"True recovery asks us to face ourselves. Industry asks us to buy a new version of ourselves.
It’s not hard to see that these industries thrive on systemic profit incentives, models that reward volume, growth, and dependency over long-term healing. The solution is not in dismantling the branches but in finding the seed that grew the roots. Understanding where the pain began is what breaks the cycle, not selling new ways to escape it."
Thank you, Emily! That’s quote of mine is exactly the key of it. What we believe is our way out of ourselves, is sold, not treated. And there’s a huge problem in that. I appreciate you adding a valuable reflection to my work!
Great insights, thanks to the author for digging so deep. To one degree or other, we are all addicts, and our addiction makes people money, as you point out so beautifully. The great thing about people like you, who face substance addiction so honestly, is that you expose the truth about this kind suffering for everyone. You gain the wisdom we all need to gain. The Buddha called this pain or suffering or discomfort "dukkha." The sense of unease and the drive to fix it. Either by craving or by running away, same difference, and it's all addictive behavior. The Buddha also talked about how suffering is simply the human condition (the "first noble truth"), but we make this suffering so much worse when we don't accept this truth, when we don't surrender, when we think we can control. The parallel between substance addiction and gender ideology is powerful. Thanks again.
Is your poem published on your page? I will go look. PITT is a very special place. The shared experiences offers a different kind of insight, and connection. And you’re right. It is a different angle, and I think it’s easy to look past how interwoven it is to be preyed on. We all should be looking at the narratives that are being pushed into our subconscious, particularly by those that see human suffering and how they can use it for their own monetary gain. This happens all over, in many different lights and shadows, and we soak up its information like sponges. It creates identity crisis’ that run deep. The part where children are targeted, is extremely bothersome and should concern everyone. Much like the elderly, children are part of a population that need to be protected. They rely on it. And no ideology should be interfering with the systems put in place to keep them safe. It’s very disturbing. And people’s lives are being completely shattered because of it. Mental health is a huge aspect of trans ideology, for both the children, and the parents that agree to participate in gender transitioning. It screams Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Where it should be looked at as abuse and neglect, it is not. Instead, in some states it’s looked at as the opposite. If you don’t support it, as a parent, you can have your rights stripped from you and lose your children to the system in a different way. My goal is only to show what is happening, and how my experience, what my family went through, will forever be altered because of, is much more than just ideology. It is betrayal by a system bigger than all of us. I appreciate your kind words, really. And your support. 🫶
It's a song, not a poem (my main thing is songwriting and essay writing). I have two substacks, one about my work with music and elders and the other more generally about my original music, where I have also posted a few on the gender topic. Here is PITT's post:
Awesome!! I will def go check it out. Thank you for dropping the links 😀 and absolutely! My inbox is always open. I need to just catch up on it currently haha! Would love to connect.
Hi, Elizabeth! Thank you, so much for this. I really appreciate how deeply you engaged with this. You’re right that the thread running through all of this is the same one that runs its way through almost every form of human suffering. It’s the restless drive many of us experience where all we want is to escape from ourselves.
I’ve always believed that looking at addiction honestly forces you to confront the universal part of that struggle. The Buddha’s idea of dukkha fits it well, because that constant sense of unease is something everyone carries, just expressed in different forms. And like you said, the real damage absolutely stems from trying to outrun it instead of trying to understand it.
The parallels you drew are exactly why I wrote this piece. Thank you for seeing it so clearly ❤️
PITT is awesome, and nice to meet you! I did think your piece presented a new angle that is so important. I'm not a parent who has gone through the almost unimaginable agony of so many on here, but since PITT started, I wanted to at least be a witness. I needed to imagine this new kind of pain, because so few were helping the parents. I've written a few pieces for them, including a song called "Icy Storm" from a parent's perspective watching their child deteriorate as she goes down the gender rabbit hole.
I'm glad you got so much engagement on your essay, it made a difference!! I wish you joy and healing on your own path! ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you, Pitt, for sharing my article. These conversations matter to me, and clearly so many others. The awareness you’re bringing helps more people see what’s actually happening beneath the surface, and the real consequences they carry. The more we speak openly about this, the harder it becomes for the system to hide behind profit or ideology. I’m grateful for your work.
