In exclusive interviews, two prominent providers sound off on puberty blockers, 'affirmative' care, the inhibition of sexual pleasure, and the suppression of dissent in their field.
Yes, exactly. Munchausen syndrome by proxy. According to Wikipedia,
"Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a condition where a caregiver or spouse fabricates, exaggerates, or induces mental or physical health problems in those who are in their care, with the primary motive of gaining attention or sympathy from others."
Not impossible, but highly unlikely. It doesn’t take much development to interact with boys and girls and feel more comfortable thinking of oneself as one or the other (though obviously such feelings wouldn’t have anything to do with sexuality and presumably not even anything to do with genitals at that point). On the other hand, it sounds pretty difficult for a parent to either subconsciously or consciously make their kid align with the opposite gender at that age, given how hard it is to get a tot to do anything! It’s notoriously hard to remember what kids can do/ look like at various ages if you don’t live with representatives of those ages, so even though two does sound a tad early to me too, I don’t put much weight on that intuition. Also, Jazz has had a consistent identification as female since then, and it’s hard to imagine how that could just be the product of her parents manipulating her when she was two, without her ever figuring out that was going on. Even with childhood memories, it’s pretty rude to deny someone’s experience without a good reason.
I would say 2 is WAY too early for an individual to be thinking about what sex they are. This is a decade before puberty.
Jazz is a perfect example of a set of parents projecting personal interpretations on their child, and in doing so, did life long pathological damage to the individual through radical affirmation.
Actually, it is abhorrent for a dude to appropriate womanhood because he is homosexual and likes dresses and make-up. If it offends you when women point that out, it is your problem. “I’d rather be rude than a f*cking liar” (Magdalen Burns, the Queen).
If he is appropriating it by demanding access to resources/spaces meant to protect biological women from being raped/outcompeted/etc. by biological men, to help biological women handle menstruation/pregnancy, etc., then yes, it is abhorrent. If she just wants to be referred to with female pronouns and allowed to act feminine without excessive ridicule, then it's preventing her from doing this that is the abhorrent act.
Maybe what actually happened at that early age was just that she wanted to wear dresses, play with dolls, etc. and was told that only girls can do that, so she decided that she would rather be a girl. In that case, it was only cultural factors that led to her thinking she was "supposed to be a girl" at that age, and without them she wouldn't have felt anything dysphoric like that until later, probably not until puberty.
So a girl that wants to play with trucks and play fetch should be encouraged to be a "boy" and eliminate their chance of ever having kids in the future due to forced hormone therapy?
At 2 years old, that level mimicking would be an aspect of mom and dad being reflected on the child.
Agreed, the best way to handle a little kid who wants to do stereotypically opposite-gender things is to just let them and not to teach them that this means they are necessarily transgender. If they are genuinely transgender, they will have plenty of time to realize this closer to puberty. I think I agree with your original comment now. I was initially interpreting it to be denying that Jazz could have independently developed an inclination towards girly things at that age, but I realize now that liking girly things is distinct from gender dysphoria, though trans activists often unhelpfully treat them as the same thing.
“… liking girly things is distinct from gender dysphoria, though trans activists often unhelpfully treat them as the same thing.”
Trans activists do many unhelpful things. They adopt absolutist positions and defend them (at times) viciously. They are not interested in “a conversation.”
Everything you posit here about Jazz’s reports could be factual. Even so, Jazz isn’t and never will be female. A surgically devised vagina is just a mutilation that fixes nothing.
They're not creating a vagina by inverting a penis, anymore than a surgeon is creating a younger person by performing a facelift. At best it's a facsimile, at worst it's a disaster--the necessity for follow up surgeries is very high, from 40-60%, with as noted, limited function. Of course, a child doesn't understand what is at risk when they are 2, or 4 or 11. As Abigail has written elsewhere, some of these adolescent girls having breast amputated & taking testosterone haven't had a first kiss.
boys too...and girls can become infertile, but the boys, the drugs they are given are intended to castrate them chemically day one. Bowers is worried about their sex life, but Bowers has 3 kids. These children are giving up their chance to be parents way before they are old enough to consider it reasonably (just try to get a hysterectomy before age 30 for non-medical reasons, there's evidence of regret that is too high, so you will have trouble!).
I recently watched a couple of youtube videos about phalloplasty. This gruesome procedure disfigures the forearm, frequently fails, and provides no real benefits.
