A small fringe of radical transdelusion activists, stemming from the Harry Benjamin Association, is seizing control in New Zealand to crush resistance. In 2013, these Americans teamed up with the declining gay-lib activism in San Francisco and New York, the breeding grounds of political radicalization. We see them spreading deeply delusional worldviews on the Internet. Then they quietly ooze their way into the political arena where, after a brief slander campaign, the most illogical notions in the history of the human race are being carved into the stone of legislation, immutable and ever-lasting. They are overhauling all sane and logical thought in secular society. Their next move is the church.

In our fact-checking on the NZ Bill against therapy, we see a massive Internet campaign to spread fake news on the World Wide Web and social media. Everything is made to look scientific, authoritative, and helpful.

The ideology behind the bill can best be demonstrated by reviewing the website called “The Sexuality, Poverty, and Law Programme”, reaching out to, among others, counselors of faith. The site offers “toolkits” and “modules”. Little do unsuspecting visitors know that they are being dragged into a deluded topsy-turvy world where common sense is relegated to the dustbin. How do they do it?

One module on their website (spl.ids.ac.uk), aims for people who adhere to religion; it is called “Sexuality, Gender Diversity, and Faith”. What do they say and why is it pseudo-science?

The site reads:

“This module aims to offer information and debunk dangerous myths around sexuality and gender. It explains how gender and sexuality can be understood along a spectrum.

• • In every society, there are dominant ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality. The dominant idea about gender is usually that there are only two genders (the way we identify or are told to behave), linked to only two sexes (the physical characteristics of our bodies) – male and female. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘gender binary system’.  

  • But there are many more than two genders and many more than two sexes. People have different gender and sexual identities that can change over the course of their lives. 

  • This two-gender system not only insists that there are only two genders but it is also harmful because it often promotes a gender hierarchy in which women are viewed as subordinate to men.

  • The gender and sexuality binary systems reinforce stereotypes that harm everyone in society. In understanding gender and sexuality along a spectrum, faith leaders can explore opportunities to challenge harmful stereotypes and better reflect the full nature of the human experience.  

The prose is deeply biased. We will analyze it with a technique called the “Micro-examination Of The Opening Sentences”, contrived by the Dutch psychiatrist Prof. Dr. Jan Bastiaans (1917-1997) from Leiden University. The American author Milo Frank said more or less the same in his bestseller “How to get your message across in 30 seconds or less”.

Professor Bastiaans postulated that the whole psycho-therapeutic effort is already defined in the first minute of the therapeutic encounter. That single frame of time determines and restricts the outcome. (So do the first 30 seconds of a blind date, come to think of it).

If followed carefully, close-reading is a brilliant strategy that saves every therapist from wasting hours of intake procedures and record building. “It is all there in the first five breaths”, so he said. As an MD, I have been trained in that technique. Let us give it a shot.

Before clicking to enroll for this “toolkit for the faithful”, you are already informed (see above) that

(1) “myths” circulate,

(2) they are “dangerous”,

(3) there are “many more than two sexes”,

(4) people are being “told to behave”,

(5) being male or female is “only a gender binary system” as though there would be other ones

(6) “gender identity can change over life”,

(7) “this is harmful”,

(8) “women are viewed as subordinate to men due to binary systems”.

Eight subliminal messages and hence eight paragraphs for this installment. These statements are leading the way for legislators to agree with prison sentences for unbelievers in New Zealand under the current Bill. They paint the picture, they set the scene.

Let’s put the spotlight on modern-day brainwashing because the train of thought in this module lies at the core of the entire NZ Bill.

1. We are told: “There are many more than two sexes.“

This is where the lunacy starts. The advocates of this phrase need to go to prison themselves because they are coming with state-approved violence for anyone in NZ who dares to oppose this craziness. Five years for a start, so they plead with this Bill.

And in due time, more prison sentences will no doubt be needed since the resistance to the nonsense will certainly not be stifled in the cold and damp prison cells of the NZ mountain range. It gets really cold up there, snowy even. But die-hards who hold on to normality will not be silenced. The bill is alarming because it is not the end-all to crush resistance, it is the start.

In this “toolkit” on the Internet, we observe the writers introducing an Alice-In-Wonderland enchanted feeling. The phrase “more than two sexes” is a rabbit hole. You are tumbling upside-down through a cramped cognitive tunnel to join a topsy-turvy sect. There is no one at the controls and the captain on deck is as mad and paranoid as a hatter.

I once saw a movie starring Humphrey  Bogart about a paranoid captain on a submarine. In Wikipedia, we read:

“The Caine Mutiny (1954), directed by Edward Dmytryk. With Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray. When a U.S. Naval captain shows signs of mental instability that jeopardizes the ship, the first officer relieves him of command and faces court-martial for mutiny.”

