January Littlejohn, a member of the Eastern USA Chapter of Our Duty, has given an outstanding talk on the effect Florida Schools’ promotion of Gender Ideology has had on her family.
This is the transcript of her speech:
She is a mother of three children she’s a licensed mental health counselor she holds a master’s degree in counselling from Florida state university and January Littlejohn, January is her name is also involved with a federal lawsuit involving the transgender issue and I’m just going to invite her to share for 10 minutes what her story is and I think that you’ll find it quite helpful and interesting so January thank you for being with us today.
[Applause]
Good afternoon, I’d like to thank John with the Florida Family Policy Council for having me today.
I am here to tell you how gender ideology almost destroyed my family.
I am a stay-at-home mom to three amazing children.
We’re very close with our children and I spend most of my days volunteering at their schools like most typical stay-at-home moms; taking them back and forth to theater practice, swim, etc.
It’s no revelation that Covid lockdowns caused a rapid decline in the mental health of our teens and our children, our 13 year old daughter was no exception she became socially withdrawn more anxious and depressed leading up to Covid she had a friend group that was obsessed with anything to do with LGBTQ letters.
Three of the children had come out as non-binary or transgender within three months’ time.
So when our daughter told us she was experienced to stress about her gender at the height of the pandemic we were completely caught by surprise.
She had expressed no signs of gender confusion or distress in early childhood or leading up into this announcement.
So we were trying our best to navigate these unchartered waters and support her in the best way we could and help her through her feelings.
We found a counsellor, and started our own research which led us to gender ideology.
School started in September 2020, and I reached out to a teacher and told her the struggles our families had been dealing with.
We let her know that we were not affirming our daughter’s preferred name and pronouns at home, that we did not feel like this was in her best interest, that she was receiving mental health counseling to help her process what she was going through.
I also told the teacher that I felt it was directly related to her friend group that my daughter has ADHD which puts her emotionally immature and behind her peers, and that while we weren’t affirming her name at home I didn’t feel like we could stop her from adopting a nickname at school. I now know better.
It turns out the teacher I shared my heart with was the LGBTQ advocate on campus.
I didn’t hear anything again from my daughter until a couple of weeks later when she got into the car and bubbly told me she had met with three school officials to change her name and how funny because they asked her which restroom she preferred to use.
I was shocked.
I immediately called the school and was called back by both the guidance counselor and the vice principal and they told me they could not disclose what occurred at the meeting with my child.
I was ‘Volunteer of the Year’ at this school.
They knew who I was, I was not a stranger.
I ran their coffee room, I knew all of the teachers I was there up there every week.
They proceeded to tell me my daughter had to give consent by law for me and my husband to be notified and present at the meeting.
My 13-year-old daughter who can’t vote, drink, or enter in any other legal contract without our permission or input.
After several weeks of back and forth with the district, finally we were able to meet with the principal and we were finally shown the transgender gender non-conforming student support plan that was created and signed by my daughter.
This was a six page document that she completed with the vice principal, the guidance counsellor, and a social worker I had never met.
They gave her the sole authority to decide if I could be notified of the meeting or attend. They allowed her to change her name and pronouns, restroom preference, and even choose if she chose to room with males or females on overnight school field trips.
The plan also stated to use her birth name when speaking to us, in effect to deceive us of the social transition that had occurred.
My husband asked to see, we asked to see, legal justifications for the complete disregard of our parental authority and we were finally given a copy of the Leon county schools lesbian gay bisexual, transgender, gender non-conforming and questioning support guide.
In this very long guide were three key points:
Number one – parents are not to be informed when their children announce a transgender identity with school personnel.
Number two – children are allowed to choose the restroom that matches their gender identity without parent notification.
Number three – children have a legally protected right to keep from their parents information regarding their gender identity and steps taken by the district to affirm that identity.
Perhaps the most shocking was under a Q & A, and I will read…
Question: A student has exhibited behavior in school leading administrators or teachers to believe the student is LGBTQ+ Should the parents or legal guardians be notified?
Answer: No. Outing a student, especially to parents, can be very dangerous to the student’s health and well-being. As many as 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBTQ+ many of whom have been rejected by their families for being LGBTQ. Outing students to their parents can literally make them homeless.
Folks, this is a lie that is driving a very dangerous wedge between children and their parents.
These guidelines also send the message to the child that parents are the enemy and that children need to be protected from their parents instead of by their parents; that their input and authority are no longer important.
This created a huge conflict with our daughter and us we were the only people in her lives not affirming this new shiny glittery identity that we thought would ultimately lead to her self-harm.
Social transition is a complex psychosocial intervention that should always involve parents as it requires clinical supervision. Further, schools are grossly unqualified to be making these decisions.
We know this because social transition is the first step toward medical transition that can include experimental medications and hormones and sometimes surgeries that often cause long-term irreversible damage such as sterility and sexual dysfunction to the child that is irreversible.
Fundamentally children and teens cannot consent to these interventions because they do not have the maturity or capacity to understand the long-term consequences of these choices.
What my husband and I learned after months and months of research is the following:
There has been a sharp increase in teen girls suddenly becoming distressed about their gender and coming out as transgender if you’re unfamiliar with the work of Dr Lisa Littman or Abigail Shrier please look into their work they have pioneered research in this area and uncovered what Dr Littman coins as Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria and this phenomenon has become a social contagion among teen girls and now we are seeing teen boys as well.
Many of these girls have co-occurring mental health issues such as anxiety, ADHD, previous trauma, depression, and up to 40 percent are autistic.
When parents are excluded, these issues often go unchecked and unresolved putting the child at further risk of psychological and physical harm.
As with a lot of issues in our culture today this has become extremely politicized.
But I’m here to tell you this issue impacts all types of families of every race, atheists, religions, everyone.
This was also not an isolated incident In Leon County, I wish it had been.
This is happening all over our state, I could list 12 counties in the state of Florida that have the same exact guidance, same wording, everything, on their website today.
This is also happening all over our country. Some would even say that the schools are ground zero for spreading this indoctrination and social contagion.
So here’s my call to action for all of you:
Get comfortable having these conversations.
Get comfortable saying the word transgender.
Do your research and be informed.
Understand all treatment options available.
Talk with your children, your neighbors, your church, your school administration.
It is not transphobic to ask questions.
It is not transphobic to do research and be informed.
And it is certainly not transphobic to want to protect your child from an ideology that can have long-term devastating outcomes for your child and your family.
As parents we have opinion about anything and everything that can impact our child’s mental health and physical well-being.
This issue of transgender ideology is no different.
You’re allowed to have an opinion about this, because if you wait until transgender ideology comes to your home it’s too late. It’s too late to have these opinions. It’s too late to have these conversations.
The schools are continuing to align their policies with activist organization positions instead of the
U.S. constitution and the Florida parent bill of rights; and this must stop.
We must hold the schools accountable when they violate parental rights and I truly believe that courage begets courage.
Our lawsuit against the Leon county school board is ultimately about protecting the rights of parents to raise their child without the interference of government officials.
Parents know their children better than anyone else.
It is my job to protect my child, and the school took that away from me.
The time to take back our parental authority in schools on every issue is now.