I've always believed doctors who have the hubris to perform these surgeries are modern-day Frankensteins. Now, offering confused pre-pubescent children life-altering hormone treatments, I feel they are more like Mengele.
As a post-menopausal woman who has been through both puberty and menopause, I know intimately that hormones do not just affect secondary sexual characteristics - they change your personality. These doctors have NO idea what the long-term affects are of these experimental hormonal treatments. This article touches on some possible detrimental outcomes, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. It's horrifying.
Just because you are technically able to produce some result from this or that plastic surgery, this or that experimental hormonal protocol - doesn't mean you should take that unknown path and pat yourself on the back. You are dealing with human beings - not guinea pigs. Mind-numbing hubris.
There are numerous videos on YouTube made by young women (even teens) describing their struggles to cope with the premature menopause which they experience from suppressing their natural hormones and taking testosterone. Horrifying.
They aren't men, and they will never be men. Never. These unfortunate girls and women have been conned into destroying their health and appearance by scarfing down dangerous hormones and having dangerous surgeries that will shorten their lives. ]
And when these girls and women come to their senses and realize they aren't men and never will be men, they will realize the enormity of the mistake they made, and they will file massive class action lawsuits against the doctors, surgeons, therapists, hospitals, drug companies, schools and universities that convinced them to wreck their lives. Hope you haven't played a part in this debacle. But if you have, prepare to lawyer up.
I understand that they can present as men, but can they function as men? From what I read, those who transitioned rarely achieve intimacy or even have sex. If that is the case, what is the point?
I just thought it was amusing , that given that we are discussing choices transgender people make in order to achieve an alternate identity, that nancy2001 is horrified that they are ALSO achieving "baritone voices, masculine jawlines, beards, and double mastectomies".
The "also" was funny because those ARE the desired outcomes, whether horrifying to her or not.
They want to be perceived as men, to live as men, to the best of their ability.
And yeah, the sad part of that is that the desire is so strong they would rather have the IDENTITY than working sex organs, if it comes to that. 😥
But what i think most of us here can agree upon, whether we agree with transsex surgery or not, is that when it comes to very young people, it's a horror show that doctors can be so easy about it - the stakes are just too high.
I honestly think this is tragic. These surgical transformations are essentially a substitute for a productive life, no? I am not quite sure how identity can be achieved if you really can never be who you think you want to be. 15 years ago, when I lived in New York, and before that when I lived in San Francisco, there were happy men dressed as women - transvestites and cross-dressers - shopping at Loehmann's and Fifth Avenue outlets. They presented themselves the same way as transgender people today as there in never a mistake about a true biological sex of these people. Yes, I agree, that is a horror show that doctors and school staff are allowed this to happen to very young children.
How is this any different from third-world genital mutilation? The Left more and more resembles a primitive cult who wields 21st Century technology in their service.
They force you to have that in the third world. It’s a choice that requires a diagnosis, costs a fortune, and has zero perfect solutions. People treating us like circus freaks is par for the course, also assuming we’re of the left. Btw I’m not on the left, neither is Caitlyn Jenner. Dummy.
Respect and dignity for trans individuals and open discourse on the topics of sex and gender, are not mutually exclusive. The idea that opinions are tantamount to violence is a narrative being pushed by trans activists (most of them whom are not trans individuals) for the benefit of their ideology.
I was referring to myself. Goople, Gobble! There’s a Rick and Morty line that comes to mind with regards to what I think about Jerry…I’m sure it will come to me sooner or later…
Exactly! My adult daughter sent me a couple of witty, brilliant rap videos which frame these issues perfectly. They really are worth watching and spreading:
Exactly. These are guys who watch porn and read novels where some misogynist author writes shit like, "Poledancerina the private investigator was acutely aware of her pert, firm breasts while she stirred her morning coffee," or some such garbage and think to themselves, "That's me. I want to be acutely aware of my pert, firm breasts while drinking my coffee, too!" without even entertaining the idea that these are actually a MAN'S IDEA OF WHAT A WOMAN THINKS AND FEELS INSIDE.
I've never once heard one of these people talk about how they once had to wipe the backside of an 80 year old with Alzheimer's on Medicaid for shit pay and no pension and felt oh so feminine afterwards.
