The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) recently released the 8th version of its Standards of Care (SOC). Health professionals around the world will use these guidelines when they make decisions on how to diagnose and treat transgender-identified people. As the parent of a trans-identified child as well as a public health professional, I read the chapter on adolescents with interest.
"The first individual in U.S. history to be legally designated as “non-binary” — identifying as neither male nor female — has publicly renounced his transgender/non-gender persona and gone back to identifying as male."
Of course, he has always been and will forever be a man.
"In his statement renouncing his own gender journey, Shupe said that he believed allowing people to choose their gender identity “is a fraud perpetrated by psychiatry, the likes of something the United States and other nations hasn’t experienced since the lobotomy era.”
In explaining his decision, he said that he did not want to be “party to advancing harmful gender ideologies that are ruining lives, causing deaths, and contributing to the sterilization and mutilation of gender-confused children.”
Has anyone else noticed that the adult activists in the Glitter T+ crowd are really really into the narrative of "The FIRST ABCDEFGH person to do XYZ." What do you suppose is up with that? Most people are just going about life...
Pre ~2013, 'gender' was a synonym for sex. Nobody thought about 'gender identity' It did not exist, it was not contemplated, and mental health was BETTER.
This is a groomed-into-being phenomenon, with a 'do great harm' course of 'treatment.' How did we skip "where are these kids getting this insane idea?" It's predation on mentally ill or lonely kids.
How is every professional medical and psychological organization so captured, so swiftly, with such radical harms/ It had to have been military operation of institutional capture and ideological capture. What about "kids will be kids"? Self acceptance, time, psychotherapy jettisoned so easily in favor of medical interventions w such extreme consequences? It's Orwellian.
This is a groomed-into-being phenomenon, with a 'do great harm' course of 'treatment.'
It does take advantage of kids who are mentally ill, in foster care, or lonely (like so many teens today). And, it is taught in K - University schools like settled science!
It is so Orwellian and hard to believe it has happened - and in the US.
The advice now is that you must pro-actively explain to your family that there are two sexes and they don't change in humans like they do for some fish. How was a parent to know?
I want to be part of a Great Big Backlash. Let's save posterity.
We are allowing the inmates to run our society and too many young people are paying the cost. This is an entirely different matter from wanting to help those with mental illness lead productive lives. WPATH and activists fight hard against reality which is what the AGP fantasy is all about: "The ultimate eroticism of autogynephilia lies in the idea of really becoming or being a woman, not in being a natal male who desires to be a woman"
https://quillette.com/2019/11/06/what-is-autogynephilia-an-interview-with-dr-ray-blanchard/ The first group is composed of ‘androphilic’ (sometimes termed ‘homosexual’) trans women, who are exclusively sexually attracted to men and are markedly feminine in behaviour and appearance from a young age. They typically begin the process of medical transition before the age of 30. The second group are motivated to transition as a result of what Blanchard termed ‘autogynephilia’: a sexual orientation defined by sexual arousal at the thought or image of oneself as a woman. Autogynephiles are typically sexually attracted to women, although they may also identify as asexual or bisexual. They are more likely to transition later in life and to have been conventionally masculine in presentation up until that point. There’s a critical difference between autogynephilia and most other sexual orientations: Most other orientations aren’t erotically disrupted simply by being labeled. When you call a typical gay man homosexual, you’re not disturbing his sexual hopes and desires. By contrast, autogynephilia is perhaps best understood as a love that would really rather we didn’t speak its name. The ultimate eroticism of autogynephilia lies in the idea of really becoming or being a woman, not in being a natal male who desires to be a woman
Blanchard: "Modern trans activists reframed transsexualism/transgenderism as a political problem rather than a clinical problem. The flat denial that autogynephilia exists became a canon of modern trans activism, trans activism become a sub-department of the Social Justice Movement, and the Social Justice Movement became a primary combatant in the ongoing, pervasive Culture Wars."
I cannot believe this won't backfire. It's concerning how many will be harmed first. And, how will our schools K-University be able to admit they've gotten it so very wrong?
Does anybody know / has scientific reference on how many of these surgeries are being currently performed on minors? I cannot find any solid numbers. I am as horrified as the rest of you by the idea of children having these surgeries but I really wish we had rigorous data on how often it occurs. I also want to know if and how the number of surgeries have changed in the last few years.
