I honestly could post about this every day, but life and respect for the sacerdotal cycle restrained me. I add to the digital clippings file every single day, with more nonsense, and bit by bit, a little more hope.
I want to get back at it in this space, though, so I will start with something relatively simple. A Twitter thread from someone – don’t know who or what position he/she holds, but they seem to be a psychologist. Their handle is “Read some Piaget please!” – so I’m thinking child development? Yes?
Anyway, this is a very good thread related to kids and the trans issue.
What particularly struck me was the seventh 7 eighth tweets:
By encouraging the child to think of their body being “bad” and their mind being “good” they are also encouraging disassociation & separation of mind and body.
There is no reputable area of medicine that believes that separation/dissociation is a route to good mental health. /7
Dissociation is a mental health condition. In other words encouraging children to dissociate mind and body is encouraging mental illness. /8
Succinct. And horrifying, when you think about it.
Anyway, below the cut, the thread. And related would be a couple of previous posts of mine – not in relation to children and young people, but the bigger spiritual issue of not feeling “at home” in one’s body – it’s called being a human being living on planet earth. And this is a spiritual problem wrought by technology of all types, material prosperity and the elevation of a particular sense of self. Again – a spiritual problem. Spiritual leaders? Paying attention?
First, a reflection inspired by a New York magazine article about an elderly female artist reflecting on a self-portrait:
My spirit looks nothing like my body…
Well, proclaims the modern age, just fix it up! Become the self you know you are inside! Lift, tuck, go to the dermatologist and the surgeon, get a makeup and hair consult, and let me tell you about the best filters!
Or…just accept? Accept not only the reality of who we are and our physical state, but accept the dissonance we live with in these bodies, on this earth, in this life.
Sorry, it’s not going to “match.” Ever. It’s just going to be. That’s the curse, that’s the gift.
A few weeks ago, on our way back from Spain, I spent time with my friend Ann Engelhart, who also turned 59 this summer. Over great Greek food in Astoria, I looked at her and asked the question that had been weighing on me:
“Do you feel fifty-freaking-nine years old?”
“NO!” she exclaimed, clearly relieved to hear someone else say it.
What does it even mean? we wondered, articulating the same thoughts aloud. What does it mean to be “almost sixty” – but to feel no older than, say forty, and to wonder – was I ever even 45 or 52? I just seem to have leapt from still almost youngish adulthood to AARP discounts without blinking. My appearance is changing, and I look at women two decades older than I and I know – God willing I make it that far – that there will be a day when I, too, will be unrecognizable to my younger self.
It’s very, very weird. It’s challenging. I completely understand why people – especially those in the public eye – get work done to stave off the sagging and the wrinkles. It’s so strange when what you look like on the outside doesn’t match what you feel on the inside. It’s disorienting. You might even say it’s dysphoric. Centered in those feelings, living as though this were the only reality and all that matters, the temptation to use all the technology at one’s disposal to fix it – to make it all match up – might be very strong.
But understanding that disassociation and sense of dislocation in another way, as an invitation. An invitation, a hint to listen to the heart that seeks and yearns for wholeness and unity, to understand that while it’s not perfectly possible on this earth, the yearning for it is a hint that somewhere, it does exist – that wholeness, that perfect unity of self – and it waits – and the hard, puzzling journey we’re on does not, in fact end where the world tells us.
For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come.
NOW, let’s hand it over to the smart people:
I don’t reproduce the entire thread here, but the gist:
A thread about a deliberate tactic being used by gender ideologists to groom pre-pubescent children, who are naturally confused and upset about their developing bodies and sexuality, into believing that they are “trans”. /1
As anyone with a cursory understanding of child development will readily understand, pre-pubescent children do not welcome puberty. Most regard their developing bodies with horror. They are very vulnerable to being misled and to magical thinking. They are children after all. /2
At this stage it is not difficult to persuade the child to hate their body. Social media does a pretty good job of this anyway, showing this age group idealised visions of bodies with which to compare their own. Of course their own bodies will always come up short. /3
At this stage if you are acting in the child’s best interest you will gently remind the child that these images are not real life, and that body maturation is natural. See this wonderful book https://www.transgendertrend.com/product/my-body-is-me/
But gender ideologists see an opportunity to exploit here. /4
Rather than taking the humane route of persuading the child to accept their body, their tactic is the opposite. To encourage the child to believe they were born in the “wrong” body. That their discomfort is simply caused by their biological sex and “gender” not being aligned. /5
In other words that they are “trans”.
They take natural feelings of disgust that a child suffers & persuade them that it is caused by being in the wrong body.
If only they had the right body their problems would all be solved. This really is magical thinking in practice. /6
By encouraging the child to think of their body being “bad” and their mind being “good” they are also encouraging disassociation & separation of mind and body.
There is no reputable area of medicine that believes that separation/dissociation is a route to good mental health. /7
Dissociation is a mental health condition. In other words encouraging children to dissociate mind and body is encouraging mental illness. /8
…..
Gender ideology leverages a developmental stage when children are very vulnerable, to encourage them to hate their own bodies.To create a mental health crisis – dissociative disorder – which can only be cured by harming the body, rather than healing the mind. /11
Yes I will repeat that. According to gender ideology the cure for the condition that they have leveraged and now encourage in children – gender dysphoria -is to harm the body of the child. To make a healthy child sick. /12
The depths of depravity that large parts of the medical profession have sunk in encouraging illness and harm in children will be the biggest scandal to emerge.
“First do no harm”
End.
Originally tweeted by Read some Piaget please! (@prof_curiosity1) on April 30, 2022.
Back to me – and in case you are fuzzy about what this “gender-affirming” care for kids is all about – here you go. (Content warning: gross and disturbing)
The Church — or more specifically, some theologians, but “the Church” really never corrects them or offer explanation — does not help when it/they lead people to think of heaven in terms of disembodied spirits, thus separating body and spirit, even though the human person is body and spirit in a unified indivisible whole.