Communicate With Colleges

I was motivated to write to senior leaders and faculty at my child’s college this month. It emerged as a “must do” as we have a whisper of hope that he may be desisting from a five+-year pursuit and adoption of a trans identity. This merged with my immersion in desistance stories and the reported requirement that the Cleveland Clinic and Texas Children’s Hospital provide care for desisters and detransitioners as part of the settlement with the DOJ’s investigations into allegations that they submitted false billings to public and private payers to secure insurance coverage for pediatric sex-rejecting procedures.

My background is in higher education, and it has been satisfying to use my professional experience to pursue this advocacy. I emailed my child’s major faculty, the Provost and the President. As expected, the provost referred me to the senior student affairs officer with whom I spoke on the phone and with whom I am working to keep the conversation going. I intend to write to members of the Board of Trustees as well.

I used a pseudonym in my communications because I’m afraid to do anything that would jeopardize our tenuous connection with our child. And everything feels like anything right now. I could also easily imagine how the exchange could negatively impact my employability if revealed.

I’m deeply aware of how higher education was a catalyst for gender ideology and how the ideology has profoundly captured higher education. And there is value in being a canary in the coalmine with the leaders of these institutions. Especially when our children are in their stewardship. Because I’m afraid to do anything more than tell my son how much I love him and find opportunities to just be in his orbit, I’m exercising my compulsion to do with advocacy actions. I offer excerpts from the letters I wrote to anyone else with that interest.

President and Provost

I’ve searched (Name of Institution’s) website and find no resources or visibility for students who are desisting or pursuing detransition from socially identifying as the opposite sex, or taking cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers, or undergoing surgery to modify their appearance.

• Please share with me the resources and support (Name of Institution) provide to students who are desisting from identifying as “trans.”

• Please share with me the evidence-based sources informing (Name of Institution’s) “gender affirming care” and resources for students pursuing a “trans” identity.

• Please share with me the resources and support (Name of Institution) provide to faculty and staff to support students who are desisting and pursuing detransition from identifying as “trans.”

I hope that someone of your intellect and compassion is deeply questioning of gender ideology. Given your academic background as a Name the Academic Discipline, I expect that you are a sex realist and understand there are two immutable biological sexes. I anticipate that as you review the lack of credible evidence for sex-change practices you are actively concerned about the irreversible medical harm and fully understand that the drugs are damaging, the surgeries unsafe, ineffective, unethical, and unjustifiable. As a result, I would expect the leadership of Name of Institution to prioritize ensuring highly visible and expert resources for students who are engaged in an off-ramp from their pursuit of a cosmetically and chemically induced alternative gender presentation.

*At my child’s institution both men in these positions came to their leadership responsibilities through STEM disciplines.

Senior Student Affairs Officer

I understand that qualified staff at the Health and Counseling Center provide individualized assessment and care and that providers make treatment decisions in confidence with students. My concern, however, is not about the clinical care provided during appointments. Rather, it is about the information the Center chooses to make publicly available on its website.

The website includes numerous and explicit resources intended to support students who identify as transgender. My question is whether the Center has considered providing comparable publicly available resources for students who are questioning a transgender identity or considering detransition.

Does Student Affairs believe there is value in making resources for these students visible on the website, just as resources for students pursuing transition are currently visible?

If the decision not to include such resources is intentional, I would appreciate understanding the rationale. If Student Affairs has established criteria for determining which external resources are appropriate to include on the website, I would also appreciate learning what those criteria are.

My interest is in understanding how Student Affairs approaches the inclusion of resources for the full range of students navigating questions related to gender identity.

I know that inclusion and belonging help to ensure that students thrive and do well academically. I also know that Student Affairs professionals work extremely hard to ensure all students see themselves reflected in the resources available, especially those who are most underrepresented or at risk. Unfortunately, nothing on Name of Institution’s website suggests that students desisting or pursuing detransition would be welcome or supported. In fact, the exact opposite is much more likely, and this puts these students at grave risk.

