Hyperbole in Pink

Allison Dahle, Representative for District 1, NC

Sex reassignment surgery means big money in America—to the tune of $2 billion annually, with a forecasted annual growth rate of 11%, to reach a value of $5 billion annually by the end of this decade. According to the 2020 Plastic Surgery Statistics by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), a 15% rise in breast or chest surgical procedures was reported in transgender male patients from 2019 to 2020.¹ So, whilst hyperbole in pink Allison Dahle, Representative for District 11, NC (see transcript of her speech below), wants you to believe Gender Affirming Care is nothing special, just a few surgeries here + there that save lives + make families happy, the reality on the ground looks far more sinister, as you will see toward the end of this piece.

Hyperbole in Pink

What you're doing is you're causing attention to children who don't need this kind of attention. And you're saying to them, you don't matter. You don't, we don't value you. We don't care about you, because you don't need medical treatment. You don't need anything. Because you're not human. So what we're saying is, go ahead, kill yourself, go ahead end it get because you're not, you don't match our values. So go away. And I'm not telling you this from my heart. I'm telling you this from the countless people who find me the only safe person to come and talk to, to tell me how they feel, and how scared they are.

I'm telling you, because of a child who's a child of a friend of mine who doesn't know what they aren't, it really doesn't matter. Because this kid's happy. This kid's going to school, this kid's making A's. And this kid has not asked for any other special treatment than to live. Guys. I just can't say enough. John Autry said it best, or Representative Autry. Just stop it. You are taking the rights away from parents who want to take care of their children. If you don't agree with it. Then don't do it. Just don't seek that help. If you don't agree with it that’s your choice as a parent, but you can not take that choice away from other parents. That's their child. And you may think this is some sort of horrific thing.

But I'm telling you, I have researched this. The amount of surgeries done in the United States are very few and for very important reasons that I don't even know because we don't we don't need to know. I have friends who work in this field who counseled children and they never recommend surgery.

This is not what this is about. This is about you controlling parents choice, because you don't agree with it, or you don't feel good about it, or whatever. But it's the parents, right? To take care of their child in the manner that they see fit. And this is not our right. Our right is not to come in here and take away people's rights. What we're supposed to do is support the people of North Carolina. And we're supposed to write laws that helped the people of North Carolina. And all this is doing is giving permission for people to make fun of trans kids to make fun of gay kids to make fun of anything that they don't understand or that they fear. So please, do not concur and let it go. Just let this go.²

Thank you. —Allison Dahle, Representative, District 11, NC

I have cringe moments, sitting watching Dahle’s bizarre + emotionally intense monologue. The fear in her message feels real to me, not contrived or performed. I often am inclined to perceive fear-based narratives of persuasion as attempts to manipulate me—sway my position without appealing to my logic and instead by appealing to my emotions. I find it difficult to have compassion for anyone I have pre-judged as manipulative. When I watch Dahle though, I feel like I am watching a delusion unfolding. I remember working with the profoundly delusional in a provincial asylum and I can have a modicum of compassion and enough sense to realise that such an individual lies beyond rational debate and that my judgment would be cruel and inappropriate. How can we judge the brainwashed or delusional? I hear the words — a child who is a child of a friend of mine, and I think of Helen Joyce’s words about the projected guilt of adults infecting organisations from within.

In her monologue Dahle mentions Rep. John Autry, who has a trans grandchild. Using children as a political football simply to enrage your voters is despicable and beneath the North Carolina General Assembly, said the grandfather of a 21 year old trans-identified granddaughter. How much projected guilt drives the progressive opposition to reforming Pediatric Gender Affirming Care? How many legislators are voting against legislation that promotes the interests of the public which they serve in favour of their personal/social interests?

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Dahle opens her 3 minute speech tearful and emotional. Anti-wokes and the rest of the gender critical crowd who have grown tired of the shirt-tearing histrionics roll their eyes + sigh + call it the drama club. The more I watch the clip though, the more I am convinced Dahle really believes herself—like a cult member believes. The chilling and disturbing thing about this gender movement is the intensity of belief and it’s toxicity— genderism inflicts such a desperate fanaticism onto its followers, to the point of extreme denial of reality. Believers in Gender Affirmation don’t strike me as joyful or resilient. Fundamentalists are like crackheads—insatiable, enslaved to their brain’s reward circuitry. I often imagine that the cognitive distortion which sex denialism forces onto its captured minds must feel conflicting and render a significant level of inner turmoil. Sex denialism is self denial, it is human denial, it is misanthropic.