For some reason, those numbers seem to be hard to find. For some reason… Part of it is our decentralized medical system in the US, but think of how horrified the general public would be to see the number of young women and girls who have gotten mastectomies because they hate themselves.
I am a woman and only have one daughter but WPATH recommendation to remove testicles of healthy males at 17 sounds even more horrible than mastectomy. I certainly hope there are no actual cases of 17 year old boys being castrated in the US or elsewhere due to emotional distress. Who could possibly think it is ever justifiable?
Gendermapper is a voluntary, unfunded project and relies on donations. PayPal has closed their account for "Hate Speech". The only way you can support Gendermapper at the moment is here:
I read somewhere that most people in the medical community paid little attention to WPATH for a long time because it was such an infinitesimal population. I don't know what the excuse is now. Of course, this ought to be a giant story in the news. Lawsuits will pave the way to change.
I used to have more faith in lawsuits, but you’d need to find lawyers who are not looking purely for damages to cash in on. It seems like the “greater good” lawyers are also the ones who think this is about being kind and social justice, plus they don’t want to risk their reputations, just like the silent docs. I’ve come to believe the only way to change this tide is to educate parents and make as many people as possible aware that the popular narrative is wrong and stop the flow of kids going to the clinics. At first, the affirming parents were the norm. I believe that’s shifting as more info becomes available and as the topic gets more balanced coverage, which is slowly starting to happen. Sooner or later, non-affirming parents will become the norm and the affirming parents will be seen as the ones who are letting their kids down. Let them write their crazy guidelines. Won’t matter if their clientele disappears.
I wonder whether the proportion of affirming parents and non affirming are the same but the non-affirming had to be very very quiet because we were so under siege and unsupported at every turn (like the neighborhood and the schools and doctors). I know that there is no way I would ever have called my lovely daughter "he" no matter what the whackos around me had to say. But, I guess there are some who might veer either direction depending what advice they get.
I am not seeing balanced coverage as yet... but we do have substacks :)
Mass insanity can seem like a norm that will never go away until the preference cascade somehow shifts like it did in Salem, MA a long time ago. I don't know what will make it shift this time but I expect it will be sudden. After that there may be a lot of lawsuits to change the institutions and remove the worst actors, like Diane E. And, we do have the Kiera Bell case in the UK ...
For sheer entertainment value, try making it through the “Non-binary “ section. Purposeful? I think it’s an indication of the ideological capture of the clinicians, and of the split between those that see what’s happening and those that can’t accept that what they’re doing is actually gravely harmful. The “standards” are all over the board and the people writing them are clearly not the best and the brightest. Not by a long shot.
Thanks for this clear exposé of the distorted thinking behind the Trans Movement among professionals. I hope this, and other rational explanations of the Trans fiasco, gets widely read.
Only 1/4 of detransitioners in that survey told their clinicians: these were people who were active online so that the survey could find them, and who were willing to participate. Some people who detransition are surely being missed. So I'm guessing 1/4 is the low end. To truly know, the doctors doing these interventions would have to keep track of who stats on the lifetime drugs they start them on. Measure the outcomes (long term, not just 1 year after surgery, as the Dutch did).
It's astounding that these off label medical interventions are widely and easily available given the lack of data about safety, effectiveness and long term outcomes. And it's not been shown to be necessary. Smith et Al 2001 delayed treating one group.....and many of those later no longer wanted surgery. It had been a transient wish.
Only when the horrors of what has been allowed comes to light with people detransitioning, regretting in many numbers and the main stream starts to cover this will people wake up. Need lawsuits. Right now there is lots of money to be made. Parents need to inoculate their kids to this nonsense ahead of time. Affirm their sex and they can like, present however they want. Identity formation is a confusing time in adolescence and brain development around 25. Where are the mental health professionals that know about adolescent development, peer influence and social contagions? Not enough are speaking out. Why can't they get some airtime on mainstream tv? You don't medicalize this when adolescents are in flux.
I have to believe that if most people knew about this, they too would be horrified, but then, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most of the world has gone insane - or maybe I'm insane. I wish The View or some other mainstream tv show would have someone like you on to discuss this, and ask questions about sterilizing minors with no medical necessity whatsoever, based on a subjective "feeling of being the opposite sex," which itself makes no sense, since, if the feeling is independent of biology, why, oh why does the feeling require chemical and surgical alteration of the body?! Would people finally realize what's happening and try and stop it?
