I am the mother of a child who suddenly claimed a transgender identity and became swiftly medicalized — meaning prescribed wrong sex hormones and surgeries to treat gender dysphoria, without any in-depth exploration. I came across your name while researching gender ideology and your background in bioethics seems well-suited to my story and the information that I am here sharing.
I am not seeking your help; sadly I have come to realize there is little to no help available for parents like myself. I am a mere representative of the many thousands of parents who have had their child medicalized in as little as one visit to a gender affirming medical establishment. I have previously spoken with many professionals highly critical of the latest fad in psychiatry of accepting patients’ self-diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’ and then being ushered into transition. Parents have connected via social media platforms and organizations across the US and internationally and we hail from all political and religious affiliations. I am sharing the truth of gender identity medicine today as our family and countless others have experienced it.
Since Lisa Littman’s work in 2018 first exposed the possibility that social contagion could be at play in the sky-rocketing numbers of transgender identified youth, this topic has been continuously lauded and glorified by the media. Considering there are close to 40k young women wanting ‘top surgery’ (a euphemism for non-medically necessary breast amputation) today on GoFundMe, it seems that Littman was on to something. Certainly, this is not normal.
The industry today is light years away from the time when anabolic steroids first came on to the market and doctors and patients began to dabble in altering the human body to take on the appearance of the opposite sex. Now, the fact that Paul McHugh shuttered the gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins in the 1970’s because transition did not benefit the patient population has been lost to history.
Fast forward to 2021 and the industry that used to be in back alleyways is exploding like never before. The affirmation model is now the norm and most medical institutions have established guidelines to push patients into the pipeline of gender medicine, while laws are being passed to deter any counseling for gender confused patients. The fact that there is so little help for families like ours does not prove that the affirmation model is sound healthcare. All the parents I have connected to know that it is not. Our children are in harm’s way and we are desperately trying to organize to save them from unnecessary mental and physical harm.
I have been experiencing this contagion first hand. My college-aged daughter was prescribed testosterone and, a mere few months later, she had her breasts amputated. There is nothing that could have prepared our family for this tragedy that is still unfolding. To know our daughter would be to think up is down, black is white or that Mickey Mouse is real. She was gender conforming, had mostly female friends her entire life, meets none of the criteria for gender dysphoria as laid out in the DSM-5, and had little interest in stereotypical masculine activities at all. Our daughter was extremely gifted, highly creative, an AP student throughout high school, and involved in countless activities.
Now, she has been indoctrinated to join the cult of gender ideology. She has severed ties with all family members, save for some tenuous contact with a sibling. Can this possibly be medical care? She was encouraged by her like-minded peers, harbored by her university and swiftly led down the rabbit hole of transgender medicine to either be a patient for life or to one day wake up and decide to reconvene in a body that has been harmed for life. And, if she chooses this latter path, no medical assistance will be forthcoming. Gender transition assistance these days is a one-way path.
There are thousands of parents living this nightmare and I’ve met many of them. Our stories are eerily similar and yet we read lie after lie in the mainstream media that we are bigots, transphobes, ‘terfs’ and other names, many too despicable to mention. We read that we have disowned our children, when the opposite is often true. We are lied to by educators and the medical community who are hellbent on creating transgender youth. We read the lies that only adults get surgeries or that our children have gone through rigorous psychological counseling. Neither of these is true. Some parents have even lost their children in the court of law when they question this supposed ‘care.’
The political and pharmaceutical ties to this narrative are blatant. Our children are seen as specimens for a social experiment. The suicide card that is played has been debunked as many times as it is played and yet the card continues to be played on repeat. We know that the only long-term study ever completed actually shows a 19 times greater risk of suicide AFTER transition. I believe this is likely an underestimation, as the cohort in this study was far different from today’s trans-identified patients, who are younger and largely female. It would not be a stretch to say the harms could be far greater.
As parents, we have lobbied Congress, pushed for bills in various states to hold doctors accountable and to quell this gross social contagion. We have pushed for advocacy in schools, churches and the like against the radical indoctrination into gender ideology. We keep our fingers on the pulse of this exploding medical scandal as more and more desisters and detransitioners come forth with their stories, as more and more countries begin to question their practices and pull back the veil on transgender medicine. Here in North America, we are living in the gender medicine capital of the world, with more clinics than any other country. This article speaks accurately of the totalitarian regime I have witnessed under the guise of ‘healthcare.’
Imagine how this would turn your personal life upside down if the child you raised suddenly claimed an opposite sex identity? Imagine knowing the actual risk of suicide and having a child who has shut you out of their life? I live in fear for my daughter and other young people across this country where mutilating body parts is increasingly becoming second nature. There are even surgeries and hormones for “non-binary” identifying people now. None of this makes any sense. I fear for families that are as of yet unaware of the dangers that loom. I can say firsthand that this social contagion does not discriminate and, by all appearances, our government is dead set on creating more and more casualties.
While fully realizing the contentious nature of this issue and the work you do, I would be grateful for the opportunity to share my personal story. I have repeatedly witnessed the reactions from parent’s firsthand accounts as most people do not realize what is really happening.
Follow up: The author of this letter received NO REPLY.
No surprise that you received no reply. My daughter's pediatrician flatly refused to accept a copy of Irreversible Damage as a gift. FLAT. OUT. REFUSED.
Excellent letter! One thing- near the end where you say “Imagine if…” and how your child claiming the opposite gender identity would turn your world upside-down, I think it should say that wanting hormones and surgery would turn your world upside-down. Kids want weird things all the time. If they mention of gender transitioning itself is mind blowing, you sound “trans-phobic,” but you aren’t. Being clear and avoiding being misconstrued is important. The advocates will latch onto anything to debunk you.