What an amazing piece! I am particularly grateful for your explanation of gender bending as a cure for pains of the psyche. Changing the sexual characteristics of your body provides only momentary relief without changing the underlying problems at all. In fact it only adds actual physical pain for the person seeking a relief from the emotional pain they are experiencing!
Thank you so much. I’m glad that part stood out to you, because it’s the piece of this conversation that keeps getting ignored. When someone is carrying deep psychological pain, changing the body can feel like a quick way to quiet it, but it never reaches the actual source. And like you said, it often adds new layers of physical pain and medical dependence, which only pulls the person further from real healing.
The tragedy is that people are seeking relief, not harm. But when the underlying issues go untouched, the “solution” becomes another form of suffering. That’s why these conversations about mental health, ethics, and long term consequences matter so much 🙌
Thanks for the nice comments, and thanks particularly for the additional information you have added. I wish we could share this with every teenager in the world. Like addicts and alcoholics, most wouldn’t listen, but every life saved from unnecessary and unethical medical procedures is one step closer to a better world!
I would love to speak at high schools one day, and maybe that will happen. There is so much value in hearing this from people who have lived through the consequences, not from institutions with something to sell. I agree completely that these conversations have to happen publicly, and especially with youth, before they get pulled into narratives that tell them their pain is a problem on the surface instead of something deeper that deserves real care.
Absolutely. I actually wrote an entire piece on resilience for that exact reason. It’s something we build, something we teach, something kids pick up by watching how the adults around them handle difficulty. And somewhere along the way, we stopped passing that down.
What makes it even harder is how little control parents actually have. If you look at Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory, the chronosystem shows how many different forces shape a person over time. Parents are one part of that, but they’re not the whole thing. There are wider social, cultural, and technological influences that reach kids long before we realize it.
We started teaching avoidance instead of strength, quick fixes instead of endurance. When resilience isn’t taught, everything becomes harder to hold onto. I’m really glad this connected with you, and thank you for commenting and reflecting on what I’ve written.
Great article. One comment I would add is that I’m not sure adults in these situations can fully comprehend the long term consequences of these decisions. My child transitioned at 29 ( an adult) but I know he has no idea what the long term consequences are.
Thanks for commenting! ❤️ I Absolutely agree. That part is its own conversation and its own ethical dilemma. I bring it up often when discussing gender ideology with others. I point out that there is a HUGE mental health component that keeps being ignored. It is not easy to dispute, yet people continue to dismiss it with reasoning that has no clinical basis and no logical structure. And the reason it is ignored is the same reason I wrote about in the first place: the money, the industry, the incentives that turn real human problems into profitable ones for Big Pharma and the medical system.
And here is the irony. We have laws built around understanding consequences, which is what my article was about, protecting kids who cannot grasp long term impact. Yet at the same time, adults who are in the middle of severe mental instability can still sign off on irreversible procedures. There is a reason psych evaluations exist before major surgeries, but their accuracy is questionable. Someone sitting in cognitive dissonance cannot fully understand long term consequences, and pretending they can is its own ethical failure 😣 💔
Well, the medical industry is showing no signs of wanting to improve, just look at the AAMC:
"In addition to administering the MCAT, the medical school admissions test, the AAMC sponsors the accrediting body for allopathic medical schools."
"Frank Trinity, the AAMC’s chief legal officer, noted that the organization is backing a challenge to the Trump administration’s executive action cutting off funding for hospitals that perform transgender procedures on kids.
“Since 2022, the AAMC has been a part of a coalition of more than 20 national medical groups, joining an amicus effort filed in many courts across the country supporting challenges to mostly state laws that would essentially prohibit gender affirming medical care,” Trinity said."
"LEAKED FOOTAGE: Medical Org Vows To Fight Trump’s Crackdown On Transgender Ideology
Great points! Thank you for taking the time to read, and share you reflection to my words. I appreciate the time you took to cite sources for others.
But yes, this is exactly why I keep saying the issue is not isolated to individual clinicians or individual cases. The problem is systemic. When the AAMC, which controls medical school accreditation and the MCAT pipeline, publicly commits to defending these practices even for minors, it shows you where the institutional incentives are pointed. They are not moving toward caution or reevaluation. They are moving toward entrenchment. And it is beyond concerning.
And it is also the part people underestimate. Once a system aligns itself financially, politically, and ideologically with a specific medical model, it becomes very difficult to get honest self correction from within. The incentives are not set up for that. The industry protects the industry. So, I keep returning to ethics and consent. If the institutions that train doctors, accredit programs, and shape national standards are already committed to supporting these interventions, then the ethical guardrails become even more important. It can be the one part that can’t be argued against by most. Without those guardrails, everything defaults to whatever the system finds profitable, defensible, or politically useful. And the brainwashed people supporting them.
Yes! Escapism is never the answer and deprogramming is key. One of my early posts was on 'gender dysphoria' (a subjective bunch of bull). In that post, I wrote, "Ever seen a drug addict do anything for that next high? Imagine that as desperate families try to keep their loved ones from gruesome industry offerings."
Testosterone is a controlled substance for a reason! Psychological addiction is also real. With tech, the addiction to curated online persona is happening. It is performance on steroids. Once the self is destroyed by tech initiatives, groomers, apps, Orwellian words, etc, following medical masters who guide the gender confused step by step for their next surgical update happens.
You write, "These systems are designed to reward dysfunction, to turn pain into profit, dependence into data, and confusion into currency." All so true and with this data (ever so easy with mental health apps, telehealth, and professionals keen on lies) they have created a multi billion dollar industry.
Escapism, identity-chasing, and online personas all feed into the same problem, but the core issue is the system that monetizes instability!! When you pair psychological vulnerability with an industry built on incentivizing it, people get steered, not healed. They do not solve anything; they replicate the confusion because the confusion is profitable!! Thank you for writing a comment on my article. I am glad it resonated with you!
This was an excellent and a mesmerizing article, thank you for writing it. Too bad parents aren’t given a handbook of what to teach your children to let them grow up to be discerning adults. This article should definitely be in there. All parents should teach their children from the day they are able to understand (age 7) that all these things could happen to them if they’re not careful and if they don’t have the wisdom to resist. You didn’t mention it but in my opinion we need God in everything. God should be the number one in everyone’s minds every day and that should be sealed into children’s minds everyday. That’s the problem - we don’t teach our kids to worship and trust in God over every earthly thing or person. We look to the doctor to heal us, to the psychologist (quacks in my opinion) to figure out what’s inside our minds, the nutritionist to tell us what to eat, the physical trainer to tell us how to exercise and on and on > people making money off of what one could figure out for themselves if they’re tried or they had one mustard seed of confidence in themselves.
Thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate you taking the time to sit with the piece. And I do agree with you that children need something anchored in them early, something that keeps them from getting swept up by whatever comes along. Discernment is a skill you build through guidance and experience, not something you magically wake up with at eighteen.
And I hear you on the spiritual side. If you’ve read more of my work, you know I talk about a higher power and the need for something larger than ourselves. I’m not disagreeing with you there. Faith and spirituality matter, especially when the world pulls people in a hundred directions at once. I study psychology, and not all psychologist are quacks haha 🤣 but I will say, there are bad apples in all fields. The medical side of things has many, and it’s deeply unfortunate.
Thank you, very poignant. You have been to the depths of the human condition in this insane twisted culture and articulated it spot on accurately. If I were a high school teacher I’d make it required reading with a follow up essay on what it what it personally means to them. ( and likely get suspended or fired for doing so🙄)
What!!! Stop it!!!! That was so humbling. My goodness. Thank you for such kind words. And I will say, these conversations should be had in schools. This is the critical thinking that is instead being taken out of them. And it is sooooo important to point that out.
"Adults have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, absolutely, and that’s true even when those choices carry risk." I really don't think gender medicine is something to be framed in terms of anyone's rights. Do people have the RIGHT to take phen phen to lose weight? Um.. moot point, it was a dangerous drug taken off the market. Do people have the RIGHT to get a lobotomy to relieve their depression or OCD? Moot point again, this dangerous procedure is no longer offered. The issue is about taking harmful, unscientific treatments off the market, not about anyone's rights to live as they want.
