Casualties in the War on Gender

By Michael Dellaperute

In many ways, James is a typical seven-year-old boy. He loves superheroes, Boy Scouts, and pretend sword fights. Unfortunately, his divorced parents agree on very little, including his gender. Their ongoing dispute has unintentionally placed their child on the front lines of the gender war, where he narrowly escaped mutilation.

James’s mother insists that her son is a girl trapped in a boy’s body. Consequently, she pursued gender affirmation therapy for James. This popular approach to treating gender dysphoria involved renaming her son Luna, dressing him in girls’ clothes, and reinforcing a female gender identity through intensive counseling. James’s school respected his mother’s wishes and permitted him to identify as female. However, when his mother sought to administer puberty suppressing hormones to facilitate a more convincing transition later in life, James’s father intervened. James’s case ended up in a Dallas courtroom, where a shocked nation watched as a judge initially ruled in favor of his mother. James’s father immediately appealed the decision, and he and James’s mother now share custody. James has since reidentified as male, and his ordeal, while true, is as disturbing as the war itself. James narrowly escaped becoming the latest casualty in the culture’s ongoing gender crisis.