American College of Pediatricians releases position statement that “Gender Ideology Harms Children”
The socially conservative American College of Pediatricians released a position statement this past week that would appear to give ammunition to conservatives in the South Dakota Legislature who had proposed and supported House Bill 1008, otherwise known as the “transgender bathroom bill,” which was ultimately vetoed by Governor Dennis Daugaard after passage by the legislature.
As noted in the position paper…
2. No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.2,3,4
3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such. These children suffer from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria (GD), formerly listed as Gender Identity Disorder (GID), is a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V).5 The psychodynamic and social learning theories of GD/GID have never been disproved.2,4,5
and…
5. According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.5
Read the position statement here.
Do you agree or disagree with the position paper? Coming from a group of pediatricians, does it have merit?
And If this information had been widely available before session, would it have made a difference in the final vote, as well as the Governor’s response to the measure?