Over the past few years, the idea that gender is something one chooses rather than is has been increasingly directed at some of our society’s most vulnerable and impressionable — children.

Parents and caregivers are encouraging it. The media is encouraging it. Even public schools are teaching transgenderism (a.k.a. It’s a choice if you are a boy or a girl or one of the many other possible “gender identities”) in some states. But the American Academy of Pediatrics has drawn a line — they say such teachings are CHILD ABUSE. Here are their 8 reasons why. They say:

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of health – not genetic markers of a disorder.

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.

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.

4. Puberty is not a disease and puberty-blocking hormones can be dangerous. Reversible or not, puberty-blocking hormones induce a state of disease – the absence of puberty – and inhibit growth and fertility in a previously biologically healthy child.

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.

6. Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.

7. Rates of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT – affirming countries.

8. Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful as child abuse.

I have never felt conflicted or torn about being biologically and socially a female. So I will admit, it is hard for me to relate to someone feeling they are not the sex they were born. And I am sure there are relatively rare cases (.003%) where it truly is the case, such as in people who were born hermaphrodites and whose parents choose at birth their gender, and choose wrong.

But otherwise, from the minute sperm meets egg, people are XX or XY. And that same XX or XY data replicates, along with the rest of their DNA, in every single cell of their body.

It’s not good or bad to be a boy. It’s not good or bad to be a girl. It simply is what it is. IMHO, it isn’t a choice. Actually it seems masochistic and self-loathing to fight it. There are lots of things we can choose about being who we are. I say better to focus on those, rather than spend energy on wanting to change something one cannot —  your own biological reality. Even after surgery, hormones, and other measures — you’ll never change your cellular reality of XX or XY.

What do you think? Please share in the comments.