By Bill Muehlenberg
4, 2025
What we must know about harmful gender ideology:
Whenever you want to dehumanise and control groups of people, a major tactic is to get them out of sight and out of mind. Make them invisible, in other words. We have certainly done that with the unborn as we kill them in the millions.
We have done it with Blacks in the past. More recently we do it with groups that we want to pretend just don’t exist. Ex-homosexuals is a classic case in point. And now, hot on their heels, ex-trans people (detransitioners) is the latest group that we want to keep invisible.
So many of our progressive elites, politicians, media outlets, academics and others want to pretend that there is no such thing as a person who once transitioned but now deeply regrets it. The mantra of our leftist overlords is that transition is always good, and there can be no other direction to take. They have fully bought the lies of the trans lobby, and countless people are now suffering as a result, including so many grieving mothers and fathers.
The truth is, de-transitioning is now a major growth area. More and more people who first thought that the trans agenda would solve all their problems are realising that it was all an appalling lie, and it simply has made matters worse.
But still, countless kids are being led down this garden path, a one-way-ticket to a life of turmoil and misery – for child and parent alike. One of the latest resources discussing all this is the new book edited by Kirralie Smith, Devastated: How Gender Ideology is Tearing Australian Families Apart (Gender Awareness Australia, 2024).
Smith heads up Binary, an Australian-based ministry devoted to taking on the trans behemoth and helping people who are being harmed by it. The book features nine moving personal stories of those who have been so very badly damaged by trans ideology.
She introduces the issue, presents the stories, and then offers some concluding chapters. A slim book – just 164 pages – it packs a punch. Because most our leaders and elites, along with most of the mainstream media, do not want you to hear stories like this, it is so very important that Kirralie has put this book together.
As she says in the Introduction:
Already transgender regret is a growing phenomenon. As children captured by the ideology become adults they realise how deficient they are due to medicalized interventions that have stunted their growth and left them scarred and life-long medical dependents.
It is criminal and sad beyond words.
The growing number of devastated and abandoned young adults must cause us to sit up and take notice. There will only be more as the years pass and more children reach adulthood.
Lying to children or to anyone in fact, is not kind. It is cruel to deceive already confused people into believing they can achieve the impossible. Pronouns and name changes will not change a person’s sex. Costumes, makeup and hairstyles are simply appropriations of stereotypes. Becoming a lifelong medical patient, reliance on drugs and very risky surgical procedures will not turn the male into a female or a female into a male.
It is devastating to families and children that activists have succeeded in convincing legislators that these lies will result in freedom. They never will. Only the truth will set them free. (p. 10)
Devastated, How gender ideology is tearing Australian families apart by Smith, Kirralie (Author) Amazon logo
The stories she shares are utterly heartbreaking. How we as a society could have allowed our children to be abused and harmed for life is something we should never have allowed.
Tara’s story is representative of so many devastated parents. She says, “both my daughters have fallen victim to the modern mania of transgenderism. The last three years have been a plodding kind of hell lit by spotlights of hope.” (p. 63)
She also writes:
Scared and confused though we were, my husband and I did our best to keep our heads and to be supportive. In the privacy of our bedroom, we held each other and whispered our confused theories. What was happening to Grace? A lovely young girl who had been luxuriating in the sun in a gingham one-piece bathing suit only a few months earlier.
Grace shaved off her long blonde hair and adopted a skater-boi style. She tore everything out of her room and threw away almost all records of herself as a child. She sought to lay a fresh path in the future by destroying evidence of her past. She declared her birth name to be a ‘dead name’. She threw out all her clothes and replaced them with men’s clothes. She adopted a deep voice and would swagger about. She would man-spread when she sat down…. (p. 66)
She concludes her piece this way:
Activists are pushing a narrative that failing to affirm a child’s brand-new gender identity constitutes child abuse. This narrative is being used as grounds by trans-activists (who have infiltrated Social Services) to seize confused children from loving homes.
And so, unfortunately, you must minimally affirm your daughter lest you lose her entirely.
I use my daughters’ chosen names when addressing them and do my best with the linguistic gymnastics that are their chosen pronouns. In return, my daughters have agreed not to pursue chemical or surgical gender transition while living at home.
These boundaries take away the grounds for the State to seize them. They concede enough ground to my daughters to keep them safe, and give them time to think.
