Marketing isn’t just an advertisement telling you to buy this detergent. Marketing is culture. It’s the stories we hear and the stories we tell. It’s what people are talking about. It’s cultural influencers setting the tone and setting the narrative.

If you think there’s no push to sell kids on being transgender, you’re thinking too literally. It’s far more subtle than that. Consider these two examples:

It’s 20 years ago. There’s a teenager in the Midwest who doesn’t fit in. He gets picked on at school. He doesn’t have many, or any, friends. He doesn’t like or wear the same clothes as the other kids. He doesn’t listen to the same music or have the same tastes as the cool kids. He’s depressed and possibly even contemplating things like drugs, cutting himself, or even suicide. He’s questioning everything, including perhaps even his own sexuality. He doesn’t really have anywhere to turn, and he doesn’t really live in a progressive city.

He just wants an anchor. He just wants a friend. He wants to have a place to fit in. He just doesn’t want to be alone.

In this scenario, he isn’t exposed to much mainstream progressive cultural thinking or influence because social media is not available, much less omnipresent. He’s fairly sheltered, and exposure to things beyond his small town is minimal.

Now, it’s 2021, and the same teenager is still lost. He doesn’t fit. He’s seeking acceptance, and maybe a little friendly attention, as well.

The difference is he lives in a world with exposure to progressive cultural influencers and leftist ideals. He lives in a world that says if you are not a white straight male, you are a victim, and we’re going to celebrate you.

Specifically, he live in a world in which transgender people aren’t just present and represented in movies, television series, commercials, music, and everywhere you look, but they’re also celebrated in schools, clubs, and other institutions.

This kid is different and looking for acceptance. Transgender kids have people, businesses, and institutions falling all over themselves trying to let transgender people know they are loved and supported.

The same kid with the same problems, but totally different environment. In the first environment, the kid probably gets through it and 10 years later is out of the high school environment, on his own, and hopefully in a place where the tormentors are gone and he is at peace with who he is. The idea that he was actually meant to be a woman is a completely foreign and unknown concept. He proceeds on and lives his life as the male his chromosomes say he is.

In the second scenario, this kid is bombarded by messages of transgenderism. They’re everywhere. They’re in mainstream culture. They have their own clubs and activities. They stand out for their differences. They’re encouraged to be different than everyone else. They are accepted. But even more important, they are celebrated. They are welcomed. They belong.

Same kid. Different time. What are the chances the second kid is going to determine that if he just decides he identifies as a woman, he can wear what he wants, cut his hair however he wants, take on a new name, and be accepted by a community for just making these small changes? What are the chances that he thinks, perhaps his gender is the source of his unhappiness and decides to pursue living as the other sex?

We’ve been around for centuries, and only in the last few years has a noteworthy portion of our population determined they were actually meant to be the other gender – and they’re not considered mentally ill.

The thing about gender dysphoria that is different than homosexuality is that you’re not just determining you’re more comfortable with, or attracted to, members of the same gender. You’re also deciding that you were meant to be the opposite sex or that you identify as the other sex. It’s defying hard and fast science.

You are either born a male or a female. With that foundation, you can choose, or be inclined, to mate with anyone you want of either sex. But you’re still the gender you were born to be.

If you determine you aren’t the gender you are according to science, you are in denial of a hard and fast fact. If you are a male, you are a male. You can pretend you’re not, but you are. Many would call that a mental illness. In fact, many medical professionals do.

But if we seek to normalize it and pretend that these people are not facing some tough mental challenges, they are not getting the help they need and possibly compounding the depression, anxiety, and loneliness they feel because deciding to be the other gender is only an option because it presents them with solutions to their desire for attention and acceptance.

This is one of a long list of unfortunate societal circumstances we’ve allowed leftists to implement in the United States in their attempt to make victims out of as many people as possible. There are victims according to gender, race, religion, sexuality, and now identity. And it’s all in the name of presenting the Democrat Party as the people who can make it all better.

My point is not to judge or impugn people going through this. Quite the opposite. I think they are victims. They’re just victims of a party with an agenda of power and control.

This is definitely marketing, and it’s sinister marketing. The only hope is that eventually, enough Americans recognize what is happening and grow enough of a spine to stop it.