I hear what you are saying, but you misread what I was addressing. You are treating harm as if it automatically removes a procedure from practice. It does not. If that were true, Brazilian butt lifts would not exist. They have one of the highest mortality rates in elective surgery, yet they are still performed. Many cosmetic and surgical interventions remain legal despite clear risks. That inconsistency is the immoral part, and it is a separate debate from the point I made.
Phen phen and lobotomies were removed because they failed scientifically, not because “rights” were the issue. Adults never lost bodily autonomy. The procedures were eliminated because evidence showed they did not work and caused unacceptable harm. To be clearer, my point was not about defending any intervention. It was about the ethical boundary that separates adult autonomy from pediatric protection. Medicine imposes age limits on irreversible procedures because informed consent requires a fully developed brain. Children do not have that capacity as they cannot understand permanence, long term consequence, or the impact of irreversible risk. Adults can.
So yes, the moral question about why harmful procedures stay available is real. But that is one conversation, and an important one. It is simply not the conversation I was having. My point was the ethical breakdown. This is the only area in medicine that discarded established consent standards and treated minors as if they could consent like adults.
- How "Gender" isn't different from any other manner where people are expressing pain
- Barriers to being loved. As an example he discussed a husband and wife he saw where the husband overcame a "need" for his and her boxing gloves prior to sex once he understood where the desire came from.
- There is self hatred/masochism/punishing oneself in transvestism.
- The 2% regret rate for "gender" medicalization is false.
- You amputate your breasts and maybe you no longer have "breast dysphoria" but you still have "gender dysphoria".
- Even those who insist they are "happy - this is who they are" when asked about various measures of how life is going - it's not good post medicalization.
- When Levine goes to conferences on schizophrenia, there are no schizophrenics in the audience booing as with "gender" sufferers.
I have argued this, too. And it is a deeply important issue to me as well. And you are one hundred percent correct. But this is not what I was discussing in this article. My focus here was on the ethical dilemma, and when all of a sudden the guidelines around consenting age disappeared. A focus on protecting our children. As I wrote about losing my cousin. Who was preyed upon as… a child. So it hits home to me. Deeply.
The mental health side of this with adults and elective surgeries is a separate conversation. And it is one I would be happy to write about. I have a lot to say, and I actually reference Body Integrity Identity Disorder often. Because it correlates well. It is the same pattern of feeling the body is foreign and trying to resolve psychological distress with irreversible physical procedures.
What is happening for profit is horrific. And what our country allows adults to do to their bodies while they are clearly in the middle of a mental health crisis is its own ethical failure completely. A bigger piece of the puzzle to what I wrote about. And it’s all very concerning.
Also Cross Sex Hormone should be outlawed. It should be a law to not be able to prescribe a hormone estrogen -testosterone to the opposite sex and those physicians and clinics that do should have licenses revoked and face prison sentences. Cross sex hormones at the beginning of Trans journeys.
I agree, there should absolutely be consequences for those that are doing harm when their duty is to protect. How they continue to get away with it is truly disheartening and terrifying at the same time.
"True recovery asks us to face ourselves. Industry asks us to buy a new version of ourselves.
It’s not hard to see that these industries thrive on systemic profit incentives, models that reward volume, growth, and dependency over long-term healing. The solution is not in dismantling the branches but in finding the seed that grew the roots. Understanding where the pain began is what breaks the cycle, not selling new ways to escape it."
100%! couldn't agree more. Well written piece.
Thank you, Emily! That’s quote of mine is exactly the key of it. What we believe is our way out of ourselves, is sold, not treated. And there’s a huge problem in that. I appreciate you adding a valuable reflection to my work!
Very good comparison. The financialisation concept is key.
Thank you, Sharon!
Great insights, thanks to the author for digging so deep. To one degree or other, we are all addicts, and our addiction makes people money, as you point out so beautifully. The great thing about people like you, who face substance addiction so honestly, is that you expose the truth about this kind suffering for everyone. You gain the wisdom we all need to gain. The Buddha called this pain or suffering or discomfort "dukkha." The sense of unease and the drive to fix it. Either by craving or by running away, same difference, and it's all addictive behavior. The Buddha also talked about how suffering is simply the human condition (the "first noble truth"), but we make this suffering so much worse when we don't accept this truth, when we don't surrender, when we think we can control. The parallel between substance addiction and gender ideology is powerful. Thanks again.