When you listen to them talking about how womanhood equates to tits, stiletto heels, and lip gloss, that proves that they are men. Only men think that that's what womanhood consists of.
My wife who is also trans delayed her transition to care for her mother with cancer. I’ve never seen her in a pair of stilettos in my life. Who are you talking to?
Wow! Honestly, my head is spinning. Thank you for sharing. I previously didn’t have much of an opinion on this one way or the other. All I can say is WOW.
I don’t have to take anyone seriously that calls themselves News Nut. Why do you people always talk about your kids like I give a crap? What are you going to do when you kids come and say, “mommy I’m a girl?” Mine put me in the hospital for it. Ever have that happen on your slender grasp of reality?
I am sorry this happened to you. If my kids came out as trans, I would look for the best evidence-based compassionate treatment or intervention available. However, since scientists and researchers have been cancelled over this topic and I understand that good science should be (per definition) unbiased—then I would have a very hard finding who to turn to. This is why I think Ms Shrier’s articles and books are important—science doesn’t work on the basis of cancelling and intimidation from activists.
I agree. I’m mad at the comments section. I’m going on the Glenn Show to talk about these issues. Probably never going to get a job from doing that. Don’t talk to me about getting canceled, those people canceled me long ago. I was actually friends with them, can you say that?
I am not for cancelling anyone—I am all for open dialogue. One of my main issues with trans activists is that they are just as likely to turn on someone who identifies as trans if such person fails to toe the line. Are they really all about empathy for the marginalized or are these just empty platitudes?
YOU DIDN'T HAVE FRIENDS you had acquaintances a friend will stick by you no matter what , I sure never canceled a friend because they were gay trans or spported B-DET OR T-RUMP might not agree with their choices , not a deal breaker for me . Sorry you had to go through that
I appreciate the empathy. Funny thing happened when I first transitioned. Everyone I knew started asking me about trans kids like I had any, or knew anything about raising children. If we’re asking angry hurt people like me for advice on that, we’re in trouble.
The article interviews a surgeon who performs these surgeries to make its point, gonna call Dr. Bowers Mengele? I want to insult you, but I’m going to be better than you and let it go. A thirty year old tranny just made you look six years old.
Agreed. "I mutilated dozens of likely mentally ill young people but now I regret it." Well, you still need to go to jail. We don't say that someone committed arson or mutilated people but admire them because they now feel really bad about it. I mean, it's a good thing for the world in general that this individual is now at least likely to mutilate fewer people than before, but the bar should be a little higher than that.
I’d like to thank these physicians for speaking out. I have a couple of issues with the current epidemic of non-cis/binary identification.
1-What other psychological conditions are treated surgically?
I can really only think of lobotomies and those have a ‘glorious’ history that may actually look better than our current physicians will in 50 years. Deep brain stimulation is relatively new and not nearly as commonly performed. Also, what is the malpractice risk of the physicians/surgeons when these kids realize they were treated with permanent sterilization for a temporary dysphoria? Even those that are happy with their transition essentially become wards of the medical establishment. No wonder so many doctors see transgender medicine as a growth field. But I can totally see hundreds of juries awarding plaintiffs vast sums for premature medical/surgical interventions before psychological treatment options were adequately attempted.
2-Recent surveys report up to 20-20% of teens are identifying as something other than cis & straight. Can someone explain an evolutionary advantage that would lead to 20% of a population taking itself out of the gene pool?
The 1000x rise in gender dysphoria over the last 20 years suggests to me a social phenomenon. Which takes the medical malpractice beyond surgically treating minors with a temporary psychological dysphoria (in most cases) to treating a social phenomenon with permanently sterilizing major surgery.
Some European health systems have started to realize this and restrain their cavalier physicians. Hopefully, through a combination of legal risk and education we can do the same in the US before more harm is done.
God, I hope so. But we must start with the medical schools and medical societies that not only pressure, but threaten doctors who refuse to conform and practice the "affirmative care" model! This is reminiscent of the proliferation of "pain clinics" in the mid 90s/ early 2000s when Oxycontin came on the market. At that time many medical societies (the ACP, American College of Physicians, is one) insisted that its members treat pain with addictive opioids.
The AAP insists on the affirmative model, even though James Cantor (2019 article called Fact Checking..., peer reviewed and published) tore apart their reasons (mostly based on conflating trans and gay, or quoting papers for the opposite of what they said) close to immediately. The Endocrine Society has similarly come out with a position paper not based in reality (Dec 2020) which has been debunked, there is no better word, by Malone et al (2021). It claimed false things like a there's a biological basis for gender identity and that gender identity can't change due to external influences (let's not forget Olson-Kennedy convincing a tomboy that she's a boy when she thought she was a girl, "pop tart"), and that current treatments are conservative (that is, sterilizing people, cutting off healthy organs, and the rest, based on low quality or very low quality or ungraded quality evidence, where no one even knows the likely outcomes for any given person).
I understand why endocrinologists might want people to think that they need hormones and why surgeons might want people to think they need surgery, maybe, if they are uniformed, but why everyone else is going along with it and not looking at the evidence, or refusing to print it (why isn't this information in the New York Times instead of those pieces telling everyone, well, lies, that medical transition is the only way forward and that the problem is just people not getting drugs and surgery fast enough??).
Thank you Abigail for speaking up over and over and over again for these kids (girls and boys, 20% are boys)!!!! And thank you Bari for hosting this incredibly important essay!
I am gay and 65. I was an effeminate child, and still have a few mannerisms. I never was dissatisfied being male.
I see what is happening today and it horrifies me. What would have happened to me had I been an effeminate child today? Would I have been told by teachers, psychologists that I was really a girl and should change my body?
I understand that effeminate male children can be targets for suggestions from authority figures about eventual transitioning. And parents can be purposely kept out of what's going on with their children.
What on earth is wrong with being an effeminate male, I'd like to know? Surely it is our definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" that need to change, not surgically altering children's bodies. If you are a biological male, whatever way you are is masculine enough- and perfectly fine. Men have to be John Wayne and women have to be Marilyn Monroe now, or what? This isn't progressive.
If you are a gay man in Iran, they will put you to death. If you are a gay man in Iran who is willing to become a "woman", the Iranian government will pay for your transition. As long as the coupling can be considered "heterosexual", the Mullahs are fine with it.
This trans-mania is homophobia and misogyny in a new getup; same shit, different day.
YES. When I was little, it was "You can't be that smart at science, you're a girl." Now it would be, "You can't be a girl, you're that smart at science."
""When I was little, it was "You can't be that smart at science, you're a girl.""
Can I ask how old you are? This cartoony attitude toward women is so very contrary to my own family history (4 generations of STEM educated women) that it's a little difficult to believe.
I'm 55, and are you really serious that you think that a four-generation long streak of STEM-educated women is the yardstick of normality? Might I ask how much money your family is worth?
Depends on your socioeconomic group. I’m a little older than the original poster, but I was absolutely told girls don’t need college.  My husband‘s family - the same thing. He was pushed into college, and his three equally bright sisters became secretaries because “girls don’t need college.”
The bigger problem, the one Abigail Shrier wrote her book about, is the astronomical rise in the number of girls who are experiencing rapid onset of gender dysphoria.
I was a girl who climbed trees, rode horses, and liked cars. I grew up to become a feminine female orthopaedic surgeon, very much a man's job. I've restored several antique vehicles. At no point in my life did I believe my "non feminine" interests meant I was a boy. I thank my parents for allowing me to be a girl with the audacity to pursue traditionally masculine pursuits.
At some point someone has to point out the emperor's naked arse. I don't know how this "transitioning" nonsense ever got out of the starting gate.
There is no transition, any more than there is a "gender assigned at birth." Nonsense. First, it is sex, not gender. Gender is a language construct; people belong to a sex unless they are among the fortunately-rare individuals who have a chromosomal abnormality such as XXY, XYY, XO, etc. Those patients are called "intersex" and may have ambiguous genitalia and can receive benefit from surgery.
Patients who have the normal XX or XY chromosomal pattern are, respectively, female and male. This pattern is not "assigned at birth;" it is DETERMINED by biology at the moment of conception nine months earlier, and cutting off cranks, making an outie from an innie or vice versa does nothing to change the blueprint that still resides in every nucleated cell in the body. Is that person a "trans?" Trans what, for God's sake? No he/she is most certainly not. If he was a man, now he is a postoperative man and nothing more. If a woman, she is still a woman - a genitally-mutilated woman, but a woman nonetheless.
If we acknowledge the first jot or tittle of this foolishness, then we are just fooling ourselves. Some things are actually known. Sex is one of the ones about which we are pretty sure.
