About fifty French doctors and intellectuals denounce an “ideological hold on the body of children” made in the name of the emancipation of “the transgender child”
Originally Published by L’Express
and translated for the 11th Hour
Associated with the Observatory of ideological discourses on children and adolescents, a group of childhood professionals and researchers (doctors, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, lawyers, magistrates, National Education teachers, philosophers, sociologists, etc. .), about fifty personalities protest against the discourse on the “self-determination” of the child which, according to them, legitimizes a strong increase in requests for sex-change, particularly among adolescents.
We can no longer remain silent on what appears to us to be serious abuse committed in the name of the emancipation of the “transgender child” (the one who declares that he was not born in the “right body”). On the argument of only feelings set up in truth, radical discourses legitimize requests for sex change. But it is at the cost of lifelong medical or even surgical treatment (removal of the breasts or testicles) on the bodies of children or adolescents. It is this phenomenon and its strong media coverage that challenges us and not the choices of transgender adults.
Thinking perhaps of providing an answer, the Scottish government has issued, since August 12, new LGBT inclusion guidelines, according to which children from the age of entry into primary will have the possibility of changing their name use and sex at school without parental consent. Without their consent and even without them being informed if the child so requests.
Children are made to believe that a girl could become a boy and vice versa because they would have decided it without even the opinion of adults, and this, increasingly young.
What is happening in our neighbors could very quickly happen in France: the protean dissemination of these beliefs has resulted in recent years in considerable inflation of requests for sex change among children and more particularly among adolescents. According to Jean Chambry, a child psychiatrist in charge of CIAPA (Intersectoral Center for Adolescents in Paris), almost ten years ago, we had about ten requests per year, in 2020, it is ten requests per month (only for the Ile-de-France region). He speaks of a worrying acceleration of medical responses to these requests for transition.
Trivialized discourses claim that we could do without the biological reality, the sexual difference between men and women, in favor of chosen singularities based solely on “feelings”. These false discourses relating to ideology are transmitted on social networks where many adolescents in search of identity seek solutions to their discomfort. In the name of “self-determination” – a veritable slogan that appeals to all progressives – I am free to choose the body I want – children and adolescents are convinced that they can change their sex with the help of hormonal treatments or even mutilating surgeries. This rhetoric spread by activists in many Western countries makes use of sophisms intended to deceive.
Abduction of childhood
How did we get there? And do we (still) have the right to react without being insulted, threatened? How would these rights to self-determination be fulfilling progress? This phenomenon, “the child-transgender” is a contemporary mystification that must be vigorously denounced because it is an ideological regimentation. They would have us believe that in the name of everyone’s well-being and freedom, a child, relieved of the agreement of his “reactionary” parents, would be able to “choose” his so-called gender identity.
But the child is developing, his future is in constant evolution before reaching a stage of maturity. There is unanimity on the subject between neuroscientists, developmentalists, psychoanalysts, child psychiatrists, pediatricians, and all specialists in early childhood.
The child, and even more so the adolescent, is subject to an influence whose consequences lead to mental destabilization, a break with the family if they do not support their child, and with all those who refuse to share their point of view. This grip generates an antisocial and accusatory discourse, a specific idiom, or even a Newspeak is imposed on those around you. The speeches of these young people are often stereotyped as if they had lost all critical spirit (which is a characteristic of control).
We denounce this kidnapping of childhood. It is urgent today to inform the greatest number of citizens, of all trades, of all backgrounds, of all ages, about what could well appear tomorrow as one of the biggest health and ethical scandals, which we would have watched happen. without saying a word: the commodification of children’s bodies. Because by persuading these children that sex was “assigned” to them at birth and that they can freely change it, we make them lifelong patients: lifelong consumers of hormonal chemical products marketed by pharmaceutical companies, consumers recurrent of ever more surgical operations in pursuit of the chimerical dream of a fantasized body.
This dogmatism leads to the greatest confusion so that no one knows how to act and raise their voice, often for fear of certain LGBTQI+ associations. But this acronym covers very different people, some of whom are worried like us about current abuses. Some are subject to the law of silence that reigns in this environment. Witness the Swedish documentary Trans train where young adults, abandoned to their loneliness, and threatened in the event of public speaking, declare that they have been pressured by their trans community when they have expressed doubts or “detransitioned”. (*)
Confusion reigns, largely maintained for manipulation purposes affecting humanity in its deepest substrate: its evolution, its temporality, its wanderings, and its doubts. In the name of the rejection of an alleged sex assignment, we are witnessing, embarrassed, without understanding anything about it, an identity assignment. Thus Claude from the Club of Five, previously described as a tomboy, is presented today as transgender. We could laugh about it if it were not symptomatic of our time struck by political radicalism which preempts any debate.
