From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

The stunning report from the United Nations warns against an international push to erase women and girls.

A United Nations draft report by the special rapporteur on violence against women affirmed what many critics have long warned: that there is a “concerted international push (to) erase” women and girls, and that gender dysphoria is “socially contagious.”

The report, titled “Sex-based violence against women and girls: new frontiers and emerging issues: Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls,” was compiled by Reem Alsalem of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and warns that transgender ideology has become a threat to women.

Alsalem’s report is stunning considering that it comes from a United Nations office. For example, she warns that transgender ideology is resulting in the “erasure” of women:

Recently, there has been a concerted international push to delink the definition of men and women from their biological sex and erase the legal category of “women.” Such efforts have undermined the practical achievement of equality between men and women. Women are therefore being denied their rightful recognition as a distinct category in law and society. It is a form of “coercive inclusion” that relies on the expectation that women will be kind enough to sacrifice their own recognition and protection for the sake of others.

That, in so many words, is precisely what those of us critical of transgender ideology have been saying for years. Indeed, she goes on to condemn the purging of female-specific terms from language, pinpointing the terminology I have been writing about in this space for a decade:

The suppression of women in language and law occurs in several forms: by replacing sex-specific language with neutral language; by reinterpreting sex-specific language to refer to gender identity rather than sex; and by referring to females in dehumanizing, biologically reductive terms such as “birthing persons,” “menstruaters/bleeders” or “vagina havers” with “front holes.” Such a framing is accompanied by describing the distinction between male and female itself as “biological essentialism” and “an intrinsic expression of patriarchal structures,” rather than the material reality onto which oppressive gender norms and stereotypes are imposed.

Consider: That paragraph was not written by a conservative commentator or gender-critical feminist. It was penned by the head of a United Nations office. In fact, Alsalem also uses phrases that indicate an unwillingness to recognize “transgender identities” themselves as valid; she refers, at one point, to the “effort to provide recognition for males who identify as women or girls,” deliberately avoiding the approved ideological language of “transgender women” or “transgender girls.” Several pages later, after condemning governments for not collecting sex-specific data, she also takes a shot at the pornography industry, condemning the “system of pornography, which presents violent and dehumanizing depictions of women.”

Alsalem’s report reads like an outright rejection of the transgender agenda. She states that gender dysphoria is “socially contagious.” She praises the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that the legal definition of woman refers to biological sex,” stating that it “protects women and girls under a distinct category.” She even refers, at one point, to the “harmful consequences of social and medical transitioning of children” in a truly bombshell section that rejects the concept of “gender-affirming care” almost entirely, which I will quote in full:

There is also a significant co-occurrence of what is known as gender dysphoria or incongruence and autism spectrum disorder diagnoses. Research suggests that the odds of being diagnosed with gender or bodily dysphoria are three times higher for children and adolescents with an autism spectrum diagnosis compared with those without, with girls particularly affected. They are particularly vulnerable to the socially contagious stereotyped roles as a coping strategy, placing them at risk of erroneously adopting stereotypes as their core identity while experiencing dissociation from their sexed bodies. The long-lasting and harmful consequences of social and medical transitioning of children, including girls, are being increasingly documented.

They include: persistence or intensification of psychological distress; persistence of body dissatisfaction; infertility, early onset of the menopause and an increase in the risk of osteoporosis; sexual dysfunction; and loss of the ability to breastfeed in cases of breast mastectomy (to mention a few). That has rightly led several countries, such as Brazil, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to change course and restrict children’s access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery on sexual and reproductive organs.

Allowing children access to such procedures not only violates their right to safety, security and freedom from violence, but also disregards their human right to the highest standards of health and goes against their best interests. Children are also not able to provide informed consent for such procedures. In situations in which such procedures have been found to have caused grave and lifelong harm, consent would be meaningless for both adults and children.

Consider: Alsalem states, without proviso, that gender-affirming care harms children because it “violates their right to safety, security, and freedom from violence.” She recommends that UN member states ban transgender treatments and social transitioning for anyone under age 18. This is not only a repudiation of transgender ideology but an affirmation of everything that opponents of transgender ideology have been saying for a decade. She also advocates for limiting female-only spaces to females and warns that trans activists have been eroding both freedom of speech and belief in their attacks on women who disagree with them.

This report may prove to be a watershed moment in the international debate over the transgender agenda. It is certainly a rejection of much of what activists at the United Nations have been trying to accomplish over the last 10 years — and it is incredibly encouraging.

Jonathon Van Maren

Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.