Well, we see this movie now each day unfolding itself onto us. It is called “Mutiny at the Gender Clinic (2021), directed by Job Berendsen”. Three interns, who are labeled “conversion therapists”, are being dragged to court for mutiny, for leaving the ranks, for daring to contradict outright lunacy, as happened in “The Caine Mutiny” movie. The gay-lib jailer is there, menacingly rattling the keys. He gazes at them as they are dragged to a place called Robben Island off the shores of NZ. Down-under used to be a Convict place of Hell two centuries ago. It is now being repopulated by “conversion therapists”. They are the new creed of inmates.

Like in a mirage or a dream, especially when you have had too much to drink and have fallen asleep on the bed or couch, you have this blurring of experience. Boundaries are weakened, definitions seem to be intellectually questioned, it is like an LSD trip. Pretty colors, nice strange music, and thousands of sexes marching around, each one in his or her own right. “I am sex #47. Who are you, sweetheart?”, so you mutter.

Did you know that Facebook has come to acknowledge 52 genders at enrollment? You can even click on “non-applicable” when asked for your gender. Fancy having no gender at all.

Mind you, I have never met such a non-gendered person. Have you? Where are all those individuals that Facebook is accommodating?

2. We are told: “Dangerous”

To say that opposite states of mind are “dangerous”, right from the start even before you enroll, is what we psychiatrists call fear-mongering. The writer or webmaster of those words is provoking fear and distrust. He has cast a shadow of a doubt.

Alfred Hitchcock, a British film director, made a movie on that subject: “Shadow Of A Doubt (1943)” demonstrating the damaging consequences of casting doubts on other people.

“A young girl, overjoyed when her favorite uncle comes to visit the family, slowly begins to suspect that he is, in fact, the “Merry Widow” killer sought by the authorities”.

And every viewer is enticed to go along with the suspicions. A brilliant movie, the director was ahead of his times.

“A young man, overjoyed when his favorite uncle comes to visit the family, slowly begins to suspect that he is, in fact, a “Conversion Therapist” sought by the authorities.”

3. We are told “Normality is a myth”

When you are in a state of delusion, normality changes into a mirage, a faraway subject never to be reached, a fairy story from long ago. Over time, politics has often deteriorated, reframing reality to absurd degrees.

We have been subjected to extremist political mistakes persecuting the unbelievers like the Catholic Inquisition in 1492, the Protestant Storm on religious statues in Holland 1566, the right-wing Nazi Regime in 1933, the left-wing Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966. And now this.

What once started in the 19^th century as an effort to indulge in, and enjoy, own homosexual feelings without guilt feelings, is in the 21^st century morphing into an Inquisition in its own right. We see youths led to kneel like a priest at the playing of the Anthem, to wave rainbow flags in the fashion that Crosses were once marched around, and to clinch a fist in defiance against all evil, much like the Nazis brought the crowds to raise the palm of their hand and feel good about it.

And now, president Joe Biden shows the next generation how to defy all that America ever stood for by kneeling during ceremonies where you were supposed to be united in standing proud. Is he hailing a Divided States of America, the DSA?

When normality is declared a myth, anything goes. From that moment on, all the ground underneath you is being washed away like in a flash flood, like the crevice caused by an earthquake splitting the land. When normality is declared a myth, then psychiatry ceases to exist. What paranoia chills the soul of these radical activists?

4. We read “People are being told to behave”

Note the victim stance behind this phrase. Note the self-description of a poor, powerless little girl/boy, totally at the mercy of the waves, and the winds, and the tides, and the storms. Poor little me. Note the paranoid delusion that there would be these powerful individuals who overwhelmingly would be pouncing on insignificant little infants who are misunderstood.

You can get away with this stance at kindergarten, but can it still be your narrative as an adult? Surely, you have come a long way since then? Surely you have become the master of your universe? Surely you are in command of your life, love, work, and aging?

Those who haven’t, suffer from what we call “neurotic symptoms”, that is to say, that their on-look on life and behavior is rooted in, and is an extension of, undigested youth predicaments. Is your fellow man/woman still appearing to be menacingly leaning over you like skyscrapers do when you first visit New York?

5. We are told “being male or female is “only a gender binary system”

Only? The beauty of it! You see, way down in your chromosomes, there happen to be two sex genes #23 doing their thing: an X gene or two (in all of us) and a Y gene (in some of us, like me). Mendel discovered all this long ago. Let me as a doctor walk you through this, listen up:

A combination of two X genes makes the cell (and hence the organism) female and a combination of an X gene and a Y gene: male. What? You do not like the word “male” and “female”? Hmm, but this is science, irrespective of your feelings. Feelings do not define you; feelings are merely a product of the mind, of brain activity.

Feelings about being a man can change, but being male itself cannot. You are male if you possess an X and a Y gene. End of story. You can have emotions and opinions, but they constitute software. The hardware is hardwired in genetic proteins: you are male. And no neurotic predicament can change that truth.

