If you rely only on the mainstream media to keep you informed about the transgender issue, you’re only getting propaganda. The website 4th Wave Now, for parents who are concerned about “the medicalization of gender-atypical youth,” is a great source of alternative news, scientific and otherwise. It’s not an anti-trans website per se, but rather focuses on the transgender phenomenon among kids and minors.

If you follow 4th Wave Now, either on the site itself or on its must-follow Twitter account, it’s like a doorway into some bizarre alternative universe. All this gender-nonconforming happy-clappy stuff that gets puffed in the mainstream media does not remotely tell the full story.

Via 4WN, here’s a 2015 “parenting” story from an Australian newspaper, about how far parents of trans children will go to accommodate their kids. Note well that this is a story pitched in praise of these parents going the extra mile. Get this:

Every day, 11-year-old Jake* runs to the letterbox to check if the postman has been. For four weeks he’s been waiting for a parcel that seems as if it will never come.

Of course these days you can order anything online, but this isn’t like any other purchase his mum, Ellie, has ever made. “It appears perhaps that our order has been held up in customs,” Ellie says. “That’s something else that just makes me aware of how weird and how covert this could seem to others.” Even though Ellie desperately wants to help her son, she is the first to admit that it has been an emotional and mental challenge to “try to imagine what it may be like to need this so much.”

What does this 11-year-old female need so much that she obsessively checks the mailbox? Why might it seem “weird”? Read on:

The second type of item in the parcel will be a soft, washable “packer,” that gets sewn into underwear to create the outward appearance of male genitalia. “It’s desperately important for him in order to feel comfortable and pass [as a boy] all the time,” Ellie says.

That’s right: a fake penis for this 11-year-old girl to put in her pants. More:

This issue does have a lighthearted side, though. Reflecting on her search to find her son appropriate products, Ellie describes her situation as “tragicomic.” “I’m an adult, married heterosexual woman who doesn’t have a child with a penis,” she says, “I don’t really know what children’s penises look like and yet I’ve had really explicit conversations with strangers about children’s penises.”

A “lighthearted” side? Yeah, there’s nothing that brings about a chuckle more than considering the confusion of a mom searching for a child-sized fake wang for her daughter.

4WN looked into TranZwear, a company that has an, um, pediatric division marketing to trans children. From the TranZwear website, here’s a description of a tiny silicone penis and testicles for your preschooler: the “Extra Small Newt-silicone packer” (a “packer” is the fake This is a screenshot from the order page — which, you are warned for NSFW purposes, has a visual depiction of the silicone teeny weenie.

Here’s the “Best Boy Bump” for even smaller female children who want to present as males (also NSFW):

Understand: this company sells dildos for little girls who want to appear to be boys, and the Australian newspaper wrote about this as a wonderful service.

Why do I bring up this 2015 story now? Because 4th Wave Now re-upped it as a reminder of what people will accept as normal and even good. The group said they were sure that highlighting a San Francisco company that sells fake penises to four-year-old girls would be a story that woke people up to how depraved and deviant this stuff can be. But no. As 4WN tweeted yesterday:

When it comes to transition, nothing is ever too much. No bridge is too far. Above all, it speaks to the success of the Suicide or Transition doctrine spread by gender clinicians around the world–but particularly in the US, Ground Zero for “affirmative care.” — 4thWaveNow (@4th_WaveNow) January 3, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

As far as I can tell, The New York Times has not yet written a puff piece on pediatric penis packers, but give them time. This is a headline from an October 22, 2018 piece:

When the Times does get around to doing the piece, it will be to valorize manufacturers of prosthetic tot todgers as Saving Our Precious Children From Suicide, and to demonize people who object (if they are acknowledged at all) as haters. You’ll see.

When your little girl comes home from Drag Queen Story Hour with ideas about exploring her own gender identity, take comfort in knowing that retailers are there to meet all your family’s fake pediatric penis needs.

UPDATE: Regular readers will not be surprised by the handles of the people in the comments thread who defend this stuff, but the arguments they use are worth noting. So far, we have:

1. This is extreme and no big deal.

2. It’s capitalism’s fault.

3. What adults do is worse.

4. People who object to this are hypocrites.

5. Those parents are exercising their right to do what’s best for their kid, just like the rest of us.

6. A prosthesis is not the same thing as a dildo.

7. “I don’t see what my neighbor’s gay marriage has to do with me” (recycled from 2004; replace “neighbor’s gay marriage” with “neighbor’s pre-schooler daughter’s silicone penis”).

8. I don’t see this in my daily life, so it must not be real.

UPDATE.2: Hey deniers, just ignore the fact that a Democratic US Congresswoman flew the transgender pride flag outside her office. I guess that didn’t happen, given how this is extreme, no big deal, and we don’t see this in our daily life, so it must not be a real thing. Also, prostheses aren’t dildos, so if the Democratic Congresswoman affixes a prosthetic penis to the door of her office in solidarity with pre-pubescent FtM trans children, don’t you hypocritical Republicans DARE call it a dildo.

UPDATE.3: Why should MtF trans little boys be left out? Here’s “Tuck Buddies”: underwear that allows a boy who thinks he’s a girl to hide his junk: