True Inclusion Requires Viewpoint Diversity - My Message to Concerned Parents
Julie Hamill speaks about parental involvement and the difference between FAIR Act-compliant materials and one-sided political ideology imparted to children in public schools.
I’ve taken time to process what happened last week at our board meeting. I want to express my deepest apologies to those in attendance who came away feeling traumatized. You are not alone. My closing comments from the meeting are captured in the video above.
It was disturbing and disappointing to watch adults weaponize children for political purposes, starting with one person who initiated this controversy with a false message to union members. At no time was any teacher or the LGBT community under attack, nor a book banned.
The original call to action was then transmitted to activist groups like PFLAG and the local Democratic Party. Local and state politicians jumped at the chance to capitalize on the manufactured outrage, not one of them stopping to investigate the facts before doing so. Never let a good crisis go to waste. These politicians demonstrated their status as embarrassingly uninformed virtue signalers.
The children who spoke at the meeting were eloquent, passionate, and traumatized themselves. They’ve been told the district is coming after LGBT people by adults whom they trust. This is evil. There’s no other way to describe it.
To the children who came and wept about your experiences, know that you are loved, seen, and our district is not attacking you. I’m sorry that you’ve been led to believe the opposite.
Ultimately, the meeting was a well-coordinated political stunt filled with outsider activists, including the controversial book’s author’s parents and trans rights activists who do not have children in the district.
In the end, the board unanimously agreed that we need more parental involvement in the development and adoption of curriculum. Excellent ideas were shared by members of the community who are invested in restoring the partnership between parents and teachers, and restoring trust in the district.
With respect to gender ideology, I’m glad it received so much attention last week and has sparked a conversation. I know that what I’m about to say will have activists calling me “transphobic” and “hateful” (again) but it needs to be said. The people who hurl these ad hominem attacks are committed to misunderstanding me, and this article is not for them. The beauty of surviving countless character assassination attempts is that I could care less if people want to cancel me for stating the truth. We need more elected leaders to stand up with courage. We need fewer cowards.
Gender ideology is dangerous and harmful to children. It cannot be taught as fact in our public schools. I am not saying transgender people don’t exist - they do exist and they’re deserving of love. However, the ideology harms tens of thousands of children who have sustained life-altering permanent damage as a result of the pediatric gender industry.
Beyond the studies, reports, and news documenting these issues, I personally know families harmed by gender ideology. The cult-like ideology has a documented social contagion effect on confused and vulnerable young people (despite the jokes and laughter at this idea during last week’s public comment). We need to be able to thoughtfully discuss these facts with compassion and without silencing people with whom we disagree. Concerned parents who spoke at the meeting were shouted down, oinked at, booed. Your concerns are real and valid, and you need to be able to express them.
Even those in the transgender community admit we should discuss a "safer and more scientific route" in regard to treatments for gender dysphoric patients. Here are some facts to get the community discussion started:
Suicide myth v. reality: There is no evidence that medical transition reduces suicide risk of trans-identifying adults; if anything, there is evidence that suicide rates increase post hormones or surgeries.
In California from 2012-2018, suicide attempt rates were twice as high after vaginoplasty or phalloplasty as before (3.3% post vs. 1.5% pre, p=0.017); rates of psychiatric emergencies were no lower during the 2 years post surgery than before surgery.
In Sweden, a country with a long history of tolerance, the longest (30-year) study of sexreassigned adults found that compared to same birth sex controls, rates of all-cause mortality were 2.8 higher post hormones and surgeries, completed suicides 19.1 times higher, suicide attempts 4.9 times higher, and psychiatric inpatient care 2.8 times higher. Transgender mortality rate diverges sharply from that of all adults starting about 10 years post-medical intervention
“Puberty blockers” carry significant and devastating side effects. The pharmaceuticals now sold as "puberty blockers" are better known as GnRH agonists, a class of drugs developed for use in men with advanced prostate cancer. GnRH agonists are also FDA-approved for endometriosis, uterine fibroids, and central precocious puberty (CPP). They are prescribed off-label to chemically castrate sex offenders, and they were briefly used as a treatment for autism (now debunked) in the 2000s and early 2010s. They are NOT approved as a treatment for gender dysphoria or any other mental illness.
Detransitioners exist and despite TRA efforts to silence and hide them, tens of thousands of people regret making permanent changes to their bodies as minors.
The U.S. “gender affirmation industry” is a 2 billion dollar industry with 11% annual growth projected from 2020 to 2030. The rising incidences of gender dysphoria and the increasing number of people opting for gender confirmation surgeries are expected to boost the growth during the forecast period.
Northern and Western Europe, which share the United States’ broad support for transgenderism, reject the gender-affirming care model for children. In fact, several countries, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland, have explicitly abandoned it in recent years in part due to fear that medical intervention has become overprescribed (studies show that only 12% to 27% of cases of childhood gender dysphoria persist into adulthood).
At great personal risk, detransitioners are beginning to speak out. See, for example, Chloe Cole. Now aged 18, Chloe had a double mastectomy at age 15 and spoke at an American Academy of Pediatrics rally: “Many of us were young teenagers when we decided, on the direction of medical experts, to pursue irreversible hormone treatments and surgeries… This is not informed consent but a decision forced under extreme duress.”
Going forward, our district needs to be much more clear in its policies and communication. Part of the reason for so much confusion and outrage is the fact that the district never made a statement about this issue, and left the community in the dark about the facts.
Regardless of your position on gender ideology, the law is clear - teachers cannot impart one-sided political and ideological viewpoints to their students in public schools. Further, discussing sexuality and gender with elementary aged children without the knowledge and consent of their parents is wrong, FULL STOP. Public schools are not the proper forum for anyone’s social activism, and our district must swiftly and unequivocally call it out and shut it down every time it happens.
If you are interested in learning more, here are some resources:
Irreversible Damage, by Abigail Shrier
If the activism and unauthorized conversations about sexuality and gender with elementary school kids persists, I will have no choice but to pull my own kids from this district. The district needs to earn our trust, mine included.
Remember this is just one lady’s opinion, and I don’t speak for the board or the district. Similarly, no one else speaks for me - no party, no group, no person. Thank you for reading.
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