Ottawa trustees lash out at leading psychiatrist for criticizing ‘gender identity’ policy
A prominent Canadian psychiatrist and long time
critic of gender theory has called gender guidelines being considered for
public schools in the nation’s capital both “biased and bigoted” for ignoring
the mental health and safety of the 97 percent of students outside the LGBTQ
orbit.
But several elected trustees of the Ottawa-Carleton
public board don’t appear to be interested in protecting the majority of
“straight” students, responding to a request for comment from LifeSiteNews
with ad hominem attacks on this reporter and on the psychiatrist, Dr. John Berger.
Several trustees replied to LifeSite’s request for comment with a link to
websites attacking the long time psychotherapist and examiner of applicants to
board certification as psychiatrists.
Berger called the Carleton-Ottawa Gender Identity
and Gender Expression Guide “one of the most biased and bigoted documents I
have come across in a long time. In their efforts to be oh so accommodating to
the possible feelings of a minute potential fraction of students, the writers
of the document appear to be completely oblivious to the potential feelings of
the probably 97% of other, ‘normal’ students.”
Berger, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians
and Surgeons of Canada and Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and
Neurology as well as a former assistant professor at the University of Toronto
and the past president of the Ontario District Branch of the American
Psychiatric Association, has made himself “Public Enemy Number One” of the
LGBTQ movement by testifying at legislative hearings in several countries
against measures that promote homosexuality and transgenderism.
Definitely an “old-school” psychotherapist, Berger
holds to the traditional view in that field that homosexuality is abnormal and
treatable in those who desire treatment, and that transgenderism is a delusion
like believing one is Napoleon or a horse. Deluded people need support in
the form of treatment for the delusion, says Berger, not in the form of
reinforcement for the delusion.
“Just to clarify,” Berger writes in his comment on
the district’s proposed guidelines, “there is no such thing as ‘transgendered
children’. There are children of very mixed up parents who apparently are
unable to say to their child ‘you can play dress-up at home in whatever you
want to wear. But you are a girl – or boy – and to go to school you go in
girl’s or boy’s clothes as the case may be. When you are a grown up and not
living with us anymore, you can dress how you please wherever you want.”
The draft guidelines, however, call for staff and
fellow students to accept trans students however they want to present
themselves, on whatever school team they want to compete, and in whatever
washroom or change room they want to undress. (The guidelines also call for
revamping the curriculum to advance transgenderism and gender fluidity in every
subject.)
But this, comments Berger, constitutes a major
imposition on the overwhelmingly straight majority (which Statistics Canada
indeed puts at 97 percent): “Can you imagine a dialogue, Johnny comes home from
school. ‘We went swimming today. Mummy, Lesley doesn’t have a penis.’ His
mother responds, ‘What do you mean, Lesley doesn’t have a penis? What does
Lesley have?’ ‘He has, you know, like what my sister has, [a] vagina isn’t it?’
‘So is Lesley really a girl?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Why is she in our boy’s changing
room?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘What does Lesley say?’ ‘She says she’s a
boy, but she’s really a girl, isn’t she?’”
Asks Berger, “Are teachers and parents supposed to
be telling children now that what they can see with their own eyes isn’t really
true? Do the people pushing forward this nonsense really not appreciate
how ridiculous it is?”
Evidently not. Presented with Berger’s objections,
which echo those of parents and social critics , trustee Donna Blackburn responded with reference to being the board’s
“first openly gay Trustee,” ignoring Berger’s objections, and finishing with
this attack on the reporter: ”I look forward to the where you find in your
heart to become a caring human being and refrain from spreading hateful
misinformation.”
When the reporter replied by asking her to address
Berger’s complaint -- should straight children be exposed to genitalia of the
opposite sex “to please a tiny majority”? -- Blackburn responded with, “You
have your reputation and I have mine. I am sure you make a good living
spreading your hate and misinformation and I work for less than minimum wage as
a very popular Trustee.” Blackburn went on but never addresses the needs of the
majority of students who are not trans.
The only other trustees to reply, Mark Fisher and
Chris Ellis, did so with links to criticisms of Berger, one of which could come
up with no better complaint than that Berger used the term “transgendered”
which “he doesn’t know isn’t even a word “ (it is, but not one some
transgendered people like).
More seriously, a second link leads to a page where
Berger is roasted for allegedly, “encouraging students to ‘ridicule’ gender
variant children” in 2006. It then quotes him as saying, “I suggest, indeed,
letting children who wish got to school in clothes of the opposite sex—but not
counselling other children not to tease them or hurt their feelings.”
Though it is obvious from Berger’s latest comments
that he does not advise parents to let their children attend school
cross-dressed, his earlier advice was not to encourage teasing but to allow it,
clearly to help trans students live in the real world and not in their
delusion.
When asked again to comment on Berger’s criticisms,
Ellis answered, “the scenario you fabricate will not happen. Does that satisfy
you?”
The better question is: will the trustees’ response
satisfy the parents of Ottawa-Carleton school district? To sum it up: Any fears
parents might have are groundless, and they are hateful for expressing them.
