#ideological indoctrination

By: Aaron Sibarium

Published: May 14, 2026

David Blackman, a native of Plano, Texas, was thrilled to be starting law school at Penn State in the fall of 2025.

A former 911 call operator and a veteran of the Texas State Guard, Blackman, 26, loved the university's football team and its location in the Appalachian Mountains.

"I’ve been a fan of Penn State since I was a teenager," Blackman told the Washington Free Beacon. He arrived on campus in August 2025, a 50 percent merit scholarship in hand, excited for game nights in Beaver Stadium and a three-year reprieve from the Texas heat.

Then he sat through his first anti-racism class.

On the first day of "Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws," a required course for all first-year law students, Blackman listened as a transgender faculty member, Emily Spottswood, explained why the course was mandatory.

"It’s not optional," Spottswood said, because "being a lawyer is about recognizing and combating injustice."

In audio of the session obtained by the Free Beacon, Spottswood said that this "institutional message" was "baked into" the law school's "DNA," adding that, as a "trans woman," the course's focus on "combatting oppression … is meaningful to me."

Spottswood's remarks followed a presentation by Jeffrey Dodge, the law school's associate dean, and Shaakirrah Sanders, who was introduced as "the first associate Dean of anti-racism and critical pedagogy in the country." The presentation made clear that Blackman wasn't in Texas anymore; he and his classmates were now conscripts in a political "coalition" that, as Dodge put it in his talk, was dedicated to "building a more anti-racist" future.

"We are taking action to disrupt and dismantle systems that racialize, subordinate, and oppress," Dodge said. "We … want to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism … as a foundation for this course."

Thus began a series of struggle sessions in which professors demanded students affirm activist talking points and ultimately drove Blackman, whose first-choice law school had been Penn State, to withdraw from the school after just one semester. (The Free Beacon reviewed Blackman's transcript.) Over the course of three 150-minute lectures, speakers described all white people as "privileged," called to "eradicate patriarchy," and asserted that the justice system is "about keeping black people in their place." One assignment said students should "consider" framing their essays around "the reality of systemic racism," implying that doing otherwise could affect a student's grade.

"Consider drawing on the instruction we provided on design thinking as a way to frame your assignment," the essay prompt read. Linked below were slides from the first session of the class, which defined "institutional anti-racism" as "acknowledg[ing] the reality of systemic racism, subordination, and oppression."

Launched in 2020 at the height of the George Floyd protests, the class is now raising questions about whether a public law school violated the First Amendment and the Civil Rights Act. Blackman withdrew from the law school after a committee convened by law school dean Danielle Conway refused to grant him an exemption from the course, which he said amounted to compelled speech. In an interview with the Free Beacon, he also noted that the course vilified white people and law enforcement and that professors assigned texts by critical race theorists without presenting an alternative perspective.

"My law degree is not worth sitting through a mandatory DEI class that spits on my entire background," said Blackman, who helped the Texas Guard deliver emergency supplies during Hurricane Beryl. "You have a lot of people who say DEI is bad, but I gave up a law career because of it."

Penn State is a land-grant university with significant ties to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (D.), who controls 9 of the 36 voting spots on the board of trustees. Along with the law school's strategic plan, which pledges to expand "employment opportunities for candidates who are underrepresented in the University," the course is a stark example of how DEI remains entrenched in many Democratic institutions even as the legal threats to such programs continue to grow.

The America First Policy Institute told the law school in April that the class creates "a racially hostile educational environment in violation of Title VI." And the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said Penn State may have violated the First Amendment by pressuring students to "acknowledge" contested claims about white supremacy.

"That would in many cases be compelled speech," said Zach Greenberg, an attorney at FIRE, adding that the analysis would turn on whether students could question those claims without being marked down. "Even if there is not a legal case to be made, we hope that universities are open to a wide array of viewpoints when they’re teaching students."

For his part, Blackman felt pressured to toe the line. Asked to submit an essay on "systemic racism in the law," he wrote about Texas's strict drug laws—which he believed should be reformed—but framed the issue as a matter of racial justice rather than colorblind fairness.

"I added a lot of color that doesn't really stand up with my beliefs to get a passing grade," Blackman said. Penn State did not respond to a request for comment.

Blackman had been willing to put up with the readings from Paul Butler, a Georgetown University Law Center professor who argues that police are "looking for a reason to arrest" black men, and with Penn State's propensity for progressive neologisms, such as "intersectional liberal democracy." The straw that broke the camel's back was a statement from Conway, the law school's dean, condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"This weekend's blanket of snow with its clean, white veneer starkly contrasts with the conflagration enveloping the rule of law," Conway wrote in a school-wide message on Jan. 26, 2026, referencing the deaths of two anti-ICE protesters in Minnesota earlier that month. "Our power lies in activating critical pedagogy to teach and learn about the importance of our nation’s constitutional order in real time and to voice the need for accountability and transparency to our representatives."

Blackman drafted a reply to the email, thanking Conway for her "effort to create space for reflection" but politely pushing back on her "one-sided view of deeply contested events," which he said could "undermine confidence in the school's neutrality."

"Leadership communications, as the public-facing voice of the law school, carry special weight," he wrote to a school-wide listserv. "It is not in the best interest of the law school, or our educational mission, to appear to prematurely assign blame before … an investigation is concluded and all facts are fully established."

But when Blackman attempted to send the email, he was notified that a moderator for the listserv had blocked the message.

"Your message was rejected by a moderator for these recipients," read the note from Kalene Faircloth, the law school's senior associate director of academic and student services, who did not provide a rationale for the decision.