I think it comes down to everyone being convinced that trans is like homosexuality and is innate, with the only treatment being medicalization. "Those poor trans children being born in the wrong bodies!" Which, of course, is complete nonsense, but I'll admit I never gave it much thought until my own child claimed a trans identity. And, I believe there's indeed considerable insanity in the world. This looks a bit like mass formation or mass psychosis, and it's really high stakes right now to speak against the narrative. We've got some of the most famous entertainers on the planet being vilified for speaking out. I have a friend who is a neuro-biology professor at a local college; she knows it's nonsense but says educators won't touch this for fear of the mob coming after their livelihoods. Shame and cancellation are powerful tools being used to silence the dissenters.
Agree completely. Transexuality is conflated with homosexuality in the mind of the public and this is intentional. We have "Shame and cancellation" like we have not seen since the Salem Witch Trials - which affected far fewer people. Wasn't that never supposed to happen again?
Karen, I share your disbelief and horror. All of us who read and contribute to PITT do, because we know the truth. You're right. If most people knew about this, they would be horrified too, because not only does trans "medicine" defy science and the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, but the victims are CHILDREN. That says it all.
Unfortunately, barring a rift in the time-space continuum, there is no way that the View or any other mainstream media outlet will ever allow a gender-critical expert to answer questions in good faith about this obscene enterprise. All the progressive mainstream media is ideologically captured on the topic of transgenderism, so that stories that reveal the dark side of transitioning are thoroughly censored.
At this point it still comes down to the ongoing investigations of Abigail Shrier, this Substack, and the work of organizations like the Women's Liberation Front, who are currently suing the State of California for its policy of allowing biologically intact male felons, including sex offenders, to self-identify as women and be housed in women's prisons.
Edit to the first sentence of the second paragraph: Unfortunately, barring a rift in the time-space continuum, there is no way that the View or any other LIBERAL mainstream media outlet will ever allow a gender-critical expert to answer questions in good faith about this obscene enterprise.
I agree with everything you and Stoic Mom said. I just keep thinking that there will be a tipping point, after which all the mainstream media - liberal or not - will want to air this, because they will finally see it for what it is, and then they will want to be the heroes, helping to expose the scandal. Like the opioid crisis, I believe this will become big news at some point. I just can't wait that long, for selfish reasons (relating to my teenage daughter), and because I hate sitting around knowing there are many thousands of young people being sterilized and mutilated for no good reason. But I guess there's not much to be done. If JK Rowling got shut down for her very tame, sensible, compassionate comments, and if Dave Chappelle was villainized for merely talking about the reality of his good friend's biological sex (nothing he said about his transsexual friend was at all insulting), I agree that few people will want to speak out in this climate. But someone must because WPATH's recommendations are absolutely insane. 14-year-olds being chemically altered in irreversible ways, 15 and 16-year-olds having serious surgeries to remove healthy body parts or install fake parts, 17-year-olds being permanently sterilized and losing the ability to ever make their own hormones, and losing genitalia, and 18-year-olds losing genitalia and having risky experimental surgeries to "create" a new one. This IS 1984, but even George Orwell didn't think of this craziness. People like Abigail Shrier, Dr. Will Malone, Stell O'Malley, Sasha Ayad, and many others are doing great work, but we need more, and parents without clout are helpless. All I can end with is Oy vey!
And Dave Chapppelle's transexual friend had committed suicide after receiving hate for being his friend. Very sad. I believe Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling are not going to back down, and they function at a level where they cannot really be shutdown... hard though the Glitter co-opted media tries. I think that some day (how long will it take?) this will become big news and reverse. Your opiod crisis is a really on target comparison. I also think about the Salem Witch trials which ran for sometime and then suddenly ended.
Most really do not understand. There are people I know and love who just cannot get it through their heads that this is not some sort of gay understanding movement and that whatever Unicorn nonsense that is taught in schools won't stick if families tell their children it's silly. I will finish by adding that you are in no way selfish to love and fight for your teenage daughter.
I'd like to believe that there will be a tipping point where the issue ceases to be off-limits. All but the wokest zealots understand the travesty of men in women's sports, which is the most obvious place for cracks to form, and we can already see them. It's a deeply unpopular issue with the public. Similarly, Chappelle and Rowling are invaluable advocates for truth. They can always make news and they speak for the overwhelming majority of us.
