I'm so impressed when someone can take this infuriatingly complex issue and express it in such clear, effective terms anyone who is willing to pay attention can understand.
This was such a thorough, well-thought out and well-written response! I hope it's okay for me to use this as a template for my own comments to WPATH...?
Wow, thank you, thank you!! That letter distills the mountain of facts we’re all immersed in, and points them right where they need to be. Well done, friend. Kudos to you.
Wow, great letter! Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into writing WPATH. I hope they listen. I don't see how they can ignore the facts.
Thank you so much for writing this letter. I have one add: shouldn't we insist that everyone stop asserting that all the trans-identifying young even have this symptom called dysphoria? The teens are self diagnosing as having "gender dysphoria" or ""gender euphoria" and very likely suffer from a mass psychogenic illness (MPI)/mass sociogenic illness (MSI) - see https://bprice.substack.com/p/tiktok-tics-and-mass-sociogenic-illness. Many of them were never even "gender non-conforming". Most of the girls do not so much express that they want to be men as that they "think it would be better than this (becoming a woman)" Must we accept that feeling uncomfortable with puberty, self hatred, and social confusion be labeled"dysphoria"? As Abigail Shier has said "They flee womanhood like a house on fire, their minds fixed on escape, not on any particular destination." Maybe something like "trans self-IDed" should replace dysphoric.
Amazing! The clarity and depth of your arguments are tremendous. I have little hope that your suggestions will be taken into consideration by WPATH, let alone implemented. But you have presented them so concisely and clearly that anyone who reads your letter from a position of objectivity will learn a great deal and be appropriately infuriated.
Special mention goes to the links you provide. The public needs to see them. For instance, the photos and stories of detransitioned women humanize this enormous population and will shock anyone who believes that medical transition is a benign process. Similarly, the article about the long history of the fetishizing of castrated boys by older males is utterly chilling. And so on.
I was also unaware that it is in the best interests of doctors to do as little research as possible so that their procedures can retain "experimental" status, which protects them from liability. Somehow, this cynical loophole needs to be closed.
There is just one topic I wished you had covered in your letter: a comment on the travesty of "informed consent" as another tool doctors use to protect themselves from malpractice in the treatment of adolescents. As you note, the adult brain takes a long time to develop, and not until around the age of 25 can one be said to have a mature pre-frontal cortex, the seat of executive function. It's impossible for a teenager to give informed consent to anything, particularly with respect to decisions that will affect their futures. Doctors can tell a 14-year old that in the future, she may lose the chance to become pregnant or the ability to have an orgasm without extreme pain. But the future is as far away as Pluto when a 14 year-old believes she needs testosterone today or she will die. Detransitioners frequently complain that aside from a form they were handed to sign, they were given a minimum of information or context for anything they were anticipating or feeling. Afterwards, they feel that they've been bamboozled, which, of course, they have.
I hope you will disseminate this letter widely, including to legislators, medical professionals, and educators. I also encourage readers to forward it to everyone they know in order to deepen our understanding of this horrendous phenomenon.
Very, very good. The whole piece is clear, evidence-based, and sympathetic to young people. One sentence stands out for me: "As with all adolescent therapies, the first line of care should be the least restrictive, least invasive, and most directed towards self-acceptance." That this needs to be said approaching the end of the last quarter of the 21st century shows how badly things have gone off the rails. No therapy should start with a bunch of unexplored assumptions -" evidence-based medicine" isn't just a phrase, it is necessary to safeguard the patient.
100% in agreement with you. Well written. I am in the UK where gender ideology is damaging girls more than ever before . “Conversion therapy ban” is being considered. It is poorly defined and makes no sense.
Thank you for so clearly illuminating the breadth and depth of problems with the new SoC8. The trauma-inducing Adolescent section is a step-by-step unfolding of the process for locking a child into an adolescent fantasy and then, based on that fantasy, destroying their body. It’s a clear glimpse into the unscientific world of “gender clinicians,” a term which more and more describes members of a pseudoscience cult. Any document that refers to “trans children” as if this undefined adolescent delusion is a medical thing tells us we are dealing with ideologues. The AMA and the APA have failed children by ceding to this garbage. May they be forever tied to this abominable albatross.
You write so clearly and logically. I hope you can actually get someone to dialog with you there at WPATH.