Fed up with the blatant act of censorship, Blackman filed a petition with the provost's office demanding a "University-level audit of the Race and the Equal Protection of the Law … course and the concurrent administrative suppression of student speech."

"Evidence demonstrates that Penn State Dickinson Law has established a 'Closed Loop' of state-enforced orthodoxy," the seven-exhibit complaint read. "The Dean broadcasts the ideology (Exhibit D), the Curriculum compels students to advocate for it (Exhibit C), and Administrators censor legal dissent (Exhibit F)."

But rather than launch its own audit, Penn State punted the petition to Conway—the very dean who was the subject of the complaint. Conway, the executive director of Penn State's Antiracist Development Institute, was also the driving force behind the creation of the anti-racism class, which she credits with exposing students to "the structure that supports the nation's constitutional democracy."

"REPL allows us to teach that through the lens of enslavement and racism," she said in a press release about the course. "We use critical pedagogy to analyze how a governing system founded on a pledge of democratic ideals produces systemic inequity when legal, social, economic and civil obstacles limit liberty for those othered in society."

The 2024 press release also noted that Conway attends every session of the class.

"It was an obvious conflict of interest," Blackman said. He quoted a Latin saying, "nemo iudex in causa sua," which means "no one should be a judge in their own case."

On Feb. 26, the law school informed Blackman that he would not be excused from the class.

"We conclude that none of the remedial actions you seek to have the university take are required," law professor Jud Mathews said, writing on behalf of a committee Conway had convened. "To graduate from the law school, you will need to complete all required courses, including REPL."

That was the last straw. Blackman withdrew from the law school rather than complete the course, returning to Texas for a master's degree in business administration.

Before he left, he gave Conway one final piece of his mind.

"As a former member of law enforcement in the Great State of Texas, I abhor everything this class teaches and will no longer be even a passive participant in such a farce," Blackman wrote in an email on Feb. 27. "I am 'free to think, and speak as I wish, not as the government or law school demands.'"

The full audio recordings of two class sessions are included below.

==

This is "Emily" Spottswood, the man speaking in the beginning of the first audio recording.

You don't get to pretende to be "oppressed" when you can coerce others into mimicking your opinions with the threat of an undeserved failing grade.

By: Brad Polumbo

Published: Jun 25, 2024

Republicans are very concerned about left-wing indoctrination in the public school system, and often for good reasons. Yet, it seems that some Republican leaders feel differently about ideological indoctrination in the classroom when they’re the ones doing it. 

In Louisiana, a recent law mandates the display of the Ten Commandments across all public educational institutions, from elementary schools to universities. The bill, championed by Republican Governor Jeff Landry, was signed into law at a private Catholic school. During the ceremony, Governor Landry declared, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”

This makes Louisiana the only state in the nation with such a mandate. Other red states haven’t ventured into this territory in recent years, perhaps because they know it’s blatantly unconstitutional. Nonetheless, Governor Landry appears undeterred, openly stating that “can’t wait to be sued.”

He may not have to wait very long.

A coalition of groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has already announced its intention to file suit, condemning the mandate as “unconstitutional religious coercion of students, who are legally required to attend school and are thus a captive audience for school-spons.ored religious messages.” The ACLU also added that the mandate “send[s] a chilling message to students and families who do not follow the state’s preferred version of the Ten Commandments that they do not belong, and are not welcome, in our public schools.”

This is not uncharted territory. The ACLU cited the 1980 Supreme Court case Stone v. Graham, where the court explicitly ruled that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the establishment of a formal state religion, prevents public schools from displaying the Ten Commandments. 

“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments,” the Supreme Court ruled in that case. “However desirable this might be as a matter of private devotion, it is not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.”

Governor Landry is surely aware of this precedent and simply does not care that this legislation will almost certainly be blocked in the courts. Nonetheless, it represents an opportunity for him to signal his cultural war bona fides—a move that, in any other context, Republicans might rightly describe as empty “virtue signaling.”

Regrettably, this isn’t just an isolated incident among Republicans in one conservative state. Louisiana’s initiative has garnered support from many of the most prominent figures in the modern GOP. One such figure is Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who praised the legislation in an interview with Real America’s Voice. “This is something we need all throughout our nation,” she said. “I’m so proud of Governor Landry…. We need morals back in our nation, back in our schools, and if there’s anything we’re going to present in front of our children, it should be the word of God.”

This stance appears to be a mainstream view within the Republican Party, as the party’s leader, Donald Trump, also threw his support behind Louisiana’s efforts in a post on Truth Social: 

The Republicans’ embrace of this religious mandate in public schools is deeply hypocritical, contravening many principles they have previously claimed to stand for, and incredibly short-sighted. 

Firstly, they are proving to be fair-weather fans of the First Amendment. These same types regularly champion free speech when it comes to opposing government censorship or progressive attempts to crack down on “hate speech” (which now includes uttering basic biological truths), and they are absolutely right to do so. However, you cannot selectively support the First Amendment, endorsing free speech and freedom of religion clauses while actively violating the Establishment Clause. After all, if Republicans can disregard the parts they don’t like when it’s inconvenient, then progressives can too!

Secondly, Republicans are compromising their stated beliefs about the importance of parents’ rights and opposing “indoctrination” in schools. Now, they suddenly advocate for the government’s role in teaching children morality, instead of leaving this responsibility to parents or families.

Which is it? Consistent supporters of parents’ rights believe that it should be up to parents to teach their kids about morality, whether it concerns pronouns or prayer. 