Is your poem published on your page? I will go look. PITT is a very special place. The shared experiences offers a different kind of insight, and connection. And you’re right. It is a different angle, and I think it’s easy to look past how interwoven it is to be preyed on. We all should be looking at the narratives that are being pushed into our subconscious, particularly by those that see human suffering and how they can use it for their own monetary gain. This happens all over, in many different lights and shadows, and we soak up its information like sponges. It creates identity crisis’ that run deep. The part where children are targeted, is extremely bothersome and should concern everyone. Much like the elderly, children are part of a population that need to be protected. They rely on it. And no ideology should be interfering with the systems put in place to keep them safe. It’s very disturbing. And people’s lives are being completely shattered because of it. Mental health is a huge aspect of trans ideology, for both the children, and the parents that agree to participate in gender transitioning. It screams Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Where it should be looked at as abuse and neglect, it is not. Instead, in some states it’s looked at as the opposite. If you don’t support it, as a parent, you can have your rights stripped from you and lose your children to the system in a different way. My goal is only to show what is happening, and how my experience, what my family went through, will forever be altered because of, is much more than just ideology. It is betrayal by a system bigger than all of us. I appreciate your kind words, really. And your support. 🫶
It's a song, not a poem (my main thing is songwriting and essay writing). I have two substacks, one about my work with music and elders and the other more generally about my original music, where I have also posted a few on the gender topic. Here is PITT's post:
https://www.pittparents.com/p/icy-storm
Here's the post I wrote about it on my own Substack:
https://elizabethhummel.substack.com/p/why-i-wrote-icy-storm
Let's connect more on the messaging app! Love your work.
Awesome!! I will def go check it out. Thank you for dropping the links 😀 and absolutely! My inbox is always open. I need to just catch up on it currently haha! Would love to connect.
Hi, Elizabeth! Thank you, so much for this. I really appreciate how deeply you engaged with this. You’re right that the thread running through all of this is the same one that runs its way through almost every form of human suffering. It’s the restless drive many of us experience where all we want is to escape from ourselves.
I’ve always believed that looking at addiction honestly forces you to confront the universal part of that struggle. The Buddha’s idea of dukkha fits it well, because that constant sense of unease is something everyone carries, just expressed in different forms. And like you said, the real damage absolutely stems from trying to outrun it instead of trying to understand it.
The parallels you drew are exactly why I wrote this piece. Thank you for seeing it so clearly ❤️
PITT is awesome, and nice to meet you! I did think your piece presented a new angle that is so important. I'm not a parent who has gone through the almost unimaginable agony of so many on here, but since PITT started, I wanted to at least be a witness. I needed to imagine this new kind of pain, because so few were helping the parents. I've written a few pieces for them, including a song called "Icy Storm" from a parent's perspective watching their child deteriorate as she goes down the gender rabbit hole.
I'm glad you got so much engagement on your essay, it made a difference!! I wish you joy and healing on your own path! ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you, Pitt, for sharing my article. These conversations matter to me, and clearly so many others. The awareness you’re bringing helps more people see what’s actually happening beneath the surface, and the real consequences they carry. The more we speak openly about this, the harder it becomes for the system to hide behind profit or ideology. I’m grateful for your work.
This just in:
"Scientists okay Trump-ordered report that found almost nothing to support ‘gender-affirming care’ for kids"
https://nypost.com/2025/11/19/us-news/trump-ordered-report-that-found-almost-no-evidence-to-support-gender-affirming-care-for-kids-gets-scientific-seal-of-approval/
What an amazing piece! I am particularly grateful for your explanation of gender bending as a cure for pains of the psyche. Changing the sexual characteristics of your body provides only momentary relief without changing the underlying problems at all. In fact it only adds actual physical pain for the person seeking a relief from the emotional pain they are experiencing!
Thank you so much. I’m glad that part stood out to you, because it’s the piece of this conversation that keeps getting ignored. When someone is carrying deep psychological pain, changing the body can feel like a quick way to quiet it, but it never reaches the actual source. And like you said, it often adds new layers of physical pain and medical dependence, which only pulls the person further from real healing.