I think the whole idea of "sex assigned at birth" originated from those unfortunate people who were born with the sex organs of both male and female and the medical practitioners decided which sex that child would be surgically, often times disastrously so. In those cases, I fully support waiting until the child displays the sexual proclivities or one or the other sex prior to medical intervention (unless I'm completely unaware of the hazards of doing so, which I may be). Otherwise, we are born male or female, period. We are not assigned a sex at birth. So much going on in the West currently is just so completely crazy.
An example of disastrous surgical intervention is the past procedure of feminizing male infants after botched circumcision. The lives of those boys surgically altered to appear feminine were destroyed. You can look it up.
In the early 80s anorexia nervosa was something that seemed to come out of nowhere and seemed to take the world by surprise. "Why all of a sudden are there lots of young girls starving themselves to death?" many people asked. Years later many experts came to believe this was a social contagion. It seemed to me the "trend" of anorexia nervosa seemed to peter out over time. What concerns me with gender dysphoria is instead of giving young girls the type of support they need there really seems to be full on support of their dysphoria including questionable medical intervention. This would be like supporting a young girls eating disorder instead of getting her the help she needs.
The thing is it's not "Live and let live." The transgender activists now push an extreme ideology on the rest of society, and their demands grow more extreme (and patently insane) with each passing day.
Biological male inmates with intact penises who merely declare themselves to be women are now housed in women's prison cells in California. Medical students no longer learn the basic biological differences between diseases in men and women. Women are now routinely referred to with highly insulting terms such as "chest feeders," "menstruators," "front holes," "birthing people," and "pregnant people."
This is not a step forward. It is a giant step backward.
We do, though. We're constantly expected to push down and make room for men, and we do it even without thinking. We have been second-class humans behind the ones with penises for 400,000 years, and now we're even second-class WOMEN behind the ones with penises. This is INSANITY.
LOL! No biological human male in the history of the world has ever been even "a little bit pregnant," with the possible exception of the 38th Governor of California, Arnold Schwartzeneggar.
All these terms are just SO insulting! I am more than my genitalia! Plus, I've never had children, so I'm not a "Chest feeder" or "birthing person". STILL A WOMAN!
"And the only form of treatment that works for most of them is to change their sexed phenotype."
This is true for that rare .01 percent of people. The trouble is the meteoric rise in diagnoses, the sloppy diagnoses noted in the article, social contagion, and applying the Dutch Protocols (Spak Protocols) to children.
Watch and wait resolves an overwhelming number of cases. The Dutch Protocols toss that out on its ear and now the rate of resolution is near zero, meaning most proceed to transition. And most often without addressing any underlying co-morbidities which are frequently there.
The operative word is "adults". What are we doing experimenting on children when neither we nor they can fully appreciate what may come of it? If Fernanda G above is correct, children age 12 in California can transition without their parents' approval. I'm sure you wouldn't support that. While there are no doubt real cases, there appears to be an element of social media contagion as well. We have to look out for our kids.
It's true that some people have an overwhelming sense that they are the opposite sex. It doesn't follow from that that because of this group with a rare and peculiar condition, there is then a thing called "Gender Identity" that we all have. It's a term so common that we have forgotten it's new and there really is no evidence for it. The idea that we all have a "gender soul" and that when we are very young we "just know" which is our gender soul, it's just religiously-tinged claptrap. It would be like justifying child marriage by saying every child has a "soul partner" and it's right to marry the souls at a young age, and the child can agree as they "know" who they are meant to be with, although it's always just the parents whispering in the ear what the child is expected to say. If you came across such culture you wouldnt think for a second there's any scientific validity to the "soul partner" stuff, but many fail to see the insanity of gender soul myths because it's our own scientists and leaders laundering the cult tenets info respectability.
They may have that Desire but can never have that reality. We need to learn distress tolerance and acceptance. We can overcome out distress if we don’t promise people the impossible it’s unkind to lie to people about the ability to change Sex.
Wait, they cut up perfectly healthy young bodies, and it's "live and let live?" Are you seriously proposing that that's a reasonable reaction to the mutilation of young bodies? To say nothing of letting fully intact males into women's safe spaces? "Live and let live?" I'm sorry, it's not live and let live when someone is cutting up and medicalizing healthy bodies and demanding access to private all-female spaces.
