the ladies do not get to complain about it … It’s the worst form of patriarchy,” he said, noting that ladies who dare to talk out can expect to be cancelled or subjected to threats of death or sexual violence by trans activists.
“Classic liberalism was: ‘dad, I disagree with what you say but I’ll defend to my death your right to say it.’ That’s gone now,” he said, adding that his own experience of being cancelled was “incredibly painful”.
He said it was hard to predict how things will develop in the subsequent few years but added that it was going to be “hard to place the genie back within the bottle and return to the way in which things were”, and that within the meantime there can be many “hurt” people.
At a time when the “rules are continually changing”, he said that Christians must speak the reality and resist pressure to make use of language that goes against their beliefs, while also providing support to people who find themselves genuinely combating gender dysphoria.
“We have moved from gender dysphoric people who find themselves really suffering and really want compassion, to a situation where persons are pretending. And that can’t sustain itself,” he said.
Stanton was speaking on the ultimate day of a conference organised by the International Federation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice (IFTCC) bringing together over 140 therapists from 28 countries to debate how they will support individuals who want help to go away behind unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria.
Speaking earlier within the conference, Stanton said that a “unisex culture” was being imposed on society “by force” and that transgenderism and gender fluidity now enjoyed the status of a “religious dogma that’s much more fundamentalist than any religious conservative fundamentalist that I do know”.
“How did we get here? We came by separating sex and gender” he said, adding that the answer now have to be “reconnecting sexuality and gender back together”.
Addressing the pressure on people to adopt preferred pronouns at work and elsewhere, he said, “We must refuse at every turn to play together with that.”
Other speakers addressed challenges to civil liberties resulting from gender self-identification laws and bans on so-called conversion therapy.
Felix Boellmann, of the Alliance Defending Freedom International, said he was concerned about gender self-identification laws coming into force in Germany next month. Under the German law, there is no such thing as a age limit to changing legal gender, but under-14s must receive parental consent. However, if parental consent is withheld, the court has the facility to step in and override the parents’ decision whether it is deemed to be in the most effective interests of the kid.
Boellmann said it was presumed that folks knew what was in the most effective interests of their child and that the burden of proof was on others claiming to know higher.
“With this law, that gets twisted. The burden of proof isn’t any longer on the opposite side. It is the court who shall by definition have a say on whether a change is just not against the most effective interests of the kid. It’s a really low threshold in comparison with what we originally had,” he said.
Boellmann shared a “heartbreaking” case he’s working on in Switzerland where parents are fighting the removal of their child from their care after refusing to affirm their gender transition. The cost of the legal battle has left them “facing bankruptcy and there is no such thing as a end in sight”.
He said that a typical trend around gender transition laws is the young age limits – in Switzerland the age limit of gender self-identification is 16.
“No one is exerting caution and the parents are prevented from stepping in,” he said.
“It can’t be that we don’t allow children to get married or to drink alcohol or to smoke at a certain age but they will go ahead and proceed on that trajectory [of changing gender].”
Ole Gramstad Jensen, a lawyer from Norway, spoke of the challenges arising from the “wide” definition of so-called conversion therapy under his country’s ban, which incorporates prayer.
“I find it astounding that a baby who’s 16 years old or older can search out any sexual avenue but not pursue heterosexuality. And relating to gender and gender identity, it gets even worse. They can get help to vary their bodies but not their minds [despite] the latter being far less invasive,” he said.
Dr Paul Sullins, a researcher in same-sex parenting and child development, told the conference that a liberal academic bias has led to a “double standard” and “two-tier system” in academic research and publishing, and “the censorship of ideas that they simply do not like”.
He likened academic publishing to a “religious cult” wherein only “sanitised, pre-approved ideas could be discussed”, while evidence that challenges the dominant narrative is “suppressed even whether it is true”.
Dr Sullins said that conservative academics face a “gauntlet of obstacles to publication” and that there’s a “blatant” and “huge double standard” towards pro-life research especially. If a study does make it to publication, pressure is straight away placed on the publishers to retract it.
“Studies which might be retracted are likely to be very strong [in their data]. Why? Because in the event that they were weaker, someone could write a refutation, it would not be that arduous to do,” he said.
“But if they can not refute it, then they’ll attempt to retract it. They also won’t cite it and so they’ll bury it as much as they will.”
Dr Sullins blamed the censorship on the rise of “giant science conglomerates” which might be “prone to activist pressure” and are more concerned about “popularity” and the “bottom line”.
British human rights barrister, Paul Diamond, who has spent years helping Christians fight religious freedom cases within the UK, said that diversity and inclusion terms are getting used to “silence” traditionalist viewpoints, and that hate crime and hate speech laws boil all the way down to “I do not like what you are saying, I disagree with what you are saying, and I’m not going to assist you to say it”.