When it comes to the systemic medical abuse of children and adolescents, it should be big news, but there are enormous financial and political incentives to keep the cross-sex hormones flowing. Here's a bit of a crack that has gotten some attention: As reported in the latest issue of Quillette, in 2021, clinical psychologist Dr. Erica Anderson, a trans-identified biological male, who was not only president of USPATH (US Professional Association for Transgender Health) for two years, but its first transgender president, quit the organization’s board and the position of Past-President, after voicing (by his account) lone dissent against a proposed six-month moratorium on speaking to the press while USPATH awaited public comments on the eighth iteration of its Standards of Care.
Dr. Anderson says he was affected by Abigail Shrier's book, Irreversible Damage, which opened his eyes to the epidemic of transitioning of adolescent girls and the lack of gatekeeping. It's hard to believe that Dr. Anderson didn't know what was going on, but his resignation and speaking out are steps in the right direction.
I could not agree more strongly with your statement, Beeswax: "When it comes to the systemic medical abuse of children and adolescents, it should be big news, but there are enormous financial and political incentives to keep the cross-sex hormones flowing."
Whether or not Dr. Anderson was genuinely affected by Abigail Shrier's book, or is able to see the backlash coming and wants to get ahead of it and present as a good guy, it is a good sign he quit the USPATH board. I read https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/24/trans-kids-therapy-psychologist/ and thought there was some butt covering going on but - either way - it's good. There may be more like that who start looking out for their careers...
The travesty of women's sports is the thing I see getting wide attention.
That Anderson had no idea is significant. This is a top “gender clinician.” If we didn’t need her voice, we should be calling her out for medical negligence. Any clinician continuing to spout the “less than 1% have regret” nonsense (creepily similar to the “less than 1% of OxyContin users get addicted” garbage) is willfully ignorant and should lose their license.
Amen to that. Anderson claims he quit USPATH because he felt he was being muzzled with regard to the press, not because things are rotten in the consultation room. Anderson is a psychologist, for goodness sake...how many thousands of children were poisoned and mutilated by the policies he helped create? It wasn't until he read Abigail Shrier's book that he realized there might be a little bit of a problem?
But yes, we need his voice. I'm sure that's why Shrier, a brilliant person, didn't confront him on his assertion that the information in "Irreversible Damage" came to him as a shock, and "there's so much we still don't know..." Who knows what motivated him to speak out now, 25 years post his own transition. Getting ready to retire? A guilty conscience?
His article in the SF Examiner is important for what it will reveal to the average person, with no dog in the fight. But it's also worth a read for Anderson's disgusting euphemisms and romanticizing of gender dysphoric kids: "gender creative youth," "special children." And why did it take him until 2021 to consider Jean Twenge's 2017 research on the epidemic of depression and suicidality in girls?
Medical negligence indeed. But yes, he's a Gift Horse, and his taking a stand in public is not nothing. I'm grateful for it.
Dr Anderson also just had an Op Ed published in the San Francisco Chronicle about social contagion! I am hopeful. These transient symptom clusters tend to go out of fashion when they get too big/common and aren't working any more to alleviate distress. The more people who "come out" as trans the less special it becomes. And as more dissenters get organized and speak out, others will be emboldened to do the same. We're definitely seeing some of that. Unfortunately, I think just as it is for our kids, the professionals who've bought into and pushed the narrative may also need a way to "save face." It's really hard to admit (even to oneself) to such egregious harm, and people tend to double down to battle their own cognitive dissonance. The resistance is definitely growing. I have to say, I hope my kid chooses to desist before there are changes in treatment protocols that would bar her from medical interventions. I want her to own it, not have any reason to cling to a fantasy "solution" that was ripped away from her. https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/are-we-seeing-a-phenomenon-of-trans-youth-social-contagion/
From the horse's mouth: Jamie Shupe
"The first individual in U.S. history to be legally designated as “non-binary” — identifying as neither male nor female — has publicly renounced his transgender/non-gender persona and gone back to identifying as male."
https://rightedition.com/2019/02/20/transgender-non-binary-individual-goes-back-to-being-a-man/
Of course, he has always been and will forever be a man.
"In his statement renouncing his own gender journey, Shupe said that he believed allowing people to choose their gender identity “is a fraud perpetrated by psychiatry, the likes of something the United States and other nations hasn’t experienced since the lobotomy era.”
