Our son recently joined graduate school. He had started on hormones during his final year of undergraduate education. Because he began to identify as a lesbian, transgender woman at 20 and showed no sign of gender dysphoria before that, we never had a chance to reflect – or advise him – on his choices. Going through the published medical research on the effects of estrogen made me aware that psychologically, excess estradiol in the serum causes depression among males, and physiologically, there are potentially much more severe effects, including on the brain and the immunological system. More of that in a minute.
You got a form email from a secretary telling you that neither you nor the recipient of the email has any power over this. The person you emailed is an academic department, not a doctor in charge of medicine, or even anyone working in the same building as a medical doctor. It's not an admission of anything, except [maybe] that you have never had a real job, have no idea how large organizations or the world work, and are undergoing this difficult investigation through the rose-tinted glasses of confirmation bias. To wit, I got about the same emails from Club Penguin support when my daughter emailed them asking for new features. This is a non-answer.
As someone who came here out of genuine curiosity and concern for my own family, the poor rhetorical reasoning shown here has put me off greatly. If you're so worried about your child, learn how to actually understand evidence, rather than regurgitate talking points from FaceBook.
Thank you for the bravery to write to your son’s university and put it on record! I can’t tell you how helpful this was to me! I am a parent in the same situation and currently considering doing the same by writing to my sons university. I believe that this is what us parents need to do to fight this so colleges realize they are, and will be, held accountable. Would you allow me to use this as a template while changing details and wording of course to my situation with my son- I wish to use the research you cited! Its very good! Thank you for your stand on this 🙏🏼 hugs from one parent to another
"Gender affirming care is a unique process in medicine in that we are not aiming to treat and eliminate a disease process...Success is not based on a clinical metric but usually involves a better quality of life balanced with potential risks including morbidity and mortality."
This claim alone must serve as call to immediately halt medical transitioning and start the investigation for medical fraud. They admit that the irreparable medical intervention doesn't aim to provide a cure and involves the risks of "morbidity and mortality" but insist that this is the only treatment available and that gender exploratory therapy that aims to help patients make peace with their bodies is not an option.
It is infuriating. My son actually decided to go to University of Pittsburgh to get a Masters in Biostatistics and that he was transgender simultaneously in early 2021 shortly after spending a year in isolation working from home for Epic and getting fired from that job for losing it in an email. Oh yeah and he graduated this year and is doing data analysis for the University on how health interventions affect transgender youth. Since he hasn’t had contact with me in close to two years now, I assume his job consists in ignoring truth and skewing the research to fit the narrative. His resume actually says something about interpreting data to support hypothesis. He never had any gender dysphoria prior to this but has always been naive and gullible. He thinks he is contributing to the good of humanity. It is so sad what these colleges are doing. Our kids are pawns in a game. I keep praying his eyes be opened. The evidence has to be overwhelming how harmful these interventions are.
I have a daughter who "transitioned" but I read your article and it was excellent. I was constantly telling my daughter how harmful this was but I was just an ignorant parent. I found some emails where we were going back and forth and she told me how she had met many online transmen who had been on T for 6 to 10 yrs. with no side effects. I did not realize just how gullible she was. This was probably back in 2017. Did we even have many girls who were on T back then? UGHHH I worry every single day about her. Have not seen her in 3.5 yrs. I am not from Ireland. I am from the US
Just speaking from my own research and experience, it seems like it was really taking off around 2015, yet there was very little information available for parents in your situation. (At least not much information supporting the cautious approach. Major medical organizations were all in support of medicalization.)
My daughter fell into this about 2 years ago, in college, but I think she was learning about it online earlier. I can’t imagine going through this before 2021, when the world started to take notice and more information and support for parents became available; at least a tiny bit. Some parents here have been estranged for a decade. I’m so sorry for the loss you’re walking through.
My daughter has had almost no contact for over a year. I’m holding onto hope that most come back to reality at some point.
Excellent letter you wrote! And wow, the reply. Just wow. So here is a classic early example we will likely see more of: doctors, hospitals and activist groups shifting the narrative. Several people have discussed this likelihood recently: Wider Lens, Leor Sapir, Peter Boghossian. And of course, in the end, none of these doctors/hospitals will be held responsible. They'll just shift the blame on to the children and the parents. And this will be a lie. I have fought tooth and nail trying to keep my kid from these vipers. Just yesterday, my daughter had an appointment with a specialist, and she came home with a new list of primary care doctors she could see. She was happy because she refuses to see her 'affirming' pediatrician anymore as even she is sick of being pushed into medicalizing (the practice is part of a teaching hospital and mega affirming 'factory'). All of those doctors on the list? All affiliated with 'affirming' hospitals. In the US, as long as she 'identifies as trans', she can't get regular medical care without being referred to a gender clinic. I'm so, so, so done with this BS.
This will go down in gender critical history as one of the most blistering posts decrying the medical insanity of our times. May the doctors and therapists perpetuating this atrocity hang their heads in shame. The mass media and politicians who have colluded all the way through can join them. There can be no excuses for these people. “I thought I was helping trans kids” will not hold up, any more than the Nazi doctors’ claims that they were just doing their job exonerated them. Wilful ignorance is better understood as criminal dereliction of duty.
This is a brilliant letter and you've forced a very revealing response out of them. Great work but I'm sorry you are having to do it at all. I hope your son desists from all this soon.
This is great but I must point out that you're part of the problem when you say that your child was "assigned" male at birth. No child is "assigned" anything. Their sex is OBSERVED. In fact, a child's sex is known before birth, thanks to being able to observe a fetus' genitalia in the womb. Your son was born a male & he remains male.
I think the OP made clear they used language that they don't agree with to avoid being dismissed as a bigot/nazi/transphobe/terf from the outset. It was worth the compromise to get this response.
What a great counter that would be to the TRA website that offers free letters of recommendation to anyone to get hormones or surgery (Their motto is "Gatekeeping Sucks", no I'm not making that up https://www.prospecttherapy.com/hrt-and-gcs-letters):
A free incriminating evidence website!
Want to sue your clinic? Look it up on the site and see if anyone's got the goods on them!
This is quite impressive research. Of course we all know that these interventions don't really work. Even the most feminine appearing transwomen still look like men playing at being women, and vice versa.
Indeed, there are some big fish to fry here, and not to come across as being persnickety, but the phrasing, I think, is vital.
1) "Children with gender dysphoria" -- should be CHILDREN CONVINCED THAT THEY ARE DYSPHORIC
2) "Assigned male at birth" should be BORN MALE / BORN FEMALE
3) "Transwoman" should be MALE TAKING CROSS-SEX HORMONES
While it's possible that the use of their jargon is designed to meet them halfway, it's stepping over the line. One way to nudge this cult out of existence is to refuse to kowtow to their delusional language -- in addition to refusing to cater to their delusions.
Your word choice is appropriate for most situations. In this case, however, the writer made clear that he or she chose language that would make the students’ family appear affirming, but concerned. The goal was to get the university health service to take the letter seriously, rather than write it off as gender-critical “bigotry.” By taking this approach, the writer lulled the health service into sharing much more about the principles behind gender care than was perhaps wise.
I acknowledge that approach in my comment, but stand by my conviction to use reality-based language. "Assigned male at birth" is particularly delusional. I don't believe this war can be won by catering to the delusions, especially with so much rational evidence on the side of truth. It's just an absolutely ridiculous thing to say and you don't win the war by acting like you believe any of it.
You got a form email from a secretary telling you that neither you nor the recipient of the email has any power over this. The person you emailed is an academic department, not a doctor in charge of medicine, or even anyone working in the same building as a medical doctor. It's not an admission of anything, except [maybe] that you have never had a real job, have no idea how large organizations or the world work, and are undergoing this difficult investigation through the rose-tinted glasses of confirmation bias. To wit, I got about the same emails from Club Penguin support when my daughter emailed them asking for new features. This is a non-answer.
As someone who came here out of genuine curiosity and concern for my own family, the poor rhetorical reasoning shown here has put me off greatly. If you're so worried about your child, learn how to actually understand evidence, rather than regurgitate talking points from FaceBook.
Thank you for the bravery to write to your son’s university and put it on record! I can’t tell you how helpful this was to me! I am a parent in the same situation and currently considering doing the same by writing to my sons university. I believe that this is what us parents need to do to fight this so colleges realize they are, and will be, held accountable. Would you allow me to use this as a template while changing details and wording of course to my situation with my son- I wish to use the research you cited! Its very good! Thank you for your stand on this 🙏🏼 hugs from one parent to another
Excellent! So informative and I love the sarcasm. Such a dark subject needs dark humor.
wow! just WOW!
"Gender affirming care is a unique process in medicine in that we are not aiming to treat and eliminate a disease process...Success is not based on a clinical metric but usually involves a better quality of life balanced with potential risks including morbidity and mortality."
This claim alone must serve as call to immediately halt medical transitioning and start the investigation for medical fraud. They admit that the irreparable medical intervention doesn't aim to provide a cure and involves the risks of "morbidity and mortality" but insist that this is the only treatment available and that gender exploratory therapy that aims to help patients make peace with their bodies is not an option.
Yep. PURE EVIL some may say. How on earth did anyone allow this to go this far?
Unbelievable!
It is infuriating. My son actually decided to go to University of Pittsburgh to get a Masters in Biostatistics and that he was transgender simultaneously in early 2021 shortly after spending a year in isolation working from home for Epic and getting fired from that job for losing it in an email. Oh yeah and he graduated this year and is doing data analysis for the University on how health interventions affect transgender youth. Since he hasn’t had contact with me in close to two years now, I assume his job consists in ignoring truth and skewing the research to fit the narrative. His resume actually says something about interpreting data to support hypothesis. He never had any gender dysphoria prior to this but has always been naive and gullible. He thinks he is contributing to the good of humanity. It is so sad what these colleges are doing. Our kids are pawns in a game. I keep praying his eyes be opened. The evidence has to be overwhelming how harmful these interventions are.
I have a daughter who "transitioned" but I read your article and it was excellent. I was constantly telling my daughter how harmful this was but I was just an ignorant parent. I found some emails where we were going back and forth and she told me how she had met many online transmen who had been on T for 6 to 10 yrs. with no side effects. I did not realize just how gullible she was. This was probably back in 2017. Did we even have many girls who were on T back then? UGHHH I worry every single day about her. Have not seen her in 3.5 yrs. I am not from Ireland. I am from the US
Just speaking from my own research and experience, it seems like it was really taking off around 2015, yet there was very little information available for parents in your situation. (At least not much information supporting the cautious approach. Major medical organizations were all in support of medicalization.)
My daughter fell into this about 2 years ago, in college, but I think she was learning about it online earlier. I can’t imagine going through this before 2021, when the world started to take notice and more information and support for parents became available; at least a tiny bit. Some parents here have been estranged for a decade. I’m so sorry for the loss you’re walking through.
My daughter has had almost no contact for over a year. I’m holding onto hope that most come back to reality at some point.
Excellent letter you wrote! And wow, the reply. Just wow. So here is a classic early example we will likely see more of: doctors, hospitals and activist groups shifting the narrative. Several people have discussed this likelihood recently: Wider Lens, Leor Sapir, Peter Boghossian. And of course, in the end, none of these doctors/hospitals will be held responsible. They'll just shift the blame on to the children and the parents. And this will be a lie. I have fought tooth and nail trying to keep my kid from these vipers. Just yesterday, my daughter had an appointment with a specialist, and she came home with a new list of primary care doctors she could see. She was happy because she refuses to see her 'affirming' pediatrician anymore as even she is sick of being pushed into medicalizing (the practice is part of a teaching hospital and mega affirming 'factory'). All of those doctors on the list? All affiliated with 'affirming' hospitals. In the US, as long as she 'identifies as trans', she can't get regular medical care without being referred to a gender clinic. I'm so, so, so done with this BS.
This will go down in gender critical history as one of the most blistering posts decrying the medical insanity of our times. May the doctors and therapists perpetuating this atrocity hang their heads in shame. The mass media and politicians who have colluded all the way through can join them. There can be no excuses for these people. “I thought I was helping trans kids” will not hold up, any more than the Nazi doctors’ claims that they were just doing their job exonerated them. Wilful ignorance is better understood as criminal dereliction of duty.
This is a brilliant letter and you've forced a very revealing response out of them. Great work but I'm sorry you are having to do it at all. I hope your son desists from all this soon.
This is great but I must point out that you're part of the problem when you say that your child was "assigned" male at birth. No child is "assigned" anything. Their sex is OBSERVED. In fact, a child's sex is known before birth, thanks to being able to observe a fetus' genitalia in the womb. Your son was born a male & he remains male.
I think the OP made clear they used language that they don't agree with to avoid being dismissed as a bigot/nazi/transphobe/terf from the outset. It was worth the compromise to get this response.
Excellent!
That letter will be worth six figures to anyone who gets hormones there and sues later.
What a great counter that would be to the TRA website that offers free letters of recommendation to anyone to get hormones or surgery (Their motto is "Gatekeeping Sucks", no I'm not making that up https://www.prospecttherapy.com/hrt-and-gcs-letters):
A free incriminating evidence website!
Want to sue your clinic? Look it up on the site and see if anyone's got the goods on them!
Amen
Oh it's all so complicated, isn't it? I'd laugh but I'm more likely to cry!
This is quite impressive research. Of course we all know that these interventions don't really work. Even the most feminine appearing transwomen still look like men playing at being women, and vice versa.
Indeed, there are some big fish to fry here, and not to come across as being persnickety, but the phrasing, I think, is vital.
1) "Children with gender dysphoria" -- should be CHILDREN CONVINCED THAT THEY ARE DYSPHORIC
2) "Assigned male at birth" should be BORN MALE / BORN FEMALE
3) "Transwoman" should be MALE TAKING CROSS-SEX HORMONES
While it's possible that the use of their jargon is designed to meet them halfway, it's stepping over the line. One way to nudge this cult out of existence is to refuse to kowtow to their delusional language -- in addition to refusing to cater to their delusions.
Your word choice is appropriate for most situations. In this case, however, the writer made clear that he or she chose language that would make the students’ family appear affirming, but concerned. The goal was to get the university health service to take the letter seriously, rather than write it off as gender-critical “bigotry.” By taking this approach, the writer lulled the health service into sharing much more about the principles behind gender care than was perhaps wise.
I acknowledge that approach in my comment, but stand by my conviction to use reality-based language. "Assigned male at birth" is particularly delusional. I don't believe this war can be won by catering to the delusions, especially with so much rational evidence on the side of truth. It's just an absolutely ridiculous thing to say and you don't win the war by acting like you believe any of it.
Agree.