Is transgenderism a form of social brainwashing?

Imagine you are fourteen, you feel different from everyone else, and you do not quite know what that means. In the past, you might have been told, “you’re just sensitive.” Now you get a different story. One with words likegender dysphoria and non-binary. Words that did not exist before, and are now everywhere.

I do not dispute that trans identity exists. What concerns me is something else: what does that language do to people who are actually just confused?

Start with the gay person who feels ashamed

Someone who has homosexual feelings but experiences them as something forbidden, because of religion, upbringing or social pressure, becomes entangled in shame. That shame eats away at them. It drives people toward self-hatred, sometimes even further. We know that pattern. The solution we found was not to change the person, but to remove the stigma.

But now consider this: a child who feels different, more playful, gentler, not fitting what is expected, grows up in an environment that says: if you feel different, you may be in the wrong body.Is that liberation? Or is it another kind of coercion?

Words create realities

Twenty years ago, the contemporary meaning of “transgender” barely existed in everyday language. People experiencing gender confusion looked for other words, other paths. Sometimes they found peace. Sometimes they suffered, but because of rejection from others, not because of the feelings themselves.

Now there is a ready-made framework. For many people, that is a solution. But for others, the framework acts like a funnel. If the first response to confusion is always: then you are probably trans, all other explanations disappear from view. And so do the other ways out.

Shame in reverse

The implicit message in certain circles is: “If you feel this but do not acknowledge it, you are betraying yourself.” That mechanism is structurally the same as what homosexual people experienced in the past. Only the direction is now reversed.

In the past: you are gay but you are not allowed to be — shame — self-destruction.
Now, in some cases: you are confused but you have to be trans — shame about doubt — hasty decisions with irreversible consequences.

This is not just a theory. From countries where treatment rates have risen sharply, there are also stories of young people who, after years, regret a transition that happened too quickly. How social pressure and conformity affect young people is explored further on transethiek.nl.

You may not adopt a mohawk. But a man in women’s clothes is allowed.

There is another distortion in this debate, something few people say out loud. Someone with a mohawk can be ridiculed. You may refuse to hire them for a job. Not a man in women’s clothes: they are legally protected. But both are expressions of identity. Why does one face the full force of social sanction, while the other receives the full protection of the law?

The answer lies in how the term conversion therapy has been expanded. It once referred to attempts to treat homosexuality out of people — rightly prohibited. Now the concept has been extended to gender identity. But not to musical identity. Not to religious identity. Only to gender. That choice is not neutral. It has far-reaching consequences for therapists, parents and care providers who dare to guide doubt without immediately steering people toward transition.

What remains is a kind of protected-species cult: one identity category so heavily fenced in by law and taboo that even the most cautious critical question is already considered an attack. The conversion lawis the most recent example. Well-intentioned, but in practice a law that criminalizes doubt and silences practitioners.

This is not an attack on trans people

People who, after careful consideration, conclude that transition is the right path have every right to do so. That is not what is being questioned here.

What I am raising is the system surrounding it. The speed, the language, the pressure. The way doubt has been transformed from something that is part of the process into something that must be corrected.

In the name of liberation, we are building a new cage. Those who doubt are not allowed to doubt. Those who wait are urged to move forward. Those who provide guidance without steering risk losing their license. That is not progress. It is simply another form of coercion, with a friendlier face.

Jansen develops related ideas in Isaiah 5:20 as a mirror, about the swapping of good and evil in the gender debate, and in why a conversation about identity is so difficult to have.