In explaining his decision, he said that he did not want to be “party to advancing harmful gender ideologies that are ruining lives, causing deaths, and contributing to the sterilization and mutilation of gender-confused children.”
Good for him.
Has anyone else noticed that the adult activists in the Glitter T+ crowd are really really into the narrative of "The FIRST ABCDEFGH person to do XYZ." What do you suppose is up with that? Most people are just going about life...
The 'trans kid' is under 10 years old.
Pre ~2013, 'gender' was a synonym for sex. Nobody thought about 'gender identity' It did not exist, it was not contemplated, and mental health was BETTER.
This is a groomed-into-being phenomenon, with a 'do great harm' course of 'treatment.' How did we skip "where are these kids getting this insane idea?" It's predation on mentally ill or lonely kids.
How is every professional medical and psychological organization so captured, so swiftly, with such radical harms/ It had to have been military operation of institutional capture and ideological capture. What about "kids will be kids"? Self acceptance, time, psychotherapy jettisoned so easily in favor of medical interventions w such extreme consequences? It's Orwellian.
Very well stated.
This is a groomed-into-being phenomenon, with a 'do great harm' course of 'treatment.'
It does take advantage of kids who are mentally ill, in foster care, or lonely (like so many teens today). And, it is taught in K - University schools like settled science!
It is so Orwellian and hard to believe it has happened - and in the US.
The advice now is that you must pro-actively explain to your family that there are two sexes and they don't change in humans like they do for some fish. How was a parent to know?
I want to be part of a Great Big Backlash. Let's save posterity.
We are allowing the inmates to run our society and too many young people are paying the cost. This is an entirely different matter from wanting to help those with mental illness lead productive lives. WPATH and activists fight hard against reality which is what the AGP fantasy is all about: "The ultimate eroticism of autogynephilia lies in the idea of really becoming or being a woman, not in being a natal male who desires to be a woman"
https://quillette.com/2019/11/06/what-is-autogynephilia-an-interview-with-dr-ray-blanchard/ The first group is composed of ‘androphilic’ (sometimes termed ‘homosexual’) trans women, who are exclusively sexually attracted to men and are markedly feminine in behaviour and appearance from a young age. They typically begin the process of medical transition before the age of 30. The second group are motivated to transition as a result of what Blanchard termed ‘autogynephilia’: a sexual orientation defined by sexual arousal at the thought or image of oneself as a woman. Autogynephiles are typically sexually attracted to women, although they may also identify as asexual or bisexual. They are more likely to transition later in life and to have been conventionally masculine in presentation up until that point. There’s a critical difference between autogynephilia and most other sexual orientations: Most other orientations aren’t erotically disrupted simply by being labeled. When you call a typical gay man homosexual, you’re not disturbing his sexual hopes and desires. By contrast, autogynephilia is perhaps best understood as a love that would really rather we didn’t speak its name. The ultimate eroticism of autogynephilia lies in the idea of really becoming or being a woman, not in being a natal male who desires to be a woman
Blanchard: "Modern trans activists reframed transsexualism/transgenderism as a political problem rather than a clinical problem. The flat denial that autogynephilia exists became a canon of modern trans activism, trans activism become a sub-department of the Social Justice Movement, and the Social Justice Movement became a primary combatant in the ongoing, pervasive Culture Wars."
I cannot believe this won't backfire. It's concerning how many will be harmed first. And, how will our schools K-University be able to admit they've gotten it so very wrong?
Does anybody know / has scientific reference on how many of these surgeries are being currently performed on minors? I cannot find any solid numbers. I am as horrified as the rest of you by the idea of children having these surgeries but I really wish we had rigorous data on how often it occurs. I also want to know if and how the number of surgeries have changed in the last few years.
For some reason, those numbers seem to be hard to find. For some reason… Part of it is our decentralized medical system in the US, but think of how horrified the general public would be to see the number of young women and girls who have gotten mastectomies because they hate themselves.
I am a woman and only have one daughter but WPATH recommendation to remove testicles of healthy males at 17 sounds even more horrible than mastectomy. I certainly hope there are no actual cases of 17 year old boys being castrated in the US or elsewhere due to emotional distress. Who could possibly think it is ever justifiable?
The Gendermapper project telephones Gender Clinics asking to make appointments for children to have genital surgery, to find out if they will do it.