The tragedy is that people are seeking relief, not harm. But when the underlying issues go untouched, the “solution” becomes another form of suffering. That’s why these conversations about mental health, ethics, and long term consequences matter so much 🙌
Thanks for the nice comments, and thanks particularly for the additional information you have added. I wish we could share this with every teenager in the world. Like addicts and alcoholics, most wouldn’t listen, but every life saved from unnecessary and unethical medical procedures is one step closer to a better world!
I would love to speak at high schools one day, and maybe that will happen. There is so much value in hearing this from people who have lived through the consequences, not from institutions with something to sell. I agree completely that these conversations have to happen publicly, and especially with youth, before they get pulled into narratives that tell them their pain is a problem on the surface instead of something deeper that deserves real care.
You have deep wisdom and understanding. Thank you for sharing your message with us.
Thank you, so kind of you. I appreciate it. It has impacted us deeply. Awareness is the only goal, and protecting the vulnerable at all costs. ❤️
Encouraging others to take the short cut to a healthy mental state by declaring a trans identity never works.
Becoming resilient takes time, effort and support but it is the only way to true contentment with oneself: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/building-resilience-takes-practice
Absolutely. I actually wrote an entire piece on resilience for that exact reason. It’s something we build, something we teach, something kids pick up by watching how the adults around them handle difficulty. And somewhere along the way, we stopped passing that down.
What makes it even harder is how little control parents actually have. If you look at Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory, the chronosystem shows how many different forces shape a person over time. Parents are one part of that, but they’re not the whole thing. There are wider social, cultural, and technological influences that reach kids long before we realize it.
We started teaching avoidance instead of strength, quick fixes instead of endurance. When resilience isn’t taught, everything becomes harder to hold onto. I’m really glad this connected with you, and thank you for commenting and reflecting on what I’ve written.
Great article. One comment I would add is that I’m not sure adults in these situations can fully comprehend the long term consequences of these decisions. My child transitioned at 29 ( an adult) but I know he has no idea what the long term consequences are.
Thanks for commenting! ❤️ I Absolutely agree. That part is its own conversation and its own ethical dilemma. I bring it up often when discussing gender ideology with others. I point out that there is a HUGE mental health component that keeps being ignored. It is not easy to dispute, yet people continue to dismiss it with reasoning that has no clinical basis and no logical structure. And the reason it is ignored is the same reason I wrote about in the first place: the money, the industry, the incentives that turn real human problems into profitable ones for Big Pharma and the medical system.
And here is the irony. We have laws built around understanding consequences, which is what my article was about, protecting kids who cannot grasp long term impact. Yet at the same time, adults who are in the middle of severe mental instability can still sign off on irreversible procedures. There is a reason psych evaluations exist before major surgeries, but their accuracy is questionable. Someone sitting in cognitive dissonance cannot fully understand long term consequences, and pretending they can is its own ethical failure 😣 💔
Well, the medical industry is showing no signs of wanting to improve, just look at the AAMC:
"In addition to administering the MCAT, the medical school admissions test, the AAMC sponsors the accrediting body for allopathic medical schools."
"Frank Trinity, the AAMC’s chief legal officer, noted that the organization is backing a challenge to the Trump administration’s executive action cutting off funding for hospitals that perform transgender procedures on kids.
“Since 2022, the AAMC has been a part of a coalition of more than 20 national medical groups, joining an amicus effort filed in many courts across the country supporting challenges to mostly state laws that would essentially prohibit gender affirming medical care,” Trinity said."
"LEAKED FOOTAGE: Medical Org Vows To Fight Trump’s Crackdown On Transgender Ideology
November 18, 2025
Association of American Medical Colleges"
https://donoharmmedicine.org/in-the-news/2025/11/18/leaked-footage-medical-org-vows-to-fight-trumps-crackdown-on-transgender-ideology/
Great points! Thank you for taking the time to read, and share you reflection to my words. I appreciate the time you took to cite sources for others.
But yes, this is exactly why I keep saying the issue is not isolated to individual clinicians or individual cases. The problem is systemic. When the AAMC, which controls medical school accreditation and the MCAT pipeline, publicly commits to defending these practices even for minors, it shows you where the institutional incentives are pointed. They are not moving toward caution or reevaluation. They are moving toward entrenchment. And it is beyond concerning.
And it is also the part people underestimate. Once a system aligns itself financially, politically, and ideologically with a specific medical model, it becomes very difficult to get honest self correction from within. The incentives are not set up for that. The industry protects the industry. So, I keep returning to ethics and consent. If the institutions that train doctors, accredit programs, and shape national standards are already committed to supporting these interventions, then the ethical guardrails become even more important. It can be the one part that can’t be argued against by most. Without those guardrails, everything defaults to whatever the system finds profitable, defensible, or politically useful. And the brainwashed people supporting them.
Yes! Escapism is never the answer and deprogramming is key. One of my early posts was on 'gender dysphoria' (a subjective bunch of bull). In that post, I wrote, "Ever seen a drug addict do anything for that next high? Imagine that as desperate families try to keep their loved ones from gruesome industry offerings."
Testosterone is a controlled substance for a reason! Psychological addiction is also real. With tech, the addiction to curated online persona is happening. It is performance on steroids. Once the self is destroyed by tech initiatives, groomers, apps, Orwellian words, etc, following medical masters who guide the gender confused step by step for their next surgical update happens.
You write, "These systems are designed to reward dysfunction, to turn pain into profit, dependence into data, and confusion into currency." All so true and with this data (ever so easy with mental health apps, telehealth, and professionals keen on lies) they have created a multi billion dollar industry.
Escapism, identity-chasing, and online personas all feed into the same problem, but the core issue is the system that monetizes instability!! When you pair psychological vulnerability with an industry built on incentivizing it, people get steered, not healed. They do not solve anything; they replicate the confusion because the confusion is profitable!! Thank you for writing a comment on my article. I am glad it resonated with you!
This is Absolutely and Spot On!
Thank you!!
This was an excellent and a mesmerizing article, thank you for writing it. Too bad parents aren’t given a handbook of what to teach your children to let them grow up to be discerning adults. This article should definitely be in there. All parents should teach their children from the day they are able to understand (age 7) that all these things could happen to them if they’re not careful and if they don’t have the wisdom to resist. You didn’t mention it but in my opinion we need God in everything. God should be the number one in everyone’s minds every day and that should be sealed into children’s minds everyday. That’s the problem - we don’t teach our kids to worship and trust in God over every earthly thing or person. We look to the doctor to heal us, to the psychologist (quacks in my opinion) to figure out what’s inside our minds, the nutritionist to tell us what to eat, the physical trainer to tell us how to exercise and on and on > people making money off of what one could figure out for themselves if they’re tried or they had one mustard seed of confidence in themselves.
Thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate you taking the time to sit with the piece. And I do agree with you that children need something anchored in them early, something that keeps them from getting swept up by whatever comes along. Discernment is a skill you build through guidance and experience, not something you magically wake up with at eighteen.
And I hear you on the spiritual side. If you’ve read more of my work, you know I talk about a higher power and the need for something larger than ourselves. I’m not disagreeing with you there. Faith and spirituality matter, especially when the world pulls people in a hundred directions at once. I study psychology, and not all psychologist are quacks haha 🤣 but I will say, there are bad apples in all fields. The medical side of things has many, and it’s deeply unfortunate.
Thank you and definitely agree
Thank you, very poignant. You have been to the depths of the human condition in this insane twisted culture and articulated it spot on accurately. If I were a high school teacher I’d make it required reading with a follow up essay on what it what it personally means to them. ( and likely get suspended or fired for doing so🙄)
What!!! Stop it!!!! That was so humbling. My goodness. Thank you for such kind words. And I will say, these conversations should be had in schools. This is the critical thinking that is instead being taken out of them. And it is sooooo important to point that out.
"Adults have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, absolutely, and that’s true even when those choices carry risk." I really don't think gender medicine is something to be framed in terms of anyone's rights. Do people have the RIGHT to take phen phen to lose weight? Um.. moot point, it was a dangerous drug taken off the market. Do people have the RIGHT to get a lobotomy to relieve their depression or OCD? Moot point again, this dangerous procedure is no longer offered. The issue is about taking harmful, unscientific treatments off the market, not about anyone's rights to live as they want.