There’s also the issue of misplaced priorities. Louisiana ranks 40th out of all 50 states in education. Meanwhile, 40 percent of 3rd graders cannot read at grade level, according to The Advocate. Yet, the governor prioritizes mandating posters of the Ten Commandments—and allocating tax dollars to defending it in court—that many students probably can’t even read.

Even many conservative Christians can see the issue here. As radio host Erick Erickson put it:

When the 3rd grade reading level is only 49 percent, I don’t see why the state wants to spend money on lawyers for a probably unconstitutional law making the Ten Commandments mandatory just to virtue signal a side in a culture war. Actually use conservative reforms to fix the schools instead of putting up posters half the 3rd grade cannot even read.

Perhaps the most common Republican rejoinder is that displaying the Ten Commandments is an educational initiative focused on historical context rather than a promotion of religion. But while there’s no disputing its historical significance, it’s not being presented as part of a broader course on religion that features a variety of religious and secular perspectives, which would be fine. Instead, beliefs from a particular religious tradition, the Judeo-Christian one, are being elevated and mandated to the deliberate exclusion of others. This selective approach is hardly subtle: Governor Landry purposefully signed the bill at a Catholic school and even referenced Moses! 

There’s no denying that the Ten Commandments are inherently religious, as they proscribe not only murder and adultery but also idolatry, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and working on the Sabbath. So, conservatives making this “history, not religion” argument are straining credulity. 

What’s more, further empowering government schools to promote a specific ideology to students will not end well for conservatives. It’s not exactly breaking news that the public education system is overwhelmingly staffed and run by people with increasingly left-leaning political and cultural views. Conservatives should be fighting to restore viewpoint neutrality in the public square—not further undermining it and thereby making it easier for woke ideologues to propagandize to everyone’s kids. 

It’s sad, but ultimately not surprising, to see so many Republicans proving to be inconsistent allies to true liberal values. At least those few genuine, principled defenders of the First Amendment now know who our allies are—and who they are not. 

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About the Author

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is an independent journalist, YouTuber, and co-founder of BASEDPolitics.

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Moral consistency requires opposing both.

... Secularism means that no particular ideology is being forwarded and getting special treatment. Go have your belief. Believe what you want. Privately. You don’t get special treatment because you believe this with tons of conviction. Secularism means that your belief in your faith covers none of the distance to proving that it’s true. Conviction is not evidence of much of anything. Except conviction. -- James Lindsay

--

“If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”

Leviticus 25:44-46

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

By: Margo Margan

Published: Jan 7, 2025

“The teacher’s weak “Congratulations!” Opening a blue envelope as she said “This doesn’t really matter…” Award-winning SAT scores I swore to hide. Eye rolls mocking me for wanting AP classes. Squalling protests over homework. Finding the book we read senior year in my middle school sister’s bookbag.”

This is a scene from Chapter 3 of my fiction piece IVY, where protagonist Seph Quark is told to hide his academic interests in favor of being something “different.”

The same scene happened to me with my ACT scores. I was told not to tell my friends I did well so they wouldn’t feel bad. I went to a private high school, one trying to correct the problems found in traditional education. We were told their curriculum was much better for our mental health.

I find it fitting that this piece is being published at The Coddling of the American Mind, as my high school’s curriculum is best described as “coddling us to death.”

The Coddling of My High School

Teachers employed a tactic they called “scaffolding,” which gives guidance so students wouldn’t be left to figure things out alone—for instance, using fill-in-the-blank worksheets in place of taking notes.

We were assigned 16 “senior exhibitions’ to prepare us for college (or as I like to call them, 16 actual homework assignments.) For instance, a test on “Calculations and Number Sense,” would include problems like, “Which number is in the hundreds place?”

Students could work on these homework assignments during regular classes, and we were also forced to attend summer school to make sure we finished them. Though it felt like we were being tested on things we should know in order to attend high school, our teachers told us, “Colleges want students who can challenge themselves. It’s not about being the smartest.”

No need for merit!

My art teacher taught us nothing. He offered three different electives — Comic Art, Drawing & Painting, and Bookbinding — but all were effectively a break period to do whatever we wanted, as long as we had some type of “art” for the school’s art show by the end of the year. We were told our teacher was missing qualifications, and the classes were named to look better on college applications.

My high school offered something called “spring mini-courses,” courses we paid for to study something special for a week. I signed up for a playwriting course, expecting something rigorous.

When we shared work for critique, I realized I wasted my money. We used something called “Liz Lerman style feedback.” As “all art is subjective,” our feedback was meant to help identify if the work met the artist’s intention. We were instructed to:

Say what stood out to us

Ask a question

Say what we wanted to see more of

How could “learning what others wanted to see more of,” help us identify flaws in our work?

What if the work met the artist’s intentions, but failed in execution?

Weren’t we here to learn?

Luckily, artists were shielded from facing potential discomfort. After all, hearing criticism could make someone give up art.

The Outside World is Deadly

While it may seem like we faced nothing difficult, this was not the case. My high school was sure to make us aware of society’s hard truths. Our curriculum had a social justice focus.

It began the first week of school.

We sat silently in the auditorium, as one by one, different identity groups were called to stand. While participation was optional, our principal told us we were “highly encouraged” to stand with our groups. I didn’t want to look selfish, so I did—even when I wanted to keep something private, like the disability I believed I had. (I was misdiagnosed with autism.)

I didn’t know these student’s names, but I knew which gender they had crushes on, and who had been diagnosed with mental disorders.