For example, this clinic in Houston, Texas that is happy to arrange castration (ie. orchidectomy - removal of testicles) of a 17 year old:
"No one is performing genital surgery on minors" debunked in 5 easy minutes
https://www.gendermapper.org/post/no-one-is-performing-genital-surgery-on-minors-debunked-in-5-easy-minutes
Gendermapper is a voluntary, unfunded project and relies on donations. PayPal has closed their account for "Hate Speech". The only way you can support Gendermapper at the moment is here:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/gendermapper
I read somewhere that most people in the medical community paid little attention to WPATH for a long time because it was such an infinitesimal population. I don't know what the excuse is now. Of course, this ought to be a giant story in the news. Lawsuits will pave the way to change.
I used to have more faith in lawsuits, but you’d need to find lawyers who are not looking purely for damages to cash in on. It seems like the “greater good” lawyers are also the ones who think this is about being kind and social justice, plus they don’t want to risk their reputations, just like the silent docs. I’ve come to believe the only way to change this tide is to educate parents and make as many people as possible aware that the popular narrative is wrong and stop the flow of kids going to the clinics. At first, the affirming parents were the norm. I believe that’s shifting as more info becomes available and as the topic gets more balanced coverage, which is slowly starting to happen. Sooner or later, non-affirming parents will become the norm and the affirming parents will be seen as the ones who are letting their kids down. Let them write their crazy guidelines. Won’t matter if their clientele disappears.
I wonder whether the proportion of affirming parents and non affirming are the same but the non-affirming had to be very very quiet because we were so under siege and unsupported at every turn (like the neighborhood and the schools and doctors). I know that there is no way I would ever have called my lovely daughter "he" no matter what the whackos around me had to say. But, I guess there are some who might veer either direction depending what advice they get.
I am not seeing balanced coverage as yet... but we do have substacks :)
Mass insanity can seem like a norm that will never go away until the preference cascade somehow shifts like it did in Salem, MA a long time ago. I don't know what will make it shift this time but I expect it will be sudden. After that there may be a lot of lawsuits to change the institutions and remove the worst actors, like Diane E. And, we do have the Kiera Bell case in the UK ...
A kind correction - these new guidelines have NOT yet been approved. In fact, one can still offer feedback on the new guidelines through January 22 (https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/SOC%20v8/SOC8%20Chapters%20for%20Public%20Comment/Letter%20eBlast%20-%20SOC8%20Public%20Comment%20Period%20Extended%20December%202021%20FINAL.pdf?_t=1639666260). I would recommend all do so!
THE MOST COMPLEX AND CONFUSING SURVEY I'VE EVER SEEN.
PURPOSEFUL ?
For sheer entertainment value, try making it through the “Non-binary “ section. Purposeful? I think it’s an indication of the ideological capture of the clinicians, and of the split between those that see what’s happening and those that can’t accept that what they’re doing is actually gravely harmful. The “standards” are all over the board and the people writing them are clearly not the best and the brightest. Not by a long shot.
The trans-affirming movement is intellectual terrorism by the sexually incompetent.
perhaps ... I just focused on the Adolescent part
Thanks for this clear exposé of the distorted thinking behind the Trans Movement among professionals. I hope this, and other rational explanations of the Trans fiasco, gets widely read.
Only 1/4 of detransitioners in that survey told their clinicians: these were people who were active online so that the survey could find them, and who were willing to participate. Some people who detransition are surely being missed. So I'm guessing 1/4 is the low end. To truly know, the doctors doing these interventions would have to keep track of who stats on the lifetime drugs they start them on. Measure the outcomes (long term, not just 1 year after surgery, as the Dutch did).
It's astounding that these off label medical interventions are widely and easily available given the lack of data about safety, effectiveness and long term outcomes. And it's not been shown to be necessary. Smith et Al 2001 delayed treating one group.....and many of those later no longer wanted surgery. It had been a transient wish.
This is horrific and wrong on every level
Only when the horrors of what has been allowed comes to light with people detransitioning, regretting in many numbers and the main stream starts to cover this will people wake up. Need lawsuits. Right now there is lots of money to be made. Parents need to inoculate their kids to this nonsense ahead of time. Affirm their sex and they can like, present however they want. Identity formation is a confusing time in adolescence and brain development around 25. Where are the mental health professionals that know about adolescent development, peer influence and social contagions? Not enough are speaking out. Why can't they get some airtime on mainstream tv? You don't medicalize this when adolescents are in flux.