No, definitely, in the name of child protection we can no longer remain silent! We refuse that in the name of “human rights”, we challenge this common base – the universalism of rights – which constitutes the foundation of humanity.
*Young people regretting the process of social and/or medical transition undertaken which seems to them to be an erroneous answer to their questions or their discomfort
Signatures
Nicole Athéa (endocrinologist-gynecologist)
Elisabeth Badinter (philosopher)
Anne-Laure Boch (neurosurgeon, Salpêtrière Hospital)
Thierry Baranger (honorary magistrate, former president of the Paris and Bobigny juvenile courts)
Marie-Jo Bonnet (historian, writer)
Jean-François Braunstein (philosopher, professor at Panthéon Sorbonne University)
Anna Cognet (clinical psychologist)
Alain Cornec (lawyer)
Laurence Croix (lecturer, University of Nanterre)
Chantal Delsol ( philosopher, member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences)
Bernard Devauchelle, (professor of medicine and head of the maxillofacial surgery department at the University Hospital of Amiens)
Marie Josèphe Devillers (lesbian feminist activist)
Christine Le Doaré (lawyer, feminist activist)
Catherine Dolto, (haptotherapist)
Corinne Ehrenberg (psychoanalyst)
Caroline Eliacheff (child psychiatrist, psychoanalyst)
Xavier Emmanuelli (doctor, president of Samu Social international)
Nicole Farges (psychologist, psychoanalyst)
Natalie Felzenszwalbe (honorary lawyer)
Isabelle Ferrari (co-founder AMQG (measured approach gender issues among young people) in Geneva)
Christian Flavigny (child psychiatrist, psychoanalyst)
Esther Fouchier (president of the Forum Femmes Méditerranée)
Pascale Fourcade (psychiatrist)
René Frydman (professor of medicine)
Delphine Girard (professor of classics in college, secular activist)
Bernard Golse (child psychiatrist, psychoanalyst (APF) professor emeritus of child and adolescent psychiatry, University of Paris)
Julie Gosselin (computer scientist, feminist)
Nadia Guenet (director of the ‘radio program “the revolution will be feminist”)
Liliane Kandel (sociologist, feminist, member of the editorial board of Modern Times)
Annick Karsenty (president of the Association “women in solidarity” in Marseille)
Aaron Kimberly (Gender Dysphoria Alliance, Canada)
Frédérique Kuttenn (former head of the endocrinology and reproductive medicine department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital)
Rhadija Lamrani Tissot (psychoanalyst, linguist)
Jean-Pierre Lebrun (psychiatrist, psychoanalyst)
Manuel Maidenberg (paediatrician)
Danièle Manesse (linguist, researcher in language teaching, Sorbonne-Nouvelle University)
Céline Masson (university professor)
Martine de Maximy (honorary magistrate, former juvenile judge)
Isabelle de Mecquenem (associate professor of philosophy,member of the Council of Elders of Secularism)
Scott Newgent (TReVoices)
Sylvie Quesemand Zucca (doctor, psychiatrist)
Gérard Rabinovitch (philosopher, sociologist)
Jean-Pierre Rosenczveig (former president of the Bobigny Children’s Court)
Hana Rottman (paediatrician, child psychiatrist)
Olivia Sarton (lawyer)
Dominique Schnapper (sociologist, political scientist)
Myriam Szejer (child psychiatrist)
Sonia Timsit (psychiatrist, psychoanalyst)
Claire Squires (lecturer, University of Paris)
Samuel Veissière (anthropologist and professor of transcultural psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal)
Jean-Pierre Winter (psychoanalyst)
WHRC-France (Women Human Rights Campaign)
Jean-Pierre Rosenczveig (former president of the Bobigny Children’s Court)
Hana Rottman (pediatrician, child psychiatrist)
Olivia Sarton (lawyer)
Dominique Schnapper (sociologist, political scientist)
Myriam Szejer (child psychiatrist)
Sonia Timsit (psychiatrist, psychoanalyst)
Claire Squires (lecturer, University of Paris)
Samuel Veissière (anthropologist and professor of transcultural psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal)