By Sherry Knight Rossiter ——Bio and Archives--June 27, 2023
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Even though the word “woke” is used multiple times per day by the media, many people still don’t understand what the word actually means. I can assure you that woke is not about being “trendy” or “cool” but about something far more insidious and dangerous.
Although the current online Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition of woke seems fairly innocuous – “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice” – wokeness has now become a major tenet of Leftist (think American Marxism) ideology. In reality, being “woke” means you believe there is no absolute truth and no rules for right and wrong behavior. Unfortunately, without any rules or structure to our daily lives, there is also no meaning to our lives. I believe there is a direct correlation between the rising suicide rates in the United States and the proliferation of wokism.
It seems clear to me as a mental health professional that the increase in transgenderism is related to an individual’s inherent desire to find meaning in their life. Children raised with no religious beliefs or practices, coupled with a lack of a rigorous academic education, are struggling to find meaning and purpose in their young lives. This is especially true after the lack of peer socialization opportunities during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Children and adolescents are very impressionable, so when a teacher or other adult suggests a 12-year-old girl approaching puberty might actually be “a boy” trapped in a girl’s body, the idea can be very intriguing. The child is likely already unhappy with her life or body, so the suggestion that her life could be much happier if she undergoes gender transforming surgery is appealing.
What makes matters worse is now schoolteachers are being told by school administrators to not tell a student’s parents if the student wants to be called by a different name or changes clothes at school to dress like the opposite sex. When I first read about this trend, I was incredulous. Recently, I learned that some of the high schools in my local community actually have “changing rooms” for this very purpose. Since when do teachers and school administrators have the right or the authority to withhold such information from a student’s parents? By not telling parents the truth about what is really going on, the schools have become complicit in encouraging children to embrace not only aberrant, but potentially dangerous, life-altering behavior.
The suicide rate for transgender individuals is significantly higher than for the general population. Tobias Elvhage, the director and writer of the recently released Swedish docudrama “Gender Transformations,” stated on June 2, 2023, in an interview on Epoch Times American Thought Leaders ([ATL:NOW] Victims of the Gender Industry and Telling Their Stories: Tobias Elvhage, Director of ‘Gender Transformation’ Film) that the chance of a transgender person committing suicide after gender affirming surgery is 19 times greater than before having the surgery. These statistics alone should be reason for alarm and at least cause parents and medical and counseling professionals to ask why.
But let’s go back to discussing the importance of having meaning and purpose in one’s life. It has been my observation as a psychotherapist and inveterate watcher of people that the happiest people are those who believe their life has a purpose. Interestingly, that purpose does not need to be grandiose. I once knew an elderly woman who told me she liked to bake oatmeal raisin cookies for the chipmunks in her backyard. Before you jump to the conclusion that Grandma Bertha is crazy, let’s consider her situation. She loved to bake, but she lived alone. She also had a difficult time walking due to bad knees, and she didn’t own a car, so she was very isolated. Seeing the chipmunks gather on her back porch even before the cookies came out of the oven brought her joy and purpose at least for that day.
I believe that as we age, we learn to find meaning and purpose in smaller and smaller things because our life experience has taught us how to do that. On the other hand, adolescents especially have not matured enough emotionally to be able to do that. Therefore, they sometimes try to find meaning and purpose in life through engaging in risky behaviors or pursuing what they perceive to be a new adventure.
As I read articles or watch documentaries about persons who went through gender reassignment surgery and now have regrets, it is clear to me that these individuals thought they would like themselves better and be happier with their lives after surgery. When that did not happen, some of them committed suicide. In my mind, this is beyond tragic because it did not need to happen.
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Even if the professionals and parents who pushed minors to have gender affirming surgery are held legally liable, the lives of the individuals who medically changed their gender will never be the same due to the mutilation of their bodies and the excessive number of drugs they will need to take for the rest of their lives in order to keep their body “fooled.”
New York based investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek talks about who is really pushing the trans agenda (Jennifer Bilek | Who is Behind the TRANS AGENDA?). While she says it may appear to be a trend started as a grassroots movement, she provides evidence that the big push for transgender surgeries was started by the upper class elites not necessarily to destabilize American society, but to certainly to cash in on the big profits such surgeries will provide to large pharmaceutical and medical corporations. Assuming this is true, our once-revered medical institutions have become shameless, greedy organizations, that no longer believe in “doing no harm.”
Finally, we should not treat wokism as a passing fad. Wokism is a dangerous and pernicious movement implemented by evil people who want to not just break down but destroy western civilization as we have known it. As Christians, we know woke thinking and behavior is absolutely wrong headed, evil, and against God’s plan for anyone’s life, but what are we doing about it? It is time to speak out locally in our communities and in our churches. It is also time for those CFP readers who are parents to have serious talks with your children explaining why you aren’t going to allow them to use certain types of social media, attend certain events, or dress like the opposite sex. We can no longer ignore this crisis or think it is not affecting our children and grandchildren. Woke is no joke!
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Sherry Knight Rossiter resides in Missoula, Montana, where she is a licensed mental health professional in private practice and an adjunct college professor. She is an unabashed Christian conservative, a former Army helicopter pilot, and a very concerned American citizen.