I have to believe that if most people knew about this, they too would be horrified, but then, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most of the world has gone insane - or maybe I'm insane. I wish The View or some other mainstream tv show would have someone like you on to discuss this, and ask questions about sterilizing minors with no medical necessity whatsoever, based on a subjective "feeling of being the opposite sex," which itself makes no sense, since, if the feeling is independent of biology, why, oh why does the feeling require chemical and surgical alteration of the body?! Would people finally realize what's happening and try and stop it?
I think it comes down to everyone being convinced that trans is like homosexuality and is innate, with the only treatment being medicalization. "Those poor trans children being born in the wrong bodies!" Which, of course, is complete nonsense, but I'll admit I never gave it much thought until my own child claimed a trans identity. And, I believe there's indeed considerable insanity in the world. This looks a bit like mass formation or mass psychosis, and it's really high stakes right now to speak against the narrative. We've got some of the most famous entertainers on the planet being vilified for speaking out. I have a friend who is a neuro-biology professor at a local college; she knows it's nonsense but says educators won't touch this for fear of the mob coming after their livelihoods. Shame and cancellation are powerful tools being used to silence the dissenters.
Agree completely. Transexuality is conflated with homosexuality in the mind of the public and this is intentional. We have "Shame and cancellation" like we have not seen since the Salem Witch Trials - which affected far fewer people. Wasn't that never supposed to happen again?
Karen, I share your disbelief and horror. All of us who read and contribute to PITT do, because we know the truth. You're right. If most people knew about this, they would be horrified too, because not only does trans "medicine" defy science and the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, but the victims are CHILDREN. That says it all.
Unfortunately, barring a rift in the time-space continuum, there is no way that the View or any other mainstream media outlet will ever allow a gender-critical expert to answer questions in good faith about this obscene enterprise. All the progressive mainstream media is ideologically captured on the topic of transgenderism, so that stories that reveal the dark side of transitioning are thoroughly censored.
At this point it still comes down to the ongoing investigations of Abigail Shrier, this Substack, and the work of organizations like the Women's Liberation Front, who are currently suing the State of California for its policy of allowing biologically intact male felons, including sex offenders, to self-identify as women and be housed in women's prisons.
Edit to the first sentence of the second paragraph: Unfortunately, barring a rift in the time-space continuum, there is no way that the View or any other LIBERAL mainstream media outlet will ever allow a gender-critical expert to answer questions in good faith about this obscene enterprise.
I agree with everything you and Stoic Mom said. I just keep thinking that there will be a tipping point, after which all the mainstream media - liberal or not - will want to air this, because they will finally see it for what it is, and then they will want to be the heroes, helping to expose the scandal. Like the opioid crisis, I believe this will become big news at some point. I just can't wait that long, for selfish reasons (relating to my teenage daughter), and because I hate sitting around knowing there are many thousands of young people being sterilized and mutilated for no good reason. But I guess there's not much to be done. If JK Rowling got shut down for her very tame, sensible, compassionate comments, and if Dave Chappelle was villainized for merely talking about the reality of his good friend's biological sex (nothing he said about his transsexual friend was at all insulting), I agree that few people will want to speak out in this climate. But someone must because WPATH's recommendations are absolutely insane. 14-year-olds being chemically altered in irreversible ways, 15 and 16-year-olds having serious surgeries to remove healthy body parts or install fake parts, 17-year-olds being permanently sterilized and losing the ability to ever make their own hormones, and losing genitalia, and 18-year-olds losing genitalia and having risky experimental surgeries to "create" a new one. This IS 1984, but even George Orwell didn't think of this craziness. People like Abigail Shrier, Dr. Will Malone, Stell O'Malley, Sasha Ayad, and many others are doing great work, but we need more, and parents without clout are helpless. All I can end with is Oy vey!
And Dave Chapppelle's transexual friend had committed suicide after receiving hate for being his friend. Very sad. I believe Dave Chappelle and JK Rowling are not going to back down, and they function at a level where they cannot really be shutdown... hard though the Glitter co-opted media tries. I think that some day (how long will it take?) this will become big news and reverse. Your opiod crisis is a really on target comparison. I also think about the Salem Witch trials which ran for sometime and then suddenly ended.
Most really do not understand. There are people I know and love who just cannot get it through their heads that this is not some sort of gay understanding movement and that whatever Unicorn nonsense that is taught in schools won't stick if families tell their children it's silly. I will finish by adding that you are in no way selfish to love and fight for your teenage daughter.