Challenging or denying the significance of hardware as these activists behind this website and the NZ proposal do, ultimately means that words have lost all meaning. We no longer share a common truth and worldview.

In no way, then, can this proposed bill seek to be taken to heart by people who know what they are talking about. The only way for activists is to enforce persecution of unbelievers and a reign of terror like we have seen in history last century and in times before that.

6. We are informed “This is harmful”

An alleged “harm” issue pops up, time and time again, when reading radical-activist prose. Where does it stem from? It is a projection. Persons who hate their own body to the extent that they want all the natural characteristics to be removed, are harming themselves, their future lives, their marriage, and their sense of belonging. The more painful this realization is, the more the person strives to get rid of the pain. The most common subconscious move to achieve this is to project the unwanted feelings onto others and to convince oneself that it is other people who are causing the pain.

If unwanted feelings are projected successfully, meaning: if the person can fool himself sufficiently, then a feeling of relief, of being cleansed, of wholeness, is achieved, and inner turmoil is resolved.

The greater the inner turmoil, the greater the need becomes to project, to deny, to ignore, to intellectualize, and to rationalize the inner struggle until it disappears from sight. Now it is the other person, the surroundings, society even, which is to blame.

Every psychotherapist who works with neurotic clients is bound to stumble on this protective shield that the troubled individual has fabricated as a coping mechanism.

Woe is you when these troubled minds find each other, cling together, unite in harmony, and take it upon themselves to finally settle the score with those other persons, with the surroundings, and with society. In this fashion, the Harry Benjamin Foundation was born. And by hijacking the radical gay-lib institutes who as of 2010 are running out of gas after legalizing gay marriage, the Harry Benjamins are hailed as the newest branch of comrades in need of support.

Meaning: you have a problem if you cling to concepts of normality. They wish to remove you from sight and the Internet. The best strategy for us is to copy their form of warfare but then the other way around. After all, it works. You cannot reason with them because they are emotionally and neurotically driven. They are propelled by inner motives that few non-professionals can fathom.

Nevertheless, they are harming themselves, and we need to step in to prevent them from harming generations to come.

7. We are informed “women are viewed as subordinate to men due to binary systems”

Well, in my family history, my father was more of a hen-pecked husband doing all he could to please his insatiably dissatisfied wife than a tyrant oppressing a subordinated sex slave. Poor guy, how I pitied him. So, the phrase is purely a matter of opinion. We see this worldview one-sidedly lying at the heart of the feminist movement.

With the coming of the new millennium, the radicalization of feminists has become problematic, leading to toxic feminism. There is much work for feminists to do when taking a good long look at oneself. That goes for everyone, of course, but feminists are no exception. We cannot go along with a female privilege when it comes to reviewing one’s behavior.

And even if perhaps at some stage in history in a certain social context, women are viewed by some as subordinated, it is overkill to state that the bodily difference between having a XX gene pattern and an XY gene pattern itself is the problem. Women are viewed WITHIN this difference, but not as an inevitable consequence OF that difference. It is delusional to think otherwise.

To say that a binary system makes women subordinated means that equality can never be reached. This is not a place that our society should want to go.

Feelings are software, my bodily hardware is hardware. And I love every second of it. Nope, don’t need no surgeon to feel good about myself. Not me.

8. We are told “stereotypes harm everyone in society”

Note once again the “harm” angle stemming from the need to choose the victim role. The views of others would be “stereotypes”. The radicalized activists claim that people who uphold opposing views are harming themselves. This is a condescending attitude.

By attacking others, the writers are doing themselves a great favor by diverting attention away from the own person.

The question is, what are they doing themselves and what balanced weighing of arguments does the Bill present us? We see that the harm that activists inflict on others, is not part of the equation. In the whole NZ bill, there is not a single mention of the possibility of “harm” done by our radicalized emancipation colleagues. It is not written into the proposal, it is not mentioned in the footnotes.

We observe no introspection. No activist is taking a good long look at him/herself. A sense of perfection abounds and self-backpatting is the way to go. The gulags of the Outback are the destination for the unbelievers.

“Lock ‘em up”, as the premier of the AU state of Victoria cries over and over again: “for once and for all”.

He is from the Labour Party. And to him, we ask: are you quite sure you are not falling prey to ideological mistakes like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Xi, and other 20^th century ideological leaders made before you? For once and for all, you say? Where have we heard that before?

Conclusion

This bill is deeply flawed and many persons have written to the legislators to point that out.

With so much discussion on a subject brought forward only very recently from abroad with not the slightest consensus in society, isn’t it far more appropriate for parliament to withdraw, to hold your horses, and to leave all talks about emancipation remaining where they were?

Why not allow emancipation issues to be a never-ending discourse for all, a free discussion among free individuals in a free society? With no one’s hands tied behind their backs? With no cold-hearted slabs of stone, stealthily engraved to stifle debate for eternity?

To be continued

Job Berendsen, MD.