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We Do Not Consent
A Report by K. Yang in Partnership with Cortland County Residents
This is not a “left” or a “right” issue. All people who are concerned about the health, safety, and well being of current and future generations have a vested interest in this conversation.
Adult taxpayers do not consent to publicly funded institutions, organizations, and parks being used to promote and host a so-called “family friendly” and therefore “all-ages” drag show. Our consent was neither asked for nor granted.
We do not consent to this use of public funds and spaces being used to promote a sexualized form of adult entertainment featuring adult performers whose social media pages proudly label them as burlesque dancers and display nudity and lewdness that is 100% not appropriate for children.
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As tax-paying adults, our consent is being violated by the forcing of this event onto our public communal spaces. The Cortland LGBTQ Center, which is funded exclusively by the New York State Department of Health, has refused to find a more appropriate form of family friendly entertainment.
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Drag is
Not For Children
Photos posted 10 years ago in 2013 on the Cortland LGBTQ Center Facebook page show a drag performance where the “tucked” genitalia of men impersonating females can be seen. The photos of the drag show represented on the Cortland LGBTQ Center Facebook page are absolutely neither “family friendly” nor appropriate for “all ages”.
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What qualifications do the drag performers invited by the Cortland LGBTQ Center have to teach young children about consent? Unqualified strangers should not be teaching these topics to children. Conversations about consent absolutely imply sex & sexual behavior –simply search “consent” on your phone and look for the top results.
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Program Director Doughty’s bio on the Cortland LGBTQ Center’s website contains the grammatically incorrect sentence, “They just bought a house with his partners.” The “S'' making “partners” plural may be indicative of a polyamorous lifestyle. Doughty further describes himself as “passionate about curating a space for all kinds of queer community.”
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Instead, on Jul 13, 2023, Program Director Mike Doughty of New Jersey doubled down, insisting on a recorded phone call with a woman concerned about the “consent” element of the show, “I have my trust in my queens” to teach the children of Cortland County about consent. Taxpaying adults say no to this type of performance in a public space, and organizers continue to violate our consent, then how can they also teach children about respecting consent?
“They make it very clear however their act is going to go, of like, you can only touch us and we can only touch you under these parameters…
consent can change from song to song…consent can be revoked
like at a bar show if someone gets really handsy”
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–CORTLAND LGBTQ PROGRAM DIRECTOR MIKE DOUGHTY 7/13/23
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We Have Not
Been Consulted
As early as June 28th the library became aware that members of the community were concerned about the use of the public institution of the Cortland Free Library and their logo being used on fliers promoting a drag show to children. On Friday, June 30th a Cortland mother asked CFL Director Jen Graney –of Honeoye– to hold a meeting for community members to voice their concerns and have questions answered about the library's involvement in promoting an event that includes an all ages drag show.
On July 6, 2023 CFL Director Jen Graney responded by email that the library was unwilling to hold a meeting for community members to voice their concerns to the CFL Board of Directors stating, “that is not something the board will be doing at this time.” Graney also stated, “we do see ourselves as a community partner with the [Cortland LGBTQ] Center” adding, “We trust the Center to organize an event that is positive and uplifting for the community and we will be moving forward with our involvement as planned.”
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Chad Felix Greene, drag queen and author of Surviving Gender: My Journey Through Gender Dysphoria says, “I love drag. I have done drag. Many of my favorite celebrities are drag queens.”
However, Greene goes on to explain, “By its very nature, drag is already unsuitable for children, based on the culture it flourished in and the way the artform communicates to its audience. It barely translates outside of the LGBTQ cultural bubble. The more you remove these elements, the less it resembles drag and the more it looks like advocacy for something kids just shouldn't be exposed to. You take away the cursing, the sexual innuendo, the revealing clothes, the provocative dress and the sharp political commentary, and you are left with an adult man in a dress mocking women and trying to convince children he is an ambassador for an entire community. It just doesn't work. It cannot work.”
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Redefining
“Family Friendly”
According to their mission statement, The Cortland LGBTQ Center “seeks to create a visible and empowered community.” There are many talented and creative lesbian, gay, and bisexual people living in Cortland and the Central New York region. Instead of promoting a sexualized art form as children’s entertainment, why not hire LGB people from the community who are musicians, poets, athletes, storytellers, artists, and artisans of crafts that are age appropriate and truly family friendly?
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The Cortland LGBTQ Center is a division of Cortland Prevention Resources which is itself a division of Family & Children’s Counseling Services of Cortland County (FCS). All three agencies have 501 C3 tax exempt status.
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“Puberty Blockers” Are Not Safe,
Not Reversible
“Resources for LGBTQ+ People” hosted on the Cortland LGBTQ Center’s website directs members of the community to an article about “The Importance of Gender Affirming Care for Transgender and Gender Expansive Youth”. The article recommends “puberty suppressing hormones'' for children ages 10-14.
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“Puberty suppressing hormones” aka “Puberty Blockers” are offered as a solution for children who are confused about sex, gender, and sexuality. The idea is that these drugs will “put a pause on puberty” so a child can decide if they want to “transition” –medically and surgically alter their body in an attempt to impersonate that of the opposite sex. Advocates of “gender affirming care” and “trans rights” boldly claim that so-called “puberty blockers” are "completely safe & reversible!" This is simply not true.
Lupron –a drug commonly used to treat adult males in the end-stages of prostate cancer– is being given to girls to disrupt their normal puberty. Lupron has shattered the health and lives of girls it has affected including severe joint pain, osteoporosis, and compromised immune systems leading to a variety of serious health problems.
Other drugs frequently prescribed to block puberty are being used off label and have not been approved by the FDA for the purpose of interrupting puberty.
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Informed Consent
Not Possible
There is not a single long-term study to demonstrate the safety or efficacy of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for transgender-believing youth.
So-called “transition” for children is experimental, and therefore, parents cannot provide informed consent, nor can minors provide consent for these unnecessary interventions that frequently cause irreversible damage including the loss of sexual function and sterilization.
Currently, girls as young as age 13 years are receiving double mastectomies, and boys as young as 16 and 17 years of age are being surgically castrated, undergoing penectomies and/or having pelvic wounds created to simulate female vaginas. These life-altering and functionality-destroying surgeries are irreversible. No child has the cognitive capacity to consent to such procedures, and no parent has the right to consent to such debilitating non-medically necessary procedures.
Girls and boys deserve to be taught to value, love, and accept their bodies. No child is born in the wrong body and no person can change from one sex to another. Teaching a child that they can and should medicalize their healthy bodies, in a futile attempt to become the opposite sex based on temporary feelings experienced during puberty, is abusive, promotes disembodiment, and creates negative self-esteem.
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Reinforcing Sexism & Stereotypes
Sex does not change based on conformity or nonconformity to sex roles and stereotypes. If a male child does not conform 100% to stereotypes about masculinity, or if a girl child doesn’t conform 100% to stereotypes about femininity, that doesn’t mean that they are “meant to be” the opposite sex. Yet saying so naturalizes and invisibilizes harmful and limiting stereotypes about the male and female sex and reinforces sexism.
Suicide Myth
Long-term data about the use of puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and so-called “sex-reassignment” surgeries in adults shows that individuals who do go through medical “transition” kill themselves at a rate 19 times greater than the general population.
Swedish child and adolescent psychiatrist Sven Roman –who is no conservative– has been clear about his assessment of the evidence: “There is currently no scientific support for gender-corrective treatment to reduce the risk of suicide.”
Psychologists Dr. Michael Bailey (Northwestern University) and Dr. Ray Blanchard (University of Toronto) agree saying, the “best scientific evidence suggests that gender transition is not necessary to prevent suicide. . . . There is no persuasive evidence that gender transition reduces gender dysphoric children’s likelihood of killing themselves.”
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Tran$ Agenda?
In 2021 The UCLA Williams School of Law reported 1.6 million children 13 and up claimed a “trans identity” in the US. These numbers are attributed to children feeling “safe” to come out, and “better data collection,” but in reality, it’s indicative of widespread social engineering and indoctrination.
According to Global Market Insights Inc. the global “sex reassignment” market was worth 622 million US dollars in 2022 with projected markets reaching nearly 2 billion by 2030. This market demands more children adopt a “trans” identity. If they don’t, the market will cease to exist.
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Girls Are Not “Cisgender”
When asked, “what is a cisgender girl?” Family & Children’s Counseling Services of Cortland County CEO Hoeschele was unable to clearly articulate an answer.
Multiple fliers on the Cortland Prevention Resources website and Facebook page advertise a so-called, “girls circle” which CPR holds at the Cortland Youth Bureau. According to the fliers, “All girls, cisgender, and transgender, are welcome!” The duplicitously titled “girls circle” offered by Cortland Prevention Resources is not a circle for girls –female children– it is a circle that includes boys under the auspices that these boys “identify as girls”.
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On July 11, 2023 in front of the Cortland Free Library the CEO of FCS, Lisa Hoeschele insisted to community members that drag is family friendly. When questioned if burlesque is appropriate for children, she refused to answer. The insistence that drag can be family friendly and appropriate for children is a redefinition of the social contract of what it means for something to be “family friendly”. We, the people of Cortland County, do not consent to a re-definition of “family friendly” to include adult entertainment in public spaces for children.
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Girls are not an identity. Girls are not a costume or concept to attempt to impersonate or subsume. Girls and boys deserve dignity and private sex-separate spaces where they are taught to honor themselves for who they are and to honor the opposite sex for their unique qualities.
Females as a sex class did not consent to being re-defined as “cis women” and “cisgender girls”. According to the Cortland LGBTQ Center’s website, “cisgender people” are people “whose biological sex matches their gender identity”. Women and girls do not “identify” as women and girls, we ARE women and girls. We are the female sex class, we make up half the world, and women have given birth to all people living in this world.
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“Cis” is a derogatory term used to incite violence against females. On June 25, 2023 I was followed through Washington Square Park in NYC by two men –one who “identifies as a woman”. The two men repeatedly called me a “cis b*tch” before another man kicked me in my side. Yet another man can be seen in the footage kicking me from behind before an entire mob of violent people begins hitting, kicking, and spitting at me. One man pulled out a visible taser which could be heard crackling in the video. The word “cis” was applied to a woman by men before an act of mob violence occurred.
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“Gender identity" has no basis in physical, material reality. It is not tangibly real. “Gender identity” is a concept and it is based completely on one's self-reported feelings which are subject to change. Replacing biological sex categories with identities based on feelings is illogical and has resulted in the denial of sex-based provisions for females in our bathrooms, locker rooms, change rooms, sports, prisons, and rape-crisis shelters.
Redefining girls to include boys and women to include men depoliticizes what it means to be a female in a country where women did not receive the right to equal education until Title IX in 1972. Of course, Title IX is now being severely undermined by the redefinition of women to include men. The insertion of “gender identity” into policies and laws on a federal and international level is jeopardizing women’s hard fought for and won rights not just in America or in the West but across the world in places where women and girls are subject to extreme forms of sex-based violence like female genital mutilation and female breast ironing.
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