Dear University President,

The following is a repost of entry from October, 2021.

Update from the author: Four years have passed since we sent the below letter, first posted on PITT here. Much has happened in that time. Our daughter was estranged from our family for a little over a year. She re-established contact two years ago. She moved home one year ago. All good. But she continues to identify as a transman and is going on five years of T use. We can see gender ideology losing its hold on her. She doesn’t castigate us for not using her male name. She doesn’t talk about top surgery. She can converse on topics other than LGBTQA++ victimhood. And she has recently returned to school at a local college. We can foresee a day when she accepts her body as it is and goes off T. We wonder how much damage is irreversible and how she will deal with the psychological consequences of being disconnected from reality and her body for so long.

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Dear “University President",

You have our sympathies. This has to be a very difficult time to be a University president, especially at the world-renowned institution that is xxx. We follow with interest and sympathy the fight for racial justice being pursued on campus.  We have also been keeping tabs on the University’s approach to the coronavirus.

You see, until “month, year” our child was a student at xxx. She left shortly after the start of her Junior year. Her life was subsumed by mental health issues and trans ideology. If you think your university has bypassed the other large controversy swirling now, trans-ideology, we are here to tell you, you are mistaken.

We won’t inundate you with the sad details of our daughter’s experience with both the University and the University Healthcare system. We only suggest that you ask some hard questions of your administration and the healthcare system starting with:

• What is the reason for the exponential increase in the number of young women identifying as “trans”?

• If there was a change of this magnitude in any other health phenomenon (decrease in cancer rate, increase in diabetes) wouldn’t there be a desire to investigate and understand the cause? Especially before treatment begins?

• What long term studies are there on the efficacy of cross hormone therapy?

• What study supports the contention that the suicide rate is higher among young adults for whom gender affirmation is not the first line of treatment?

• If this increase in transition is due to its wider acceptance in society, why is the increase disproportionately affecting young women? Why do so many of them have other mental health issues (OCD, anxiety and depression)?

We could fill this page with requests for data-based, scientific evidence of the treatment plan our child was prescribed but won’t. You can easily Google that topic to discover the lack of information. But you see where we are going with this. We fear that xxx University is failing its students, and is failing to meet the most basic tenet of health care – do no harm. We love and support our child. We will not insult your intelligence by trying to convince you that we are not homophobic or transphobic. We are neither.  But we are convinced that treatment for gender dysphoria (or any health condition) should start with the least invasive treatment, in this case, mental health therapy.

Transitioning may be the correct course for some. But should that life altering decision be made at 18 years of age, while in the throes of mental illness? According to xxx University, the answer is a definitive yes. And please, no defense that the university healthcare system is divorced from the university itself. We entrusted our child to the institution. The legal hair splitting is of no interest to us.

As we enter the 21st century who could have thought it would be acceptable for young women to be affirmed in their belief that they are in the wrong bodies and that the correct course of treatment is for them to have their breasts removed, their genitals mutilated, be medicated for life and become infertile? This is happening on your watch. Now you can’t say you didn’t know.

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The above was mailed to the university president of my daughter’s former university.

The President's response was along the lines of "I'm sure the University Health Care Service is serving him well."