I'm so impressed when someone can take this infuriatingly complex issue and express it in such clear, effective terms anyone who is willing to pay attention can understand.
Thank you very much.
This was such a thorough, well-thought out and well-written response! I hope it's okay for me to use this as a template for my own comments to WPATH...?
Wow, thank you, thank you!! That letter distills the mountain of facts we’re all immersed in, and points them right where they need to be. Well done, friend. Kudos to you.
Wow, great letter! Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into writing WPATH. I hope they listen. I don't see how they can ignore the facts.
Thank you so much for writing this letter. I have one add: shouldn't we insist that everyone stop asserting that all the trans-identifying young even have this symptom called dysphoria? The teens are self diagnosing as having "gender dysphoria" or ""gender euphoria" and very likely suffer from a mass psychogenic illness (MPI)/mass sociogenic illness (MSI) - see https://bprice.substack.com/p/tiktok-tics-and-mass-sociogenic-illness. Many of them were never even "gender non-conforming". Most of the girls do not so much express that they want to be men as that they "think it would be better than this (becoming a woman)" Must we accept that feeling uncomfortable with puberty, self hatred, and social confusion be labeled"dysphoria"? As Abigail Shier has said "They flee womanhood like a house on fire, their minds fixed on escape, not on any particular destination." Maybe something like "trans self-IDed" should replace dysphoric.
Amazing! The clarity and depth of your arguments are tremendous. I have little hope that your suggestions will be taken into consideration by WPATH, let alone implemented. But you have presented them so concisely and clearly that anyone who reads your letter from a position of objectivity will learn a great deal and be appropriately infuriated.
Special mention goes to the links you provide. The public needs to see them. For instance, the photos and stories of detransitioned women humanize this enormous population and will shock anyone who believes that medical transition is a benign process. Similarly, the article about the long history of the fetishizing of castrated boys by older males is utterly chilling. And so on.
I was also unaware that it is in the best interests of doctors to do as little research as possible so that their procedures can retain "experimental" status, which protects them from liability. Somehow, this cynical loophole needs to be closed.
There is just one topic I wished you had covered in your letter: a comment on the travesty of "informed consent" as another tool doctors use to protect themselves from malpractice in the treatment of adolescents. As you note, the adult brain takes a long time to develop, and not until around the age of 25 can one be said to have a mature pre-frontal cortex, the seat of executive function. It's impossible for a teenager to give informed consent to anything, particularly with respect to decisions that will affect their futures. Doctors can tell a 14-year old that in the future, she may lose the chance to become pregnant or the ability to have an orgasm without extreme pain. But the future is as far away as Pluto when a 14 year-old believes she needs testosterone today or she will die. Detransitioners frequently complain that aside from a form they were handed to sign, they were given a minimum of information or context for anything they were anticipating or feeling. Afterwards, they feel that they've been bamboozled, which, of course, they have.
I hope you will disseminate this letter widely, including to legislators, medical professionals, and educators. I also encourage readers to forward it to everyone they know in order to deepen our understanding of this horrendous phenomenon.
Very, very good. The whole piece is clear, evidence-based, and sympathetic to young people. One sentence stands out for me: "As with all adolescent therapies, the first line of care should be the least restrictive, least invasive, and most directed towards self-acceptance." That this needs to be said approaching the end of the last quarter of the 21st century shows how badly things have gone off the rails. No therapy should start with a bunch of unexplored assumptions -" evidence-based medicine" isn't just a phrase, it is necessary to safeguard the patient.
100% in agreement with you. Well written. I am in the UK where gender ideology is damaging girls more than ever before . “Conversion therapy ban” is being considered. It is poorly defined and makes no sense.
Check out assessment, also, which seems to live in a separate world from both the adolescent section and reality.
Thank you for so clearly illuminating the breadth and depth of problems with the new SoC8. The trauma-inducing Adolescent section is a step-by-step unfolding of the process for locking a child into an adolescent fantasy and then, based on that fantasy, destroying their body. It’s a clear glimpse into the unscientific world of “gender clinicians,” a term which more and more describes members of a pseudoscience cult. Any document that refers to “trans children” as if this undefined adolescent delusion is a medical thing tells us we are dealing with ideologues. The AMA and the APA have failed children by ceding to this garbage. May they be forever tied to this abominable albatross.