GoFundMe takes down 'puberty is not a medical condition' billboard campaign; new effort launched
GoFundMe has shut down the efforts of parents attempting to raise money to display billboards that say "puberty is not a medical condition" for violating its user rules.
The fundraising effort, which was inspired by a Los Angeles-area father of a gender-confused teenaged daughter who put up one such billboard near West Hollywood, was taken down Wednesday on the widely-used crowdfunding site. The father has received no specific response from GoFundMe as to why his page was removed.
The billboard that was erected last week in California and will be there for one month states: "Your child is learning about gender identity in school. Puberty is not a medical condition. Get the Facts. Read this book." The message was positioned next to the cover of the recent book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Wall Street Journal contributor Abigail Shrier.
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According to GoFundMe's terms of service, the platform has "sole discretion" to determine "an abuse of power or in support of hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind relating to ... sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression."
Dozens of parents throughout the country who saw the billboard and have children that have come to believe they are the opposite sex reached out to the father, expressing a desire to put up similar billboards in their cities in order to generate discussion of an issue they say has not received enough scrutiny in the mainstream press.
The father, who spoke to The Christian Post earlier this week and again on Thursday on condition of anonymity for fear of backlash and losing his job, said that his GoFundMe campaign had raised "several thousand dollars and was growing."
When he went to check the status of the fundraiser Wednesday evening, he realized it had been taken down and soon thereafter he started receiving messages from those who had contributed. They had received notices that GoFundMe would be returning their donations and they were wondering what they could now do. Contributions ranged from $10 to $500, he noted.
"They're all in bed with this blanket gender ideology," the father said of GoFundMe's and other large companies' moves against anyone who is skeptical of transgender activist claims, adding that he thinks they are either financially benefiting from transgender advocacy groups "or they are pandering to 'woke' mentality."
Irreversible Damage explores a medical mystery that has emerged in recent years, that for the first time in approximately 100 years of diagnostic history, the majority of people being treated for gender dysphoria are now females, many of them teenaged girls. For most of history, this extremely rare condition was observed almost exclusively in young boys. Girls are not receiving good mental healthcare and the skyrocketing numbers of them being hormonally and surgically gender-transitioned has its origin in a largely internet-fueled peer contagion, the book argues.
The Southern California father wanted to display Shrier's work prominently and in an area of high visibility because he thought it was well-researched, "hit the nail on the head," and had not received the mainstream media reviews or coverage that it deserved.
"The majority of these girls [documented in Shrier's book] ... are anxious, depressed, sometimes autistic, and many times same-sex attracted. They are not transgender," the father told CP.
"It is mind-boggling that lesbian and gay teens are being led down this path that they are transgender. In essence, it is gay conversion therapy," he asserted.
At his daughter's school, which has contributed to her own gender confusion, "very few" say they are lesbian or gay but there are plenty of trans-identifying students, he said. He emphasized he has no issue with being gay or lesbian and the gender-transitioning of homosexuals is the kind of practice one might expect to see in nations like Iran, not the United States.
Speaking to gay and lesbian celebrities and influencers who go to great lengths to promote transgenderism, he opined: "They are erasing themselves."
Shrier commented on Twitter Wednesday that "numberless teen girls use gofundme to pay for breast removal surgery. A group of parents started a gofundme for billboards to raise awareness of the social contagion facing teen girls. *That* was shut down."
"If you’re not alarmed by tech censorship, you’re not paying attention."
A Thursday search on GoFundMe for "top surgery," a transgender euphemism that means surgical amputation of breasts, revealed 35,049 open fundraisers for people, many of them young, seeking to alter their bodies. A Thursday search for "bottom surgery" reveals 20,053 active pages. "Bottom surgery" means amputation of the genitals on a male and the creation of a pseudo-vagina, or the surgical reconstruction of the crotch area on females by removing skin and tissue from the forearm and leg in order to construct a phallus, operations that are called "phalloplasties."
The father has reconstituted the fundraiser through another crowdfunding site called GoGetFunding, which is being launched Friday.
The new effort to raise money for other billboards explains: "In one week, we received a great deal of support and began a fundraiser with GoFundMe to launch a national campaign, but it was removed without explanation. We landed here and will begin again."
"We will never give up on our daughters."
