Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
Social Constructionism and Gender Dysphoria: “widely accepted” by few.
I am so thankful to everyone who has encouraged me over these past weeks as I continue to defend kids’ rights to our local school board. I want to emphasize the absolute fact that I am totally dependent on Jesus to help me.
It has been interesting to say the least, especially with the things you are hearing in the news with regards to executive orders by our new president. I have not encountered a trickle-down effect where I am now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming. I am not associated with various organizations like Parents Defending Education, but I totally agree with the sentiment of its founder, Nicki Neily, who said in a recent article,
DEI was never about ‘equity’—it was about enforcing ideological conformity and institutionalizing discrimination. Shutting down these wasteful, divisive programs is a win for every student.”
My own school district board would beg to differ. I am still committed to the debate because I do think that intelligent unbelievers (I cannot assume they are Christians) also appreciate an opportunity to self-correct when they have misspoken.
However, in their most recent response to my emails (which I will post at the bottom of this blogpost), they played the so-called “widely accepted” social constructionist card, which if you aren’t familiar with it, I will distill it for you per their cited source, the UMass gender studies department: Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that holds that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by cultural and historical contexts.
It is very hard to play by the rules when rules are open to interpretation. I am pretty sure 100 out of 100 board game makers and NFL referees and kindergarten teachers would agree: rules are a must for order.
But I am doing my research anyway, even if words like “peer-reviewed” and “scientific” are off-putting to the social constructionist crowd. My best hope is that one of the board members’ eyes will widen in interest when they see a chart like this one, where gender dysphoria referrals more than doubled from 2021 to 2022. Something is majorly wrong.
Here is what I have learned: teenage girls are coming out in exponential numbers as gender dysphoric as social media replaces family connections and general body-mind-social issues are already at a head because of puberty. It’s a phenomenon that especially goes hand in hand with kids who have preexisting mental issues, but is prevalent in girl friend groups that collectively decide to claim other “identities.” The beauty-at-any-cost, anorexic, bulimic, cutting, self-harm fad just took on another damaging flavor.
SEGM and L’Observatoire La Petite Sirène held a conference the summer of 2024 addressing things like the science of “trans” and reality of its social implications on kids and their future. Some researchers detailed the major resistance they faced when attempting to publish evidence-based articles. Those in opposition did not want to be seen as anti-LGBTQ—fuel for activists who take up transitioning as a “human rights” issue and press care providers to “affirm” them in their rights to mutilate a perfectly healthy body. (This eye-opening paper written on the conference is incredible and should be read by anyone who cares about kids.)
To be honest, I never intended to dive this deep into the rates of gender dysphoria or among youth to prove my point that the school board ought to keep progressive ideology out of public schools.
But I am not unhappy it led to this, because kids are drowning in this stuff and begging for help. Any exposure or learning we can do around helping kids is valuable.
Did you know the 9-8-8 suicide hotline goes straight to the LGBTQ-funded Trevor Project to the tune of tens of millions of tax payer money? (Still waiting on Elon to dig up that story.) Do you know you can’t even find non-LGBTQ help for these youth on the Google because Google is also putting tons of money into Trevor Project’s pockets? Kids who desire human attention fall for the transgenderism lie with no hope of getting out apart from LGBTQ activists who tell them this is it, this is the plan for their life.
This, dear children, is not what life is about. No life is so one-noted. No life is boiled down to sex, gender, and teenage emotions. No life requires a label, no life requires you to have it all figured out. You have every right to be a kid, think like a kid, act like a kid, love being a kid.
I am sorry there are grownups who are out there pushing such nonsense when you just want to be loved, protected, safe, known. Every advocacy group is a sorry excuse for Jesus. God did not make a mistake when He created you.
Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Psalm 82:3
And here’s recent communication with the School Board:
February 10 2025
Dear Pearl,
We have not found any evidence that the data from the Trevor Project is not reliable. They have received a 100% 4-star rating from Charity Navigator. Moreover, their numbers reflect what we see locally in our own data.
The concept of gender and sexuality being social constructs is a widely accepted. You can read more about it here.
That the Trevor Project has a 100% 4-star rating from Charity Navigator does not indicate it is a reputable, unbiased research source. It merely points out they are responsible with their funding to their organization. Being fiscally responsible ensures they will get increased funding from donors that support their progressive, anti-parent, sex-based agenda.
Regarding the hyperlinked article you sent that explains the theory of social constructionism according to the liberal arts school UMass gender studies department, the author concludes, “this perspective is especially useful for the activist and emancipatory aims of feminist movements and theories.”
Social constructionism is an extremist belief that reality and knowledge are made-up. It challenges fact-based logic by arguing that undeniable facts are negotiable.
With this logic, I might very well ask “Why have a school board? Why care about children? Why send my kids to school? Why have expectations, standards, and testing in education? Why hire qualified staff?”
This is, at best, problematic for you.
It is easy to see how, through the lens of social constructionism, you might misunderstand gender dysphoria (and other psychopathology, and how it leads to hopelessness, depression, and suicide ideation). These kids need clinical help, not a pat on the back and three cheers for inclusion.
I am disturbed this is the angle you are playing in public education.
Families like mine should not have to endure your constructionist agenda when we are entitled to a free, fair, equal, unbiased, excellent education.
Families should not be forced to leave school for fear of indoctrination, compelled thought, modern psychology and transgender theory.
Please look at this peer-reviewed study that offers an explanation for the decline in mental health and parent-child relationships in youth with gender dysphoria:
“Parents reported subjective declines in their AYAs’ mental health (47.2%) and in parent-child relationships (57.3%) since the AYA “came out” and that AYAs expressed a range of behaviors that included: expressing distrust of non-transgender people (22.7%); stopping spending time with non-transgender friends (25.0%); trying to isolate themselves from their families (49.4%), and only trusting information about gender dysphoria from transgender sources (46.6%). Most (86.7%) of the parents reported that, along with the sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria, their child either had an increase in their social media/internet use, belonged to a friend group in which one or multiple friends became transgender-identified during a similar timeframe, or both.”
“Another unique aspect of the gender medicine field is that a number of clinicians tasked with caring for gender-distressed have taken on the role of political campaigners—and in doing so, have traded wisdom and nuance for blunt activism (Kuper et al., Citation2022; McNamara et al., Citation2022). Their insistence that today’s gender-dysphoric teens are tomorrow’s transgender adults, and that their future happiness and mere survival hinges on early access to gender reassignment, is demonstrably false. While still reported as “rare” by the gender medicine establishment (Coleman et al., Citation2022; McNamara et al., Citation2022), the rate of medical detransition is already 10%-30% just a few years following transition…
The scale of the potential harm can be fully appreciated if one considers that an astounding 1 in 10–20 middle school, high school, and college students in the West currently claim a transgender identity.”
Once again, I ask that you rescind this unconstitutional, agenda-driven policy in our schools.
Pearl
Find local and national news releases on the school website. You can read my previous emails here and here.