I hear what you are saying, but you misread what I was addressing. You are treating harm as if it automatically removes a procedure from practice. It does not. If that were true, Brazilian butt lifts would not exist. They have one of the highest mortality rates in elective surgery, yet they are still performed. Many cosmetic and surgical interventions remain legal despite clear risks. That inconsistency is the immoral part, and it is a separate debate from the point I made.
Phen phen and lobotomies were removed because they failed scientifically, not because “rights” were the issue. Adults never lost bodily autonomy. The procedures were eliminated because evidence showed they did not work and caused unacceptable harm. To be clearer, my point was not about defending any intervention. It was about the ethical boundary that separates adult autonomy from pediatric protection. Medicine imposes age limits on irreversible procedures because informed consent requires a fully developed brain. Children do not have that capacity as they cannot understand permanence, long term consequence, or the impact of irreversible risk. Adults can.
So yes, the moral question about why harmful procedures stay available is real. But that is one conversation, and an important one. It is simply not the conversation I was having. My point was the ethical breakdown. This is the only area in medicine that discarded established consent standards and treated minors as if they could consent like adults.
Hey, you are clearly interested in the subject of consent. Have you followed Dr. Stephen Levine?
1) "Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults"
Stephen B. Levine,E. Abbruzzese &Julia W. Mason
https://archive.ph/4lR0S
2) “Revisiting the Impossibility of Informed Consent for Transgender Interventions
July 19, 2022 By Jane Robbins” https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/07/83503/
3) "Dr. Stephen Levine Reflects on 40 Years in Gender Medicine."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoNMzdZHQCs
Some notes I took from the video:
- How "Gender" isn't different from any other manner where people are expressing pain
- Barriers to being loved. As an example he discussed a husband and wife he saw where the husband overcame a "need" for his and her boxing gloves prior to sex once he understood where the desire came from.
- There is self hatred/masochism/punishing oneself in transvestism.
- The 2% regret rate for "gender" medicalization is false.
- You amputate your breasts and maybe you no longer have "breast dysphoria" but you still have "gender dysphoria".
- Even those who insist they are "happy - this is who they are" when asked about various measures of how life is going - it's not good post medicalization.
- When Levine goes to conferences on schizophrenia, there are no schizophrenics in the audience booing as with "gender" sufferers.
Yes, he has some great work!
You said it before I could, GenderRealistMom. I could not agree more!
Dr. Paul McHugh shut down the first gender clinic (which he oversaw) because outcomes were not improved. This issue was resolved in like 1979.
I don't have a "right" to get any Rx I want and have my arms amputated, and insist everyone call me a non-binary armchair. People need REAL help.
I have argued this, too. And it is a deeply important issue to me as well. And you are one hundred percent correct. But this is not what I was discussing in this article. My focus here was on the ethical dilemma, and when all of a sudden the guidelines around consenting age disappeared. A focus on protecting our children. As I wrote about losing my cousin. Who was preyed upon as… a child. So it hits home to me. Deeply.
The mental health side of this with adults and elective surgeries is a separate conversation. And it is one I would be happy to write about. I have a lot to say, and I actually reference Body Integrity Identity Disorder often. Because it correlates well. It is the same pattern of feeling the body is foreign and trying to resolve psychological distress with irreversible physical procedures.
What is happening for profit is horrific. And what our country allows adults to do to their bodies while they are clearly in the middle of a mental health crisis is its own ethical failure completely. A bigger piece of the puzzle to what I wrote about. And it’s all very concerning.
Completely agree. No impossible sex "change" heinous "treatment" for anyone at any age.
Also Cross Sex Hormone should be outlawed. It should be a law to not be able to prescribe a hormone estrogen -testosterone to the opposite sex and those physicians and clinics that do should have licenses revoked and face prison sentences. Cross sex hormones at the beginning of Trans journeys.
I agree, there should absolutely be consequences for those that are doing harm when their duty is to protect. How they continue to get away with it is truly disheartening and terrifying at the same time.