Transgender: Is it the new dot-com bubble?

Remember when everyone opened a dot-com business? It was a big push back in the late 1990s. Everyone was getting into it and creating high-flying companies in the new wild west of the internet, until most of them went belly up. There were some big winners… and some big losers.

This is what is happening with transgender health.

Just like tech companies in the dot-com era, today the rush is on to open up a business providing “transgender care”. Hormones, surgeries. It started out with the pretense of healthcare that was "literally life-saving” for trans identified people. Now that the trans boom is fully underway, nonsensical “non-binary” nullification surgeries is the new thing. Surgeons will just amputate, and remove the nipples (cheaper than reconstruction!) or “smooth out” genital areas to create some sort of asexual appearance. Online marketplaces abound for wrong sex hormones, complete with influencers selling the dream of how fun a trans lifestyle can be.

Dot-com start-ups surged in the 90s— there was no stopping the momentum. Then, suddenly, in the early 2000s, one by one those unstoppable businesses began to underperform. The house of cards tumbled and Wall Street took notice. Things collapsed at first, in a trickled. Then, all at once, boom — it was over.

Looking back, that whole time period was a flash in the pan, a crazy time that we look back on and (mostly) laugh about, shaking our heads. But, for those of us that lived through it, we also secretly remember thinking that it was the new normal— the way business would always be moving forward. When that bubble popped, the damaged eventually dusted themselves off and went on to the next adventure.

Right now, trans seems like it’s here to stay. Those of us that have seen fads and business opportunities come and go know better. But, unlike with dot-com start-ups, it’s not just your pride and wallet that takes the hit, it’s our children. Those people that rushed to change their bodies to try to change their sex will not be able to just get out of bed and move onto the next adventure. They will be physically and mentally scarred for life. 

Trans medicine is headed for an inevitable bust. Once the masses find out what is really going on it will all end. As a mom of a trans-identified son, this can’t come too soon.

Like with dot-com start-ups, trans medicine won’t end disastrously for everyone. There will be winners and losers. Some will come out of it making a nice profit…but they will have to live with the fact that it was blood money, that their business was built on profiting on young adults and children’s bodies and lives, and ruining families. Others will be destroyed financially and/or in reputation. The mental state and physical bodies of children and young people that bought the product of transgender business will suffer a similar fate.

Wall Street isn’t going to step in this time. It’s going to be up to parents to bring down this insanity, through awareness and legal action. Time to wake up and bring this era to a close. Time to work together to be the regulators that topple this toxic spiral of greed, that profits from our children’s declining health, and bring the boom times for trans medicine to a screeching halt.

Just like how the dot-com crash happened overnight, the writing is on the wall for gender health care. The question is how much damage can we prevent before the collapse?