Yes. Today's teenage girls and young women shoot themselves up with testosterone and hack off their breasts and reproductive organs so they can turn themselves into boys. But what they want is impossible. They will never be boys. They will never be men.
No matter how many drugs they take, how many surgeries they have, or how many "theys" they use, they will remain what they always were. Until the day they die, they will be biological women.
Yes. Today's teenage girls and young women shoot themselves up with testosterone and hack off their breasts and reproductive organs so they can turn themselves into boys. But what they want is impossible. They will never be boys. They will never be men.
No matter how many drugs they take, how many surgeries they have, or how many "theys" they use, they will remain what they always were. Until the day they die, they will be biological women.
Right now, there is an act before Congress, THE EQUALITY ACT, already passed by the House, which would give any male who "self identifies" as a woman EQUAL RIGHTS and EQUAL ACCESS to all the rights, protections now afforded to biological women!
In other words, if this act is passed, women WILL be erased!
Yes. The Equality Act threatens the health, safety, and emotional well being of all biological girls and women in the US. If this monstrous, woke legislation ever becomes law, it would allow any (any!) biological male, even those with intact penises and not on cross sex hormones, to declare himself a "woman" and gain unfettered access to woman's shelters, women's prisons, women's locker rooms, women's dormitories and women's sports.
California now has its own version of this law, and women prisoners in that state have already been raped, assaulted, and impregnated by their biological male cell mates. Moreover, the women inmates can't complain because if they do, the authorities mark them as "transphobic" and their jail terms are lengthened.
Bari and Abigail, if you're reading this, please do a piece on the insane and infuriating Equality Act. The overwhelming majority of people, regardless of politics, would be outraged if they knew the full implications of this dangerous, dystopian, and Orwellian Equality Act.
“And the only form of treatment that works for most of them is to change their sexed phenotype.”
Sadly that is far from true. Suicide rates of people with gender dysphoria (around 40%) go up during the start of transition (to just under 50%) and then go down to where it was prior to starting transition.
At this point, there is no treatment which seems to help. There is little chance radical affirmation is the answer which will simply leave far more people confused.
This is a deeply tragic situation for the people described. I have seen as a physician, colleagues who have drunk the cool-aid. The contention and division around this reminds me of the recovered memory debacle of the 80's, which likewise destroyed or damaged many lives and families. First do no harm should guide us. That there can't be reasoned evidence-based discussion without efforts to cancel people out is an indictment on our society and aspects of my profession.
Every doctor who did this type of stuff to a minor, especially without parental permission (which happens), should be locked up for the rest of their lives. And throw away the fucking key. Just another example of the devastation wrought by progressivism.
To add to that, here in California, our "beloved" Governor signed a law where a 12 year old minor can make those changes w/o parental permission or knowledge...
We're in the middle of the largest medical experiment on CHILDREN because we have a society bent on this extremism and it's scary! When the rate of teenage girl's saying they're boy's increases a 1000% come on people something is going on....when a political party is encouraging and threatening doctors to prescribe hormones to 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year old children something is clearly wrong. If we're not listening to doctors who are questioning this then we're NOT FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE! ....
In 2009, in the 12-18 age group, there were 24 natal boys and 15 natal girls presenting at GIDS Tavistock.
In 2016 there were 426 natal boys and 1071 natal girls in the same age group. )de Graaf et al 2018.) That is, the number of boys went up by a factor of 17 and the number of girls by a factor of 71.
The article notes that the boy/girl ratio has changed, but it is also true that the numbers have gone up by an insane amount. Again, 17x as many boys and 71x as many girls in the uk, just between 2009 and 2016. There is a crazy rise in both boys and girls. Both boys and girls are showing up in huge numbers compared to earlier, and getting drugs quickly, even those who try to get psychological evaluations can end up with an evaluator who is a "yes-man" who doesn't evaluate at all.
Lonely, traumatized, etc., kids can lock on this, that is what some report later when they detransition. They see all these happy videos and get all this encouragement online. Examples are in Littman's great exploratory paper trying to say what she found (and for those who criticize ROGD, check out Cantor's great response about it at sexology today, earlier this year, "CAAPS, ROGD, and the science neglected" ).
Back to boys and girls: it isn't clear whether boys or girls are more likely to detransition, no one knows how many have detransitioned, no one is keeping track of outcomes. Regret after starting hormones or getting surgery seems on average to be anywhere between 4 and 9 years, depending on the protocol for transitioning (affirm or not) and how regret is measured.
