F irst, there was the news of Bruce Jenner “transitioning” to become Caitlyn Jenner. Then, there was the news of Target permitting transgender people to use fitting rooms and restrooms aligned with their gender identity, not their biological sex. Then, there was the news of Lia Thomas, the male transgender swimmer who competed for the female swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania.

The latest madness is the news of a teenage girl who identifies as a cat — the latest example of how self-identification is not necessarily an expression of the healthiest or best thing for someone who needs mental help.

A teenage girl from Melbourne, Australia, identifies as a cat, according to multiple news stories. Even more disturbing is the fact that the private school she attends is willing to acknowledge her feline self-identification and permits her to act like a cat in school — so long as her behavior doesn’t disrupt the class, according to the Herald Sun.

According to reports, the girl allegedly is “phenomenally bright” and does not speak during school hours. Yet her intelligence level doesn’t change the fact that mental health issues require treatment, not derision. Everyone should be sympathetic to her plight, but people should not be enabling her delusions.

Human civilization has to put a halt to these destructive behaviors. The inmates cannot continue to run the asylum. At some point, even the wokest of the woke have to see the calamitous problems they have created.

The school reportedly said in a statement that its students were demonstrating “a range of issues from mental health, anxiety or identity issues.” It’s a safe bet that the girl identifying as a cat fits this description.

“Our approach is always unique to the student and we will take into account professional advice and the wellbeing of the student,” the Australian school said in a statement.

An Iowa newspaper reported some students in a small town identified as cats. Rumors began to surface that these students were permitted to use litter boxes in bathrooms to accommodate them, but the district’s superintendent debunked such stories.

But this story is real. This is the world we live in today, and this is the danger created by normalizing transgender delusions in young students who may get over it. The enabling of this behavior is halping people with legitimate mental health issues get applause instead of the medical help they truly need. We should all be sympathetic to these people, which is why we should not enable any of their delusions.

However, by constantly celebrating their decisions as brave, holding parades, allowing them to compete in sporting events with biological women, naming them “women of the year,” or even acknowledging “gender identity” as something more than junk science, society merely reinforces disturbing behaviors. Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief and director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Johns Hopkins University Hospital (and current distinguished professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences), echoed this sentiment when discussing the medical field and transgender people.

McHugh deemed the current treatment of transgender children “reckless and irresponsible.” He also argued against allowing children to transition and equated the process to “frontal lobotomies.” He also stated that there would be negative long-term consequences of allowing children hormonal treatment and transitioning.

“[Doctors] don’t have evidence that [the treatment] will be the right one,” McHugh said in 2019. “Many people are doing what amounts to an experiment on these young people without telling them it’s an experiment. You need evidence for that, and this is a very serious treatment.”

Clearly, identifying as a cat is absurd and indicative of a serious personal problem. Ultimately, when you allow people to transition or “identify” as something they are not, by enabling these mental health issues instead of trying to resolve them, the natural progression is for people to start identifying legitimately as other things, such as cats. As usual, left-wing ideologues have created larger societal problems by refusing to address the main issue. It is long past time to start rejecting this nonsense.