In fact, students were so happy to talk about challenging subjects that I knew which psychiatric medications everyone in my class was on.

In history class, we had a unit on social norms. We learned about influential sociologists, as well as a woman and a black man in the field. Our teachers made sure everyone felt “represented” so we would not become depressed.

Through this unit and others like it, we were shown footage from the darkest parts of American history. Riots against civil rights protestors? Yep. Stonewall Riots? Yep.

Pick a Historical U.S. Riot, I’ve seen every episode!

In English, we read books with themes of discrimination like Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, and James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. While my peers at other schools were reading To Kill a Mockingbird and practicing writing techniques, we were watching videos about Asian stereotypes and, yes, a documentary on the Stonewall Riots.

To Kill a Mockingbird was removed from our curriculum because the author was white.

Our school taught us to exercise critical thinking when analyzing texts. We learned that Shakespeare might be gay. We discussed if Nick from The Great Gatsby was gay.

Yes, Nick had a relationship with a woman, but she was the most masculine option he could choose. Yes, it was a book from the 1920s, but Fitzgerald, like Shakespeare before him, was definitely trying to slip some homosexuality into his work.

Yes, my teachers modeled the antics of middle school fanfiction authors who romanticize gays as supposedly being intellectually superior.

We were also sure to look for signs of prejudice in the texts. For instance, Giovanni’s Room was critiqued for lacking female representation. Sorry, Baldwin, not even your diversity credits could get you out of this one!

The Culture Spreads

It’s not a problem specific to only my high school. At the school where I interned for my gap year, these practices were not uniform, but they were starting to creep in among some of the staff.

For instance, I recall something from my leadership skills course — some of you may remember the class where my teacher asked if I was so quiet because my fellow student’s maleness made me uncomfortable.

We were shown something called an identity wheel (see above). The center circles are the “big ones,” as my teacher put it, the most important pieces of a person’s identity. Towards the outside are smaller, less important pieces.

We were asked to share what on the wheel we thought about the most. One of my classmates didn’t answer, saying it was “too personal.” I wish I had the courage he had.

Readers of IVY have told me that while Seph thinks about being gay a lot, it makes sense narratively and doesn’t feel preachy. Schools like mine and Seph’s pointed to a diagram and told us sexual orientation was the center of our personality. Whether it helps or hinders the narrative, it’s why I portray Seph thinking things like this: “…“being queer” was who I was meant to be. [...] I was coming out blazing or I was a deadbeat husk.”

The Aftermath

Did my school’s safety blanket of support prepare us to handle any challenges life threw at us? No.

My classmates snapped at the prick of a pin. When asked to read two chapters of Frankenstein— only ten pages—for a quiz the following day, the school was in an uproar. Students in this so-called “intensive” English class struggled so much, the teacher dropped the book in favor of reading a play adaptation. At least we learned Nick from Gatsby isn’t straight.

We were shown an inflated version of ugly truths. If we denied them, we were called cowards. But at the same time, the school babied us with frequent compliments. Instead of being taught to handle criticism, criticism was treated like a death sentence. We believed the world outside only contained bad apples—a mindset useful only for radical protesters.

Were we prepared for college? No.

A friend told me she hadn’t been challenged for so long she wasn’t even sure what she was capable of. She and nearly every person I knew from my school either had to transfer colleges or dropped out entirely. I can’t think of a single classmate of mine who actually graduated.

While many had mental health issues coming into my high school, I strongly believe the school made them worse. Moreover, the school drained the potential from many bright people who didn’t have mental health issues.

This scared me so much I canceled my own college plans. I was already dealing with a false diagnosis telling me I was going to barely get by. Seeing everyone I know fail made college seem hopeless.

A lot of artists say being judged for their craft gave them Imposter Syndrome. They try to counter this with “Don’t care what people think! All art has value!” mantras. But these statements never teach artists to accept reasonable critiques, and instead keep them reliant on validation.

Imposter syndrome? Try getting a scholarship-winning 4.0 you know you didn’t earn, and tell me you aren’t begging for criticism!

So, how did I not crumble like the rest?

Discipline. I could see through the facade, and decided to practice writing on my own. If it wasn’t for pushing myself with challenges like National Novel Writing Month, I probably wouldn’t have a shot at a job.

I tend to be hard on myself, but this comes from a place of not wanting to take compliments unless I know I’ve earned them. It’s not insecurity. It’s humility.

For instance, I used to write Warrior Cats fanfiction in notebooks during class. When people asked me what I was working on, I said, “Oh, just something dumb…”

My friends, teachers, everyone insisted “It’s not dumb!”

At first it might seem like they were just being polite. But no matter how much I insisted the piece was just a joke, the compliments never ceased… My notebook scribbles about shapeshifting anime cats were hailed as a masterpiece.

Sometimes, nobody will be there to put me in my place but me. But I’ve also had my share of negative feedback.

I’ve seen sexist comments. Homophobic comments. Angry liberal comments. They don’t stop me. I actually look forward to receiving these, like I’m earning battle scars.

“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five.”

• All white people benefit from racism, regardless of intentions; intentions are irrelevant. • The racial status quo is comfortable for most whites. Therefore, anything that maintains white comfort is suspect. If you are white, practice sitting with and building your stamina for racial discomfort. -- Robin DiAngelo

Remember the days when activists posted their eye rolling emojis and GIFs, and digitally sighed condescendingly that “nobody is teaching that.” Good times.

Teaching kids that they’re eternally and inescapably oppressed because of the color of their skin is as abusive as teaching them that they’re “nothing without god.”

Step 1. Denial: “LiTeRaLLy nO oNe Is TeAcHiNg X!” Step 2. Motte and Bailey: “X iS JuSt AbOuT tEaChiNg Y!!” Step 3. Reversal: “OnLy a BiGoT wOuLdN’T wAnT uS tEaChInG X!!!”

By: Colin Wright

Published; Nov 13, 2022

On May 26, 2022, I attended a private online workshop titled “Supporting Your Trans/Non-Binary Youth: A Starter Guide for Parents and Caregivers” which, as the title indicates, is geared toward parents are caregivers of children who have adopted trans and/or nonbinary identities. The workshop was a led by Kyle Weitz (he/they), a trans-identified female who works at the University of Guelph as a “trans/non-binary queer educator and advocate” and with Egale Canada as a “Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ Advocate/Community Worker,” and Jessie Myhill (they/them), who describes herself as a “non-binary queer therapist.”

This workshop proved to be particularly illuminating, as there were several long pauses between sections where the presenters took questions from the audience. This allowed me to ask very specific questions—with follow-ups—regarding gender ideology’s reliance on sex-related stereotypes and how they define “boys” and “girls,” forcing them to struggle in real time to make sense of their ideology’s most absurd and regressive aspects.

As you will see, the presenters conflate sex and “gender identity” throughout the workshop, misrepresent the evidence on puberty blockers, suicide, and transition regret, and claim to be experts on “gender” while openly admitting to being unable to define core concepts like “man” and “woman” or adequately address criticisms without deferring to the central importance of personal experience to avoid resolving issues of philosophical sloppiness. Because these “experts” believe they are speaking to a sympathetic audience, exposing this private workshops provides a rare and useful glimpse into how gender ideology is discussed behind the scenes to likeminded “allies.”

Below is an overview of the workshop’s most troubling aspects. The full 2-hour workshop can be viewed at the end of this article.

*  *  *

The workshop starts off with a land acknowledgement before beginning their “Intro to Gender Diversity,” which provides an overview of common terms and breaks down “four parts of human identity that are pretty relevant within the 2SLGBTQ+ world, and within human identity [and] everybody’s lives.”

Kyle explains that a person’s “gender identity” refers to their “internal sense of self,” or “how you know in your head, in your heart, who you are.” Kyle then immediately conflates sex and gender identity by portraying a doctor saying “It’s a girl!” when someone is born as “assigning” a “sense of self” that may not match with how someone grows up to identify, as opposed to the doctor simply observing and recording an infant’s biological sex.

We then learn that a person’s “gender expression” is “how you show the world who you are,” which is communicated through things like hair, clothing, body language, how you walk or talk, and even how you “take up space.” According to Kyle, this can be thought of in terms of “masculine, feminine, or androgynous.”

A person’s “sex assigned at birth” is explained in terms of “the body parts you have when you’re born” as well as traits like hormonal makeup, chromosomes, and both internal and external reproductive organs. Kyle says that we’ve all “been taught from a pretty young age that sex is very binary,” but that isn’t the case because all these traits have “a lot of fluidity.” Kyle then incorrectly lumps “trans folks” in with intersex people as examples of people who have a “combination of primary and secondary sex characteristics.”

Myhill then chimes in to discuss the acronyms AMAB and AFAB (assigned male/female at birth) and how they are commonly now used to describe that “the gender you were assigned at birth.” Notice that she uses the term “gender assigned at birth” instead of “sex assigned at birth” to describe people who were recorded at birth as “male” or “female,” which are sexes instead of “genders.” This is a constant conflation that is never clarified, seemingly on purpose, in order to blur the distinction between sex and gender identity. If a person’s “gender” refers to their “inner sense of self,” then it’s ludicrous to think that doctors are “assigning genders” at birth. And, if your sex refers to your body parts, then what could it possibly mean for a person to grow up to not “identify” with having certain body parts?

To show the relationships between all these variables, the presenters show an image of the “Gender Galaxy,” which they prefer to other educational tools like the Gender Unicorn because of how it depicts reality as a “blurry blob of existence” instead of “linearly.”

Kyle then pulls up a slide to help visualize the other “nonbinary” gender identities, and then allows Jessie to take it from there. This slide (below) uses the image of an umbrella labelled “nonbinary,” which is defined on the slide as “an umbrella term for a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that is neither entirely male or female.” Jessie further explains that “nonbinary” people are “folks who don’t identify as exclusively male or exclusively female,” which can mean they’re “a little bit of both,” neither male nor female, or “a little bit more one than the other.” Notice again the overt conflation of sex (male and female) with “gender identity.”

Beneath the nonbinary umbrella are all the identities subsumed under its label. These identities are listed as “androgynous,” “gender fluid,” “agender,” “genderqueer,” and even “gender non-conforming.” Yes, if you are simply gender non-conforming—such as a tomboy or effeminate boy—you are considered “nonbinary” and thus transgender.

Staying true to the above figure, Kyle then uses the terms “transgender” and “gender non-conforming” as apparent synonyms when he proceeds to the next slide about transitioning: “When we talk about, you know, gender non-conforming folks, we talk about trans people, a lot of times that then comes to this concept of transition and transitioning.”