Dahle exhibits all the signs of cult indoctrination + capture, as opposed to a balanced + impartial professional who can make difficult decisions about controversial issues even when it challenges her personal interests. The conversation-stopping language: “… you’re saying you don’t matter … you’re saying go ahead and kill yourself…”. The demand for fealty. The Us versus Them rhetoric. The repressive tolerance. The side-stepping refuting opposing arguments in favour of engaging emotional distraction tactics.

I found it interesting that Dahle spoke so passionately about parents being able to make decisions for their kids, about how we should tolerate things we don’t feel good about if it makes others happy. Dahle has, in the characteristic progressive manner, accused her opponents of doing what she herself is doing — putting her personal moral interest above the needs + safety + wishes of the children and families of North Carolina, whom she represents in the legislature of her state. GAC harms children. GAC does not save lives. GAC is not a suicide prophylaxis.

“You are taking the rights away from parents who want to take care of their children,” sobbed Allison Dahle in her passionate speech about GAC in NC. That’s interesting, because Gender Affirmationists do not believe parents who might disagree with them have the right to make informed decisions about their child’s health and well-being. Prisha Mosley’s parents did not receive the rights or care that Allison Dahle claims Republicans want to remove from trans parents. Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son? Transition or die. Do these sound life affirming and family-centred to you? When your daughter is struggling and distressed and the professional tells you to do this particular treatment or your child will die, you tend not to question the expert. In particular if this struggle has gone on a while, parents want relief for their child.

So, Allison Dahle lives in a fantasy world — a place where parents of mentally ill adolescents can receive compassion and evidence-based care without have menacing therapists and doctors bully them into choosing a particular treatment option. Projection is when accusations = confessions.

Prisha Mosley, a 25-year old who suffered iatrogenic harm when she was coerced into gender affirming care, provided a written copy of her testimony in this tweet. In her testimony you can read about the way the counselor did not investigate or probe her entrance complaint, and simply shunted her through the gender affirmation care path. The most egregious thing in this story hinges on the fact that people like Dahle who promote the suicide threat drove young people like Prisha to submit to harmful and abusive treatment because they believed they had no other option. The very horror Allison Dahle tearfully sobbed about describes the horrific threat Prisha and her parents faced down from health care professionals whom they turned to for help and care. Prisha was alienated away from her parents by online trans influencers and told “everyone not affirming you wants you dead.”

Prisha Mosley HB808 Testimony Excerpt

As a teenager, I suffered from a number of mental health issues, including ocd, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, and depression. I also suffered trauma from sexual assault at age 14, a year before I adopted a trans identity. And I engaged in self-harm.

At age 17, after meeting with me for a matter of minutes, a counselor told me that I was actually a boy and that changing my body to be more like a boy’s would fix my mental health issues. Around that same time, a pediatric endocrinologist prescribed me testosterone.

While I was in the room, my doctors asked my parents if they would rather have a dead daughter or a living son. My parents’ care for me was manipulated against them and their love was used to bait and blackmail them. Consent was stolen from them. And no parent has the right to sterilize their child, even if they want to.

Hyperbole in Pink

All this does is give permission for people to make fun of trans kids to make fun of gay kids, says Dahle. Again, another cultish conversation-stopper, an accusation, an irrefutable claim, a verbal incendiary device. All Prisha and her parents wanted was to make an informed choice about how to treat her mental health concerns. Allison Dahle says there aren’t that many gender surgeries that happen in American so it’s not a big deal. Well, Representative Dahle, I have done my research and I have found out that transgender people comprise less than 1% of the population of America—why are you making such a big fuss about less than one percent? You see what I did there?

If this care had not been available when she needed it, I fear that she may not be here today, says John Autry about his trans grandchild. You known what I think, Representative Autry? I think emotional blackmail like this unbecoming a professional in a position of trust and authority. I also think using children against their parents, (such as happened to Prisha and her parents), simply to manipulate the parents into consenting to treatment which they didn’t want for their child is despicable and beneath the clinicians practising in the state of North Carolina. I also think the legislature has a duty to pass legislation preventing this kind of medical abuse from happening under the guise of affirming care. I think children with neurodevelopmental and trauma-related and attachment-related disorders deserve far better than the brutality of a medical approach that forces them to dissociate from and hate their physical selves.

No responsible and ethical and compassionate individual believes that it is appropriate to teach vulnerable and mentally ill young people that their distress will end when they take experimental hormone therapy and undergo unnecessary surgery to become the opposite sex and then sever ties from their parents and family of origin. No mentally sound individual thinks that putting the breaks on such a medical nightmare sends a message to young gay and gender confused people to kill themselves because they don’t matter. In fact, it is because they matter that safeguarding against such abuse is being discussed.

1. Grand View Research

2. Transcribed by https://otter.ai