Why Are So Many Young People Confused about Their Gender?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the urgent need for our rising generation to be free from confusion about their genders. I spoke yesterday to a mother of two teenage girls who are suffering from this confusion about their gender. They are convinced that they “do not feel like girls.”

            The mother spoke of her heartache at finally being told about the confusion with which her daughters are dealing. They were questioning everything that she had previously taught them. Much of her pain comes from her knowledge that her daughters were in pain and could not approach her for help. This family’s struggle started a few years ago and has gone through numerous painful episodes, including threatened or attempted suicide. Gratefully, the attempts were not successful.

            The question remains, what is causing so many young people to struggle with confusion about their gender? Children, teenagers, and young adults have too many traumas in their lives without being confused about who they are. I have great compassion for the young people and their families going through these struggles. However, the experiences of others show that their attempts to solve their “problem” could bring greater pain. Laurel Duggan shared the story of a biological man who tried to solve the gender confusion problem by having sex-change surgery at age 19 and regretted it decades later. 

Anxiety, depression, and same-sex attraction drove Corinna Cohn to undergo irreversible surgery at 19, according to an article [in The Washington Post] published Monday. Cohn later felt regret about losing the ability to have children, becoming permanently dependent on medication, and taking on health risks related to cross-sex hormones and reduced testosterone.

“As a teenager, I was repelled by the thought of having biological children,” Cohn wrote for the Post. “Years later, I was surprised by the pangs I felt as my friends and younger sister started families of their own.”

Young people are now able to get sex-change surgeries quickly and without intensive psychological evaluations, Cohn wrote, especially in light of professional pressure to “affirm” gender-confused young people through medical procedures.

“I shudder to think of how distorting today’s social media is for confused teenagers. I’m also alarmed by how readily authority figures facilitate transition,” Cohn wrote.

Alabama’s Legislature passed a bill Thursday banning sex-change procedures for children. If signed by Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, it will be the first law of its kind in the U.S.

In her article in the Post, Cohn urged transgender individuals to slow down before making permanent, life-alternating medical decisions, explaining that their feelings about their bodies will likely change as they get older and experience relationships:

I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.

            No one knows why there is an increase in the number of young people who struggle with gender issues. No matter the cause of the affliction, most people realize that it is a real problem, and the young people suffering with it need compassion and support to make their way through it. I understand that most young people are better adjusted after puberty, but this is not the case with the children of my friend and many others. We should not be judgmental in any way, and we should offer our support even if it is only a listening ear.