Given the disparity, I would expect Name of Institution’s leadership to ensure that students, and faculty and staff seeking to support desisting students, can easily find explicit detransition resources at Name of Institution or guidance to resources online or elsewhere in Local City on Name of Institution’s or website. It is impractical and incongruous to imply that these are imbedded within the umbrella label “gender affirming care.”

At my child’s institution the senior student affairs officer advised me that the website advertising “gender affirming care” includes care for desisters and that students questioning a trans identity would understand this as a resource. My response:

This assertion seems ill-informed at best. It is improbable that anyone pursuing desistance or detransition would recognize that appropriate resources are available at Name of Institution. You have explicitly designed Name of Web Pages (and hyperlink) to advertise resources to support the adoption of trans identities and the pursuit of sex-rejecting treatments. It is implausible that anyone would consider “gender affirming care” to include support for individuals who decide that they want to stop identifying as the opposite sex given how most people commonly use this term. Desisting students hoping to address the root causes of their mental health, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, and the iatrogenic self-harm they have caused by using drugs and surgeries to reject their sex cannot be expected to see themselves in Name of Institution’s resources.

In addition, my child’s institution references adherence to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) as the guiding light for the care they provide. My response:

This is extremely problematic. Medical and mental health providers throughout the world trusted WPATH’s Standards of Care. However, in 2024 the WPATH Files made clear this was unfounded. WPATH activists appointed themselves as the gatekeepers while also being the promoters who benefit financially from the standards of care (unsupported by credible science) which they created. The Cass Review and the HHS Review address the evidence-based risks and life-threatening and irreversible harms of “gender affirming care” for minors. And recently the FTC announced a lawsuit again WPATH for these reasons. By association it is reasonable to include young adults and vulnerable people at risk as well. Relying on WPATH is a risk to students and a liability to the University (e.g., the Fox Varian lawsuit, the Camille Kiefel settlement, Cleveland Clinic, and Texas Children’s Hospital, etc.).

Faculty

I am the parent of a (Name of Institution) (Name of Major) major. I’m also a lifelong feminist, Democrat, and champion of liberal arts education.

I am writing to ask you to pursue every opportunity to help and support students who are desisting or pursuing detransition from trans identities.

I am watching the gender ideology belief system erode women’s rights in favor of trans rights that allow boys and men to play sports and enter rest rooms and locker rooms that our institutions reserved for girls and women in the past. I’m fighting against the homophobia that leads your students toward trans identities, which they consider to be safer than being gay or lesbian.

I am a mother who desperately loves her child and I’m distraught that higher education continues to promote gender identity ideology and “gender affirming care.” The drugs and surgeries are not safe or effective. This medicalization is not ethical nor justifiable. Using cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, sterilization, mastectomies, and castrations to present as the opposite sex and incur lifelong health conditions are the medical scandal of our lifetime.

Please help your students and my child find their way back to reality. Please be encouraging and accepting as they begin to desist or detransition. Please ensure they are safe and supported to the same degree as those who have caught the trans contagion. Please advocate with the college’s health and counseling centers to provide resources that are visible to the same degree as the resources wrongly named “gender affirming care.”

If this is new territory for you, please become more knowledgeable. Your students’ lives and my child’s life depend upon it.

Board of Trustees

My communication with members of the Board will focus on the risks incurred by the institution by failing to meet the needs of desisters and of continuing to rely on WPATH / failing to rely on evidence-based guidance.

I included these links at the bottom of all my communications:

• Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender

• Genspect

• Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine

• Health and Human Services Review

• Cass Review

Risks of “Gender Affirming Care”

• Understanding the Study Flaws

• Bad Data

• WPATH Exposed

• Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine

• The Strange Case of the Disappearing ‘Standards of Care’

Resources for Desisters and Detransitioners

• Beyond Trans

• Detrans ai

• Resilience Health Network