Jessie then interjects by saying she first wants to address some “misinformation” about transitioning (my emphasis):

When we talk about children, so I’m thinking you know like 10 and under, kind of before the tweens, we’re only ever talking about socially transitioning, right? Little kids are never kind of put on hormones or puberty blockers, or undergoing any kind of medical transition or surgery. And that, I think again, a lot of misinformation out there, and what it looks like for children of 10 is, you know, changing their appearance, maybe changing pronouns, maybe changing name. So when we’re talking about children, we’re talking about social transitioning, and sometimes legal, but we’re not talking about medical transitioning. It’s when people slowly approach puberty that then we’re starting, for some people, where they’re you know, really distressed or need to have other options, then we sometimes start talking about puberty blockers, right? And that’s really when people have just kind of started puberty.

According to Jessie, the term “children” only refers to people “10 and under.” She then uses this preferred definition to falsely claim that medical transition does not ever happen in children.

Kyle then goes on to talk about the differences between “gender dysphoria” and “gender euphoria.”

“Gender dysphoria,” according to Kyle, is “a feeling of disconnection around your body experience,” which encompasses both how you feel about your body and gender expression, as well as “how people read you.” “Gender euphoria,” on the other hand, is “when you’re feeling this connection, comfort, and joy with your body. You’re feeling like ‘Yes!' This is it!’” Kyle says that you can feel dysphoria over one body part and dysphoria over another, and so “access to transition-related supports, whether that’s your name change or that’s medical changes and supports, can really really help with those feelings of dysphoria. It can help you to start feeling like ‘Okay, what I see on the inside when I visualize how I look is now starting to match what I see in the mirror, or how people see me.”

But what person, and especially a child around puberty, isn’t self-conscious about one or more aspects of their body? What Kyle is advocating for is essentially on-demand plastic surgery for any child who is not comfortable with every aspect of their body. Why, for instance, would a girl self-conscious about her flat-chest (a very common feeling) not qualify for breast implants?

The presenters then discuss the importance of pronouns and neopronouns for trans and nonbinary youth.

Jessie says that using correct pronouns is “one of the top things that you can do that makes such a huge difference to trans and nonbinary youth” to communicate respect, love, and understanding. She even says that using a child’s preferred pronouns “is a form of suicide prevention,” despite the link between gender dysphoria and suicide being tenuous at best.

This is the first of two breaks for Q&A.

The first question comes from a mother asking where she can get facts about puberty blockers from a “gender affirming” professional because her child “is very eager to start the process.”

Jessie recommends visiting the Rainbow Health Ontario website, but then decides to offer her own advice on puberty blockers, falsely claiming that “there is no long term health impacts of around taking puberty blockers, because essentially what it does, right, is it pauses puberty, which gives the family and the youth or tween…more time to kind of decide what the right pathway is.” There are, however, no long term studies on the impacts of puberty blockers for treating gender dysphoria. From the limited data we do have, we know that around 98 percent of children placed on puberty blockers continue on to cross-sex hormones, and some of them surgeries, while around 85 percent of children who do not receive puberty blockers eventually desist and accept their natal sex. Far from being a “pause button” for confused children, puberty blockers appear to instead cement for life what would have otherwise been a passing phase.

The mother then asks about whether she can go to their family doctor with questions about this. Jessie says that many family doctors should be able to prescribe puberty blockers, but warns that “many family doctors are not comfortable because of their own biases, transphobia, etc., etc.” According to this framing, the only reason a doctor might not assist in a child’s transition is due to their bigotry toward trans people.

Finally, it was my turn to ask questions.

Question: What is the binary that nonbinary people might be rejecting? Is it the sex binary (male and female), or the binary socially constructed roles associated with males and females?

Here is Kyle’s answer:

So the idea of being nonbinary, it means that you not necessarily are rejecting, I mean for some folks sure, but it’s like that idea of like, okay, like I don’t feel like a man, I don’t feel like a woman—that’s a binary—those are two genders, and you’re like, well, if these don’t fit for me then I suppose I’m nonbinary. And so for some folks that might mean that they fall in between these two genders, or maybe they’re like ‘I feel like I’m a combination,’ or maybe they’re like ‘Nope, I’m neither, I’m none.’ And so it is, yes, this binary of man and woman, that is the gender binary that you are stepping outside of.

I immediately post a follow-up question in the chat about the difference between being nonbinary and simply being gender non-conforming.

Kyle’s response:

And so the difference between being nonbinary and gender non-conforming is like so nuanced [both Kyle and Jessie smile and laugh]. I think I could probably Google it and like you would, um, see it and be like ‘Okay, those sound very similar, I don’t really… uh, I, but I, you know, it’s just these like, little differences. Gender non-conforming, meaning you’re not conforming to gender, but lots of people kind of use it almost like synonymously, but then for some folks it just feels right to use nonbinary instead. What do you think, Jessie?

Jessie then chimes in:

I think it’s, you know, ‘cause some of these definitions they’re so, especially under the nonbinary umbrella, they’re so kind of, um, yeah close together almost, right? So, we want to just really invite conversation around what it means to the person, right? Because sometimes they just really resonate with uh, with like the term nonbinary, or with agender. Like there’s very little difference between those two things. Like agender really is part of the nonbinary umbrella, but maybe they just more closely associate with, say, agender or something. Um, so, I think it’s really about kind of just having the conversation, and getting them to like explain what it means to them, and what is it about that term that kind of resonates for them. You can kind of get a lot more information.

One thing I’ve noticed just in my practice where I work with youth, right, and this is around sexuality too, there’s so much fluidity now with this new, what’s the new generation? There’s Alpha and Gen Z, right? There’s so much just fluidity that a lot of times, you know, I’ve heard nonbinary folks they’re like even rejecting nonbinary and they’re just like ‘I’m just me and this is what I want to look like, and this is how I feel inside.’ Um, and so to just really open up that conversation, because there is a lot of nuance and I think it’s different for everybody.

Got it? All we can take from this word salad of an answer is that we need to have conversations about how people feel, even if those feelings cannot ever be articulated in a way that makes sense. Subjective experience reigns supreme.

Question: Is “man” and “woman” defined by social roles and stereotypes?

Kyle responds:

I think yes and also your internal sense of self, like you know, I think this is getting like quite philosophical I suppose but it’s true that the concept of what is man and what is woman is a social construct as well. Like what makes us a man, what makes us a woman? So often it’s based on your sex, but we’re saying no, like your sex doesn’t define your gender identity, so I think, you know, if the binary is man and woman, um, and that is defined by like social constructs, social roles and stereotypes, but also internal sense of self, like how you feel when and how you identify when you think of who you are and what your gender is. So like, yes, and, um, for that which is very hard to put into words.”

So yes, “man” and “woman” are defined by social roles and stereotypes, and you are a man or a woman if your “internal sense of self” reflects those stereotypes.

Jessie and Kyle then move on to how to offer support to trans youth as well as their family members.

One way for parents to cope with a child who comes out as trans is to learn to “reframe” any fears they might have over their child’s transition. If a parent worries that transitioning will make life much more difficult for their child, we are told that life is even “harder when you’re hiding your authentic self.” If a parent worries that their child is too young to know who they are, we are assured that “most people have a sense of their gender identity as young as 2 years old.” And to quell any fears a parent may have that their child may regret their decision, the presenters suggest that because less than 2 percent of children places on puberty blockers do not continue with medical transition, this means that there is little to worry about.

The possibility that puberty blockers may be solidifying dysphoria isn’t even considered. Instead, they insist that any transition regret is most likely due to “society’s treatment of trans folks.” Kyle says that because we don’t question whether a child is too young to know they’re not trans, we shouldn’t worry about a child being too young to know they are trans!

Next we are instructed to follow the “Listen. Validate. Affirm.” approach to supporting your trans child, which involves questioning absolutely nothing, suppressing your natural parental instincts and fears, and allowing your child to fully dictate the terms of their transition.

Jessie says that children need to know that “it’s okay to be uncertain or scared” or even “terrified” about puberty blockers and hormones, but asserts “that doesn’t mean that you’re not trans.” She says that parents need “to get on board as soon as we can” with their child’s transition, even though “it’s hard, and sometimes it’s confusing, and sometimes it feels like it comes out of nowhere.” Parents are instructed to “accept the new reality of who your child is” and to “let go of you imagined future for them.” And in order to not cause distress to their trans child, parents are told to refrain from sharing their “emotional process” with their child.

The message to parents is clear: suppress all your instincts, emotions, and doubts about transitioning your child.

This is the final Q&A period. Few others had questions, which gave me the opportunity to ask a handful of very specific questions with follow-ups to Jessie and Kyle.

Question: Are certain bits of anatomy really not “matched” with certain gender identities? So why don’t we teach people with any anatomy that they can behave as they wish and that they’re not out of alignment with themselves? I feel like doing otherwise just reinforces stereotypes. Why don’t we teach that men can be feminine, women can be masculine, or whatever is most comfortable for them? What’s wrong with that approach?

Kyle’s response:

That’s the dream. That sounds amazing. That is our goal. When that happens Jessie and I don’t have a job anymore, and we will be happy to retire. I think that that is, you know, why do we teach such strict binaries? And it’s just, like it’s just the way it has been in Western society with colonialism, with this rigid belief of like there is man and woman, and there is a certain way that we live and a way that we will grow up. And to break free of that is really important, and I think that it is more than even just though, like, teaching your kid that at home because you know then they watch TV and they see it reinforced. Then they go to school and it’s reinforced. And then they go into their lives and they’re being told like ‘You gotta man up!’ or you’ve gotta, whatever, all these things, ‘be a good girl’ and that stuff, and so it is like an ongoing unlearning and unbreaking of those binaries.

And I would love if it were taught in school that like, you know, anatomy doesn’t necessarily match with a gender identity. I think that might be the way it’ll go one day, but I think like, what we all learn in school about people who are intersex, or at least I didn’t, and like that is very very valid. People are born intersex, meaning that, as I said, you have a combination of masculine and feminine primary or secondary sex characteristics at the same rate as people who are born with red hair or green eyes, or twins are born. So it’s definitely not uncommon, and yet it’s like something that I have to define when I talk about it because a lot of folks don’t necessarily aren’t familiar with it, and it feels like something and up to a certain point it was something that was ‘dealt with’ through medical intervention.

If the “dream” is indeed to allow people to behave as they please and detach this behavior and expression from sexual anatomy, and allow men to be feminine and women to be masculine, it seems that the best way to ensure this goal is never achieved is to literally define “man” and “woman” according to social roles and stereotypes, and then teach gender non-conforming children that the mismatch between their expression and behavior can be “fixed” and brought into alignment with hormones and surgeries.

Kyle then brings up intersex conditions, which is totally irrelevant to the question, and perpetuates several common myths about about them, such as that they’re as common as red hair, green eyes, or twinning in humans.

Question: Do you need to have gender dysphoria to be trans?

Kyle responds, “Absolutely not, no. Not every person is going to experience dysphoria, or sometimes it might develop, or it might come and go like a little annoying house guest.” Kyle then says “You don’t need to have anything to be trans besides the knowledge or the feeling that you’re trans.”

Question: How are the terms “man” and “woman” and “boy” and “girl” defined?

Kyle: “Oh wow, this question is going to be difficult to answer ‘cause it’s a bit philosophical.”

Jessie then answers:

Well that’s a great question. So I did an undergrad and a masters in Gender Studies, and like, I don‘t know if I could even tell you that, right? Like, because part of it, it’s, you cannot get away from social constructionism and language. So we define these terms based on many different things, but they’re always defined by the current context in which we live, like culture, time, all of these pieces, right? I think, and in that, we also define it by things like hormones, and things like anatomy, right? It’s like, how do we decide, um, you know, when we assign somebody male or female at birth, what is that based on? That’s based on anatomy, right? But there’s actually so many things, um, that are, that we’re not kind of looking at, right? That we also have to take into account. So, I mean, I honestly can’t answer those questions.

Um, you know, it’s, when we talk about gender identity, right, people, uh, say like ‘How do you know you’re trans?’ kind of almost like ‘How do you know you’re gay?’ It’s like, how do you know you’re straight? Right? It’s just kind of like, it’s often times like an internal feeling, but we define these things in terms of like biological factors, social factors, psychological factors, um, and they change from, like, different eras, different centuries, and mean different things at different times. I don’t know, that’s a hard one.

You read that correctly: Jessie did both an undergrad degree and completed a masters degree in Gender Studies, yet cannot even provide definitions for the two “genders” that children are identifying with and away from that serve as the basis for removing and modifying their body parts.

Kyle then adds:

We spoke a bit earlier about this idea of like labels and alphabet soup, and sometimes I think like yeah, these ideas of what is man and what is woman, what is boy what is girl? They’re just like arbitrary words to describe, you know, experiences and labels to put on people. And like who really knows what it means to be man, to be woman, to be masculine, to be feminine? I think it is what you say it is.

If “man” and “woman” and “boy” and “girl” are indeed only “arbitrary words to describe experiences,” then how can we possibly justify any medical interventions for children describing themselves in these terms? This concern leads to my next question.

Question: If we can’t understand these concepts, why do we think children can grasp them?

Kyle responds that’s because the real experts are the children themselves!

I think that we need to give way more credit like, when I’m, as I said when I’ve run these workshops it’s like students who are the ones being like “We don’t care that you’re trans and telling your story because, like, that’s fine, you be you.” I get asked so many times “Why were people ever mean to you for being trans? Like, it’s just you.” And it’s like, yeah, they get it way more, like I think it’s the unraveling that we are doing presently, the peeling of the onion, has already happened for them. They’re there with this fresh onion already, like crying away and being like “Cool,” like this radical acceptance of like this is how things are, and it is like an unlearning that has already been happening, um, and so we’re catching up, I think.

Jessie echoes Kyle’s sentiment about how children are the true experts because they’ve yet to be corrupted by socialization, whereas adults are perpetually engaged in a “process of unlearning” their biases, phobias, and preconceptions about what it means to be a man or woman.

These are challenging ideas, and we can get into philosophy and all these things, but you have to remember the way that we were all socially kind of, like, you know, taught about these concepts, and so we’re very much in a process of unlearning, where you know, there’s almost like a simplicity to kids, right? Like around, um, just being who they are, and being accepting, and loving of themselves and other people, and then, you know, and then bias kind of comes into play, and a lot of hat is taught, actually.

A mother from the audience then interjects—“My child is the one who’s constantly educating me and their classmates!”

*  *  *

This workshop represents the standard introduction into transgender issues. It is not an outlier in terms of content and ideology. The only thing that makes this workshop somewhat unique is the fact that I was there asking the questions that your standard believer never does in order to force the presenters to grapple with fundamental issues with gender ideology.

Are gender identities based on stereotypes? How are “man” and “woman” defined? How can we expect children to understand concepts that people with masters degrees claim is beyond their capacity to understand? These questions should not be viewed as aggressive or out of bounds. These are fundamental questions that any gender “expert” should be able to easily answer, but they can’t. Yet they somehow remain so sure of the truth of what they believe that they’re willing to shuttle children down the path to irreversible hormone and surgical treatments to conform to identities they readily admit are “arbitrary words to describe experiences.”

Children are not the paragons of wisdom and self-knowing that gender “experts” claim they are. Children lack the life experience and perspective to make radical permanent decisions about extreme body modification. It is the duty of parents to apply their real life experience and perspective in order to ensure their children make it through childhood with healthy bodies and minds.

Gender ideology indoctrination does the exact opposite.

==

“You don’t need to have anything to be trans besides the knowledge or the feeling that you’re trans.”

“The bible is true because the bible says the bible is true.”

“You don’t need to have anything to be a bicycle besides the knowledge or the feeling that you’re a bicycle.”

If trans doesn’t require dysphoria, then what does trans “feel” like? Without gender identity disorder, what is the distinguishing feature of trans vs not-trans?

These are the same people who will argue that there is no single feature of “female” that determines whether someone is female; they’ll argue infertility, menopause, chromosomal abnormalities, intersex conditions, etc, etc, to “prove” that “female” is just a guess (”assigned at birth”). Yet their... “definition”... of “trans” is just someone who says/feels so, without explaining what that even means. (Hint: it means stereotype non-conformant.)

This circular, contradictory, incoherent lunacy is then used as the basis for scolding society that it’s a moral imperative to mutilate, medicalize and sterilize healthy children without dysphoria, who have simply self-IDed as trans and are not to be challenged at the threat of suicide. (”Do you want a trans X or a dead Y?”)