I'd like to believe that there will be a tipping point where the issue ceases to be off-limits. All but the wokest zealots understand the travesty of men in women's sports, which is the most obvious place for cracks to form, and we can already see them. It's a deeply unpopular issue with the public. Similarly, Chappelle and Rowling are invaluable advocates for truth. They can always make news and they speak for the overwhelming majority of us.
When it comes to the systemic medical abuse of children and adolescents, it should be big news, but there are enormous financial and political incentives to keep the cross-sex hormones flowing. Here's a bit of a crack that has gotten some attention: As reported in the latest issue of Quillette, in 2021, clinical psychologist Dr. Erica Anderson, a trans-identified biological male, who was not only president of USPATH (US Professional Association for Transgender Health) for two years, but its first transgender president, quit the organization’s board and the position of Past-President, after voicing (by his account) lone dissent against a proposed six-month moratorium on speaking to the press while USPATH awaited public comments on the eighth iteration of its Standards of Care.
https://quillette.com/2022/01/06/a-transgender-pioneer-explains-why-she-stepped-down-from-uspath-and-wpath/
Dr. Anderson says he was affected by Abigail Shrier's book, Irreversible Damage, which opened his eyes to the epidemic of transitioning of adolescent girls and the lack of gatekeeping. It's hard to believe that Dr. Anderson didn't know what was going on, but his resignation and speaking out are steps in the right direction.
I could not agree more strongly with your statement, Beeswax: "When it comes to the systemic medical abuse of children and adolescents, it should be big news, but there are enormous financial and political incentives to keep the cross-sex hormones flowing."
Whether or not Dr. Anderson was genuinely affected by Abigail Shrier's book, or is able to see the backlash coming and wants to get ahead of it and present as a good guy, it is a good sign he quit the USPATH board. I read https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/24/trans-kids-therapy-psychologist/ and thought there was some butt covering going on but - either way - it's good. There may be more like that who start looking out for their careers...
The travesty of women's sports is the thing I see getting wide attention.
That Anderson had no idea is significant. This is a top “gender clinician.” If we didn’t need her voice, we should be calling her out for medical negligence. Any clinician continuing to spout the “less than 1% have regret” nonsense (creepily similar to the “less than 1% of OxyContin users get addicted” garbage) is willfully ignorant and should lose their license.
Right, I think Anderson is trying to get ahead of the eventual lawsuits.
Amen to that. Anderson claims he quit USPATH because he felt he was being muzzled with regard to the press, not because things are rotten in the consultation room. Anderson is a psychologist, for goodness sake...how many thousands of children were poisoned and mutilated by the policies he helped create? It wasn't until he read Abigail Shrier's book that he realized there might be a little bit of a problem?
But yes, we need his voice. I'm sure that's why Shrier, a brilliant person, didn't confront him on his assertion that the information in "Irreversible Damage" came to him as a shock, and "there's so much we still don't know..." Who knows what motivated him to speak out now, 25 years post his own transition. Getting ready to retire? A guilty conscience?
His article in the SF Examiner is important for what it will reveal to the average person, with no dog in the fight. But it's also worth a read for Anderson's disgusting euphemisms and romanticizing of gender dysphoric kids: "gender creative youth," "special children." And why did it take him until 2021 to consider Jean Twenge's 2017 research on the epidemic of depression and suicidality in girls?
Medical negligence indeed. But yes, he's a Gift Horse, and his taking a stand in public is not nothing. I'm grateful for it.
Dr Anderson also just had an Op Ed published in the San Francisco Chronicle about social contagion! I am hopeful. These transient symptom clusters tend to go out of fashion when they get too big/common and aren't working any more to alleviate distress. The more people who "come out" as trans the less special it becomes. And as more dissenters get organized and speak out, others will be emboldened to do the same. We're definitely seeing some of that. Unfortunately, I think just as it is for our kids, the professionals who've bought into and pushed the narrative may also need a way to "save face." It's really hard to admit (even to oneself) to such egregious harm, and people tend to double down to battle their own cognitive dissonance. The resistance is definitely growing. I have to say, I hope my kid chooses to desist before there are changes in treatment protocols that would bar her from medical interventions. I want her to own it, not have any reason to cling to a fantasy "solution" that was ripped away from her. https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/are-we-seeing-a-phenomenon-of-trans-youth-social-contagion/