SPAT: The Future of Gender Affirmation Medicine and Therapy

Written by the father of a feisty, brainy, complex, feminine ROGD daughter filled with limitless potential and also deep reservoirs of compassion, “fuck off,” and resilience.

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Most did not anticipate the tragic effects of gender identity ideology on a generation of children, teens, young adults and their families.  The next tragedy is much easier to predict.

Published February 2024 in the Turban Times (pre-printed here with permission):

SPAT (Suicide Prevention for Affirming Therapists) was created in August of 2023 as a resource for Gender Affirming Therapists (GATs) who took a well-meaning but poorly informed approach to the care for young people who came to them questioning their gender identities between 2007 and 2022.  

In the aftermath of the tragically well-documented rate of regret and self-harm among young adults who received “gender affirming care”, particularly between 2014 and 2022, we are witnessing another unfolding tragedy:  mental health practitioners who provided this “care” and funneled pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults down the path to “gender medicalization” are themselves becoming the most common cohort engaging in self-harm and presenting with suicidal ideation.

SPAT’s goal is to apply an explorative, well-researched, non-political and non-ideological standard of care to GATs which they themselves did not apply to the vulnerable young people who sought their help during what major media outlets (BBC, Fox, CNN, NPR) are now calling “Gendergeddon,” which tragically has led to the largest epidemic of mental health crises amongst 20-28 year-olds in recorded history.  

The actual number of GATs who are seeking psychiatric care is not currently known, but evidence is mounting that a statistically improbable number (over a 4000% uptick in the past 16 months alone) have left the profession.  This alarming increase in almost any other social scientific context would attract the attention of mainstream media, but sadly the plight of the GATs has been deemed by most major outlets as “outside our current coverage priorities.”

As the following quotations from a qualitative analysis by Blair, Winston, & Syme (Oceania University Press, 2022) indicate, this issue is incredibly complex and far from binary:

“I really believed I was helping.  Parents would bring their children to me with questions about their child’s sudden identification as being trans, and I would smile and nod about their concerns while inside I was thinking I MUST protect this child from her parents!  I know her better after 50 minutes than they do after 14 years!  I gender-affirmed 17 teenage patients (12 girls, 5 boys) between 2016 and 2021, and by 2022, 14 of them had medically transitioned. I really thought I had done the right thing, and then, between 2022 and 2023, 7 of them contacted me to express regret, and 4 of them attempted suicide.  I don’t know how I can go on with my life.”  

– Name Withheld, Former GAT, Austin TX

“My wife was a therapist for 12 years.  It was always her dream job to help others, after surviving a rough childhood herself. She really thought she was helping and protecting these “trans” kids.  Then several former patients initiated lawsuits against her and her practice, saying that she funneled them down a path to irreversible harm with only cursory evaluation and no exploration of prior traumas or history of mental health difficulties.  She left her practice and now barely leaves the house.  She is a beautiful person and I love her deeply.  I tell her every day that it is not her fault.”  

– Desmond K., husband of a former gender-affirming clinical psychologist, Palo Alto CA

“Our son Jimmy got a PhD in Psychology to specialize in helping troubled teens who were victims of abuse, suffered from addiction, or were harming themselves in some way. About 5 years ago he started telling us about all these distressed teenagers who were “born in the wrong body.”  He left us a voice message in September of 2022 saying he loved us and tried to do the right thing.  No one has seen or heard from him since.”

– Linda and Donald “Hub” Hubbard, parents of James Hubbard, missing since November 2022.  Last seen in Lincoln, NE.  If you have any information about the whereabouts of James Hubbard, please contact the Lincoln Police Department at (402) 441-6000.

These are only three of hundreds of similar heart-wrenching stories.  

SPAT is attempting to call attention to the plight of GATs but faces formidable opposition from the Society for the Protection of Endocrinologists and Plastic Surgeons (SPENDOPS).  SPENDOPS now rivals the effectiveness of the gun and tobacco lobbies and provides liability shielding to those who earned windfall profits providing “Gender Affirming” treatments during Gendergeddon.

According to SPENDOPS president Donald Parsons, “after the trans kid market dried up in 2022, we had to pivot to different markets to maintain the increasingly high levels of productivity we enjoyed for the past decade.  We had pretty much run out of cross-sex hormones by that point anyway.”  

When asked about their new growth strategy, Parsons replied “sounds crazy, but we’re working with influencers on TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, and Instagram to encourage gender-questioning kids to graft unicorn horns onto their skulls.”  Unicornification, or “Unicorning” has become outrageously popular after two pop culture icons appeared in public showing off their newly implanted diamond-coated “Sparkle Horns” while holding hands outside a popular nightclub in Miami Beach.  “Plastic surgeons formerly making bank on phalloplasties and amputating healthy breasts are now attaching horns to people’s heads at $12k a pop” continues Parsons.  “It’s like Christmas all year round!”  

As for the Endocrinologists, after injecting the entire global supply of synthetic testosterone and estrogen into teenagers, their newest product is the revolutionary “hornosterone,” which helps to transform the human voice into the lilting whinny of a unicorn in less than 6 months.