Once again, self-appointed experts working for the State are deeming mothers ‘unfit’ and seizing their children.
Please help us keep our kids safe from harm. Radical gender theory confers no benefits on vulnerable children and poses huge risks to their mental health. (p. 71)
The first story found in the book, and the longest, involves someone I happen to know. Her story has been featured elsewhere, and what she says needs to be heard. Tess and her husband lived a normal life with their daughter and son, but things went off the rails early on in the daughter’s teen years.
First, she revealed that she had been raped by a boy she was hanging around with; then she announced that she was a lesbian; and then she declared that she was really a boy, not a girl, and transitioning was the way forward. All this occurred in a relatively short period of time.
You really have to read the entire 44-page story. The hell this family has been through seems unimaginable to most of us. The entire family was turned upside down. And then there were the police and other authorities continuously siding with the confused daughter against the parents.
At one point the police confiscated the daughter’s diary which described the initial rape, and when the father tried to get it back, he was told it was destroyed! Just one brief quote from Tess: “I couldn’t believe what he was telling me! How could the police destroy evidence into the rape of a minor…? A wave of emotions coursed through me that I just couldn’t control. I started sobbing…” (p. 41)
The whole thing was an utter nightmare, with tears and anguish almost a daily outcome of this diabolical situation. The chapter ends with these tragic words:
It’s been almost 4 years since I spoke to my daughter. I miss her every day. I missed the person she was and the relationship we had. I mourn for the loss of the relationship with her sibling, I mourn for the experiences she has missed and will never get back and I worry constantly for her health and mental wellbeing. I ache to hug her. I ache to listen to her laugh. Parenting was never meant to be this difficult or this crazy. What I do know is that I’ll never stop fighting to protect all the people being harmed by this dreadful agenda. What the professionals, activists, and the children themselves forget is to never get between a mother and her young (regardless of age, our protective instincts will always be there), and that when hopefully these lost youth realise they’ve made a massive mistake, it won’t be the medical professionals or the activists or their glitter families that will be there to help them. It will be the mums and dads waiting to help them heal. (pp. 60-61)
Closing chapters written by Kirralie examine various issues, including how so much of the media is complicit in pushing radical trans activism. The penultimate chapter speaks about “Resources for families”. In it she says this:
Despite the pressure and misinformation, its vital parents understand that having compassion doesn’t have to mean 100 per cent agreeing with their beliefs, or condoning their behaviour.
Many de-transitioners (former trans-identifying people) caution parents of gender dysphoric children against simply presenting scientific facts and arguments about biological sex. While truth is certainly on your side, there are complex layers underlying the gender issue meaning a guns-blazing approach is likely to drive them further down the ideological hole.
It’s important to prioritise building a quality relationship with your child and moving the conversation away from gender and transitioning as much as it’s possible. Remember that studies show around 90 per cent of children will grow out of their gender dysphoria if left to go through normal puberty.
Many young women who were caught up in the transgender craze in their teenage years describe body image issues, unrealistic expectations of womanhood, and the hypersexualized culture as contributing factors that led to their trans identity. Parents play an important role in combating these negative cultural messages and engaging in constructive conversations around some of these damaging lies they may be believing. Flaunting your body and liking ‘girly things’ do not make a woman, nor do muscles and cars make a man. Gender ideology is purely based on stereotypes and denies the beautiful diversity of character and temperament of males and females. (pp. 153-154)
Her closing words in her final chapter are also worth sharing:
We must offer support, compassion and hope to those impacted by gender ideology. Nearly everyone has a story of someone they know who has been captured by gender ideology. So many sad stories based on false narratives and promises that cannot possibly be realised.
We can all be a part of the change and influence our culture for good. Anytime someone tries to silence you, remember these stories. Stand firm, speak up and speak loudly for those whose voice has been stolen from them.
Truth, reality and evidence-based science will prevail. It is just a matter of time and a commitment from each one of us to stay the course. (p. 164)
Right on, brother Bill!
From the biblical point of view, the accommodation to sin is itself actually sinful. In my field of clinical psychology, it is called “the codependent enabling of harmful behavior.” Jesus used stronger words. Although He was speaking primarily about children, we know that all believers of any age are God’s ‘little ones’: “If anyone causes one of these little ones— those who believe in me— to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom…