Pronouns as weapons of deception

For Vanessa, using 'preferred pronouns' was not a harmless courtesy.

For the last month in New Zealand, the heartbreaking story of a teenager (pseudonym “Vanessa”) who starved to death, alone, in emergency accommodation has been the subject of commentary, both in mainstream media and online. The latest salvo, by journalist David Fisher, was published in the Herald on Saturday.

Refreshingly, Fisher’s article did not overtly blame the teen’s parents for her death as has previously been the response of those who defend transgender ideology. Instead, Fisher uncovered some new information that has corroborated the testimony of Vanessa’s parents: that whilst in the grip of a very serious mental illness, Vanessa had developed secretive, devious, and manipulative behaviours with the express purpose of preventing those around her from intervening in her ultimately fatal eating disorder.

The article has provided some key pieces to the puzzle of how such a horrific death could occur in the midst of so many and it is now up to the Coronial Inquest (date yet to be advised) to put the whole jigsaw together.

However, attention does need to be paid to the way Fisher has deftly deflected scrutiny from the role gender identity beliefs played in Vanessa’s decline. While painting an accurate picture of a very seriously unwell teenage girl, Fisher has nevertheless used male pronouns, thus validating one of the delusions that undoubtedly contributed to her death.

Perpetuating a myth

A footnote to the article cites the newspaper’s pronoun policy, as if a company policy can exonerate journalists from their responsibility to report objectively and truthfully.

The NZ Herald editorial code of conduct and ethics says a person who changes gender is transgender and should be referred to by the gender identity with which they identify.

By using male pronouns, Fisher has endorsed all those who blithely affirmed a mentally unwell teen’s make believe that she had changed sex. He quotes an online friend of hers saying Vanessa was “deeply entrenched and trapped in his thinking”, yet Fisher has failed to join the dots and see that part of Vanessa’s illness was taking extreme measures to deflect attention from her eating.

One very effective method she discovered was to claim a ‘boy’ identity which had the double advantage of allowing her to hold at arm’s length anyone who didn’t agree with her and to wear baggy, androgenous clothing so that she could hide in plain sight.

As reported in our last substack, gender dysphoria and eating disorders are two sides of the same coin:

Both anorexia nervosa and gender dysphoria involve body image disorders where aggression is "turned against one’s own self, inward, but also outward, against important others.”

Fisher uncovered messages that “reveal Alex didn’t want to take hormones or have gender-affirming surgery until he was in his 20s and possibly not even then.” Vanessa’s parents report that she expressed doubts about being a boy in their last phone conversations with her. These are hardly evidence of a fixed and irreversible determination to be trans.

No one can know what Vanessa’s final choices would have been because she didn’t get the chance to make them. It is highly presumptuous of the Herald to think it has the right to make those choices for her.

There is nothing solid on which the Herald can base its decision to use male pronouns for a seriously mentally unwell teenager. The newspaper’s policy perpetuates the myth that humans can change sex and, by playing along with that delusion, is entrenching malignant thinking patterns that are harming thousands of young people.

Communication fundamentals

Gender identities are in the mind and are fluid but sex is innate and immutable. It is an established scientific fact that humans cannot change sex. Female DNA cannot be replaced by male DNA, or vice versa. It simply isn’t possible.

At fertilisation, human life begins in a male or a female form and the language to confirm and describe this follows quite naturally. The connection between pronouns and the sex of the person referred to is clearly observed by people all over the world. We need them, indeed rely on them, for effective and accurate communication. The link is observably fundamental to our understanding of reality, language, and each other.

The Herald’s pronoun policy takes a delusional concept and treats it as if it is a fact.

Those who promote the idea that humans can change sex have taken a belief that is contrary to science, asserted it to be true, and permitted no further debate. This arbitrary and unsubstantiated ‘fact’ has then been uncritically applied to all language associated with sex, including pronouns and foundational nouns like, boy, girl, son and daughter.

The obvious lack of integrity in this practice is plain for any reasonable person to see. It is capricious. It cannot be measured or delineated. It defies logic. Changing sex by self-assertion is an incoherent concept, based purely in the minds of those suffering gender distress and their cheerleaders. And the consequences?

The instinctive connection between pronouns and sex becomes ambiguous and obscured. Accurate communication between individuals becomes contorted and fuzzy. Statistical and legal requirements are undermined. Language becomes unreliable and confusing in both public and private settings. Our understanding of reality, language and each other becomes a practical nonsense.

That a national newspaper would proudly collude in such duplicity is disgraceful.

Self-harm comes in many forms

A child psychiatrist is quoted in the article as saying eating disorders and gender issues “were not considered to be linked”. While this opinion no doubt suited Fisher’s purpose - damage control for transgender ideology - there is mounting evidence that it is not correct:

1. The Cass Review (5.26) says, “Of the studies identified in the systematic review, almost 50% reported data on depression and/or anxiety, and close to 20% reported other mental health issues. In short, rates of depression, anxiety and eating disorders were higher in the gender clinic referred population than in the general population.”

2. In a paper written by psychiatrists Korte and Gille and published in 2024 in the journal of the German Society for Sexual Medicine, Sexual Therapy and Sexual Science, the authors identify multiple pathways for the development of trans identity in adolescents, including delayed maturation, non-conformity to gender roles, sexuality problems, and psychiatric conditions such as autism, trauma or personality disorders.

3. The Guidelines on reporting and portrayal of eating disorders, recommended by the Eating Disorder Association of NZ, says (p7), “Limited research shows that people who identify as LGBTIQ+ are at greater risk of developing disordered eating, compared with people who do not identify as LGBTQI+.”

4. Counsellor Fritha Robinson in a new substack titled Fueling Obsessions, compares transgender ideation with the earlier medical scandal of recovered memory syndrome. She says, “It is well-documented that a large number of people who identify as trans have been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which is significant because many of these individuals describe obsessions with the belief that the next medical procedure or treatment will alleviate their distress. Tragically, far too often, this obsession has been affirmed and enabled by mental health providers who confuse helping with enabling.”

Robinson continues:

“The parallels between recovered memories and pediatric gender modification are striking, particularly in the illusion of consensus used to mislead the public into believing the evidence base for both was stronger than it actually was…

A critical component in both scandals is how obsessive patients became and how therapists encouraged and enabled these obsessions. In both the pediatric gender modification and recovered memory scandals, therapists overlooked underlying reasons for distress, focusing instead on fueling obsessions…

I suspect that many therapists are not well-trained in identifying and treating obsessions, and this needs to change. In graduate school, I learned that OCD primarily involved behaviors like excessive hand-washing. I was not taught about the chameleon-like nature of this disorder, how it can manifest differently across time and cultures, or about culture-bound conditions…

We need more training on distinguishing between helping and enabling, as well as how to assess whether we, as therapists, are truly helping or merely enabling.”

For those of us who are sounding the alarm about the exponential rise in children claiming to be the opposite sex, it seems so obvious that Vanessa was enabled to deflect attention from her eating disorder by those who unquestioningly affirmed her ‘boy’ identity. For Vanessa, using opposite sex pronouns was not a harmless courtesy – it was one of the contributors to her death.

That individuals suffer gender dysphoria is heartbreaking indeed. That the delusion is currently affirmed without question or debate reflects badly on everyone who participates and especially on a Health system that otherwise treats all other delusional conditions at the root cause - the mind.

By Fern Hickson