A California mother whose daughter was "socially transitioned" to a boy without her knowledge or consent spoke out against an opinion piece published in the New York Times over the weekend.
Jessica Konen joined FOX & Friends, along with Mark Trammell, the executive director of the Center for American Liberty, to discuss their reaction to the article, written by columnist Lydia Polgreen, as well as the broader push against radical gender ideology.
"The possibility that children might make irreversible decisions on this particular question that they later regret is, for many people, simply intolerable," Polgreen wrote in her piece titled "Born This Way? Born Which Way?" where she laid out the case in favor of gender transitions, arguing children need freedom to make mistakes.
"So what are we saying, really, when we worry that a child will regret this particular decision, the decision to transition?" Polgreen wrote. "And how is it different, really, from the decision I made to quit competitive swimming?"
"To be super honest, that's stupidity at its finest," Konen said on FOX & Friends Monday morning. "You cannot compare a swim team to our poor children."
"In their lives, they regret things of course, we all make mistakes, but it's our job as parents to love them, to guide them, direct them from making those poor mistakes," she added. "Of course we want our kids to have freedom, but they have enough freedom as children. Let them be children."
In her column, Polgreen also argued that "Many major identity categories, like race, gender and ethnicity, seem absolute and immovable," but if you "dig a little deeper and quickly you realize how malleable and mutable they are."
"Gender identity, many will argue, is fundamentally different, and medically or surgically altering your body to better align with your gender identity is a drastic intervention, especially for a child. But is it so different?" she asked.
"A mistake is an action that is misguided. It's not adequate information," Konen said in response to the article. "They don't have enough knowledge about things. They should not be making adult choices and comparing it to quitting a swim team versus sexually transitioning or cutting off body parts. These are our children."
"This type of freedom that she is expressing in her article," she added. "It's harming our children."
In August, Konen's case against the Spreckels Union School District in Monterey County, which was referred to as a landmark victory for parental rights, was settled for $100,000.
Konen brought the case after her 11-year-old daughter, Alicia, was told by her school in the district that she may be upset because she didn’t know who she "truly was inside." After that, the school allowed her to use the boy’s bathroom and male pronouns to refer to her as part of her "social transition" away from her biological gender.
"I personally experienced a lot of secrecy," Konen said of her experience with her daughter's transition at school. "I experienced a troubled child and I feel like our schools have thought that they could possibly parent better."
"They decided to make adult choices with my child, there was a lot of hush hush and a lot of behind the parents' back," she added. "It's emotionally traumatizing to our children. They are doing things that are inappropriate and I feel that my child was one of the survivors out of this horrible mess that's happening."
Trammell described Polgreen's point of view as a "cold and callous perspective to take."
"Our laws protect kids because kids lack the capacity to understand the nature and the consequences of some of the decisions that they're confronted with," he said. "The Center for American Liberty, we were able to represent Jessica and her and her daughter and Jessica is a hero. She filed this lawsuit and won and has inspired more parents to do the same."
"As adults, many of us as parents, we should be doing everything we can to protect other kids from experiencing that irreversible damage and trauma that those young women are experiencing today," he added.
Konen said children should be able to innocently make mistakes, but argued the mistakes made during a gender transition are "life choices" that lead to mental health issues, like depression.
"My daughter almost committed suicide due to her ‘freedom of mistakes’ and her mistakes were not so much hers," she said. "They were encouraged mistakes."
"Our kids have enough freedoms," she said. "It's absurd, it's ignorance, it's child abuse to not sit there and parent our kids and have interest in them and not guide them away from making that mistake."
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"She was lost momentarily, but by the grace of God and and by the support of everyone and her finding herself, she's doing so good," Konen concluded. "I'm so proud of her."
