In 2017, a boy dressed in all pink appeared on the cover ofย National Geographicย alongside the words โGender Revolution.โ This special issue was produced because, โbeliefs about gender are shifting rapidly and radically.โ When this issue came out,ย Answers In Genesis covered itโbut I donโt think any of us fully appreciated back in 2017 how โrapidly and radicallyโ beliefs about gender would shift throughout the West!
Featuring a boy dressed as a girl on the cover of a magazine was considered provocative in 2017. Now that kind of content is routinely discussed in kindergarten classes and on the pages of dozens of childrenโs library books. Itโs astonishing how much the culture has become warped on this issue in just a handful of years!
But where is that little boy now? In 2017, nine-year-old Avery Jackson was a budding trans activist with bright pink hair, sharing things like โthe best thing about being a girl is, now I donโt have to pretend to be a boy.โ In videos, he shared that doctors said he was a boy when he was born, but he โknew in his heartโ he was a girl, and โthat is okay.โ Now heโs 17, and a group called Restore Childhood published a threadย documenting whatโs happened to him since he was featured onย National Geographic [which included a video where he tried to tell his mother that the trans activist lifestyle “ruined” his life].
Avery has been on a regime of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that have rendered him sterile. And he no longer looks like the โgirly girlโ of National Geographic fame, nor does he identify as a girlโnow he believes heโs nonbinary with they/them pronouns. In a 2022 post, his trans-activist mom wrote,
Theyโve always described themself as โa tomboy trans girlโ because while knowing deep down that they are *not* a boy, they also didnโt always fit what people expected a girl to be. They are a fabulous, swirling, cosmos of all genders but also no gender at all.
In other words, childrenโs subjective feelings about self change over time, and who knows what his parentโs affirmation of his feelings at four years old, and his subsequent activism and time in the limelight, did to enshrine his identity as a girl in his young mind?
In one of her posts, his mother talked about how she allows her child to lead, a common parenting strategy when it comes to so-called โgender non-conformingโ children.ย I wrote in detail about this idea in an articleย where I reminded parents, “You are leading your children. You are either leading them toward life by teaching them what is right and good and true, or you are failing to teach them, and by default, allowing them to make up their own minds and form their own worldview from the world around them. In doing so, you are leading them toward death and destruction.”
In a fallen world, some children do genuinely struggle with their identityโit seems Avery was confused from a very young age [after his daycare gave him a princess dress to wear at the age of three]. But the answer is not to allow impressionable, foolish, immature children to lead parents around wherever they want to go (this path leads to broken bodies and, despite what activists will tell you,ย a higher risk of suicide). The answer is for parents to gently, lovingly, and wisely lead their children in truth, helping them ground their identity in something concrete:ย Godโs Word and his design for us as males or females made in his image.
And itโs important to know that the solution to this issue is for people to have a heart and mind change in regard toย Godโs Word and the savingย gospel. Only then will someone understand they canโt trust their feelings because they have sinful hearts. Asย Jeremiah 17:9ย states, โThe heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked…โ