I'm glad these doctors are speaking up, but they need to start collecting the data on outcomes. If someone has done 2000 of these surgeries on MTF, where are they now? 5 years later? 10 years later? 15 years later?
Do either of these doctors have follow up on their patients from 10 years ago, to find out how they are doing? All of them? (Sometimes studies quote low regret rates, but it's because they didn't include everyone when they surveyed to check regret, see D'Angelo et al, 2018.) Many people have euphoria a few years later (the only time the Dutch in their study which everyone quotes, from 2014, evaluated), so the study really has to be long enough.
Also, as far as benefit, it seems that long term there isn't on average a benefit to surgery or hormones in general, according to a Yale/Karolinska study (which first tried to say there was benefit, but then was corrected). No one knows who might actually get over gender dysphoria without medical intervention, and who will have intervention and still have gender dysphoria. They don't know. And these children and young people are having their sex organs cut up, off, taken out, based on this "evidence".
The way to be careful isn't only to do evaluations, it is to do follow up. Maybe, like Sweden's Karolinska, restrict these interventions unless they are part of studies, or be super super careful like Finland which is restricting under 26 I think. Check out segm.org/news to find out more.
I'm so glad they spoke up but there is so much more that needs to be known.
'Gender dysphoria' is itself a faddish new term, only recently entered public consciousness (mostly since the compilers of the DSM were pressured by activists to get rid of 'gender identity disorder' in 2013), with teens susceptible to being led to re-interpret themselves under its vague label. It's become a trendy catch-all for typical teen angsts and human struggles. The changes of puberty, body issues, anxieties about sexuality, social awkwardness or unhappiness, traumas such as sexual assault, rape, abuse among them.
'I hate having periods' or 'I don't like how men stare at my boobs, they're too big' or 'I hate wearing dresses' or 'I don't like the things my sex/gender is supposed to like' morphs into 'I have gender dysphoria' and being celebrated for 'coming out'.
Young people on the autism spectrum are especially vulnerable to being led to misinterpret their sense of difference as 'having gender dysphoria', when they are just on the spectrum.
Yes, there is SO much more that needs to be far, far more conscientiously examined, questioned, and understood.
Gender dysphoria is the actual medical term. Just thought I throw that out there. I learned the term in 1992 in a human sexuality course in my first semester of college. Not sure what makes you say is new or “radish”. Your take caught my attention. I agree otherwise. That’s all.
The term "gender dysphoria" may not be new, but what TJ37 is saying above is that in previous editions of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--the "Bible" of psychiatry), people with gender dysphoria were classified as having "gender identity disorder," but in 2013, the DSM dropped that term, under pressure from activists, and began exclusively using the term "gender dysphoria."
Yes, and following from that, 'gender dysphoria' as a term and concept spread to the mainstream, no longer restricted to academic gender studies/gender medicine circles.
Crucially, ‘Can a mere description of a condition make it contagious?’
This key observation – vitally important to our understanding, and of many phenomena – is beautifully examined by bioethics professor Carl Elliott in his essay in The Atlantic, ‘A New Way To Be Mad’ (link below). Primarily enquiring about apotemnophilia, in which physically healthy people develop determined desires for limb amputation, he also writes
‘Fifty years ago the suggestion that tens of thousands of people would someday want their genitals surgically altered so that they could change their sex would have been ludicrous. But it has happened. The question is why.
'...it is possible to imagine… that our cultural and historical conditions have not just revealed transsexuals but created them. That is, once "transsexual" and "gender-identity disorder" and "sex-reassignment surgery" became common linguistic currency, more people began conceptualizing and interpreting their experience in these terms. They began to make sense of their lives in a way that hadn't been available to them before, and to some degree they actually became the kinds of people described by these terms. [ ... ]
‘Many people seeking amputations are desperate and vulnerable to exploitation. … All they have is the Internet, and their own troubled lives, and the place where those two things intersect.’
Written in 2000. Twenty-one years of internet influence later, well, we have only to look around.
I only learned of it later, but yes, it made a deep impression.
Due for a reprint, don't you think? Though publishers of today would likely deem it too full of no-longer-permitted truthful observations. Yet informed, reflective, critical thinking is precisely what's needed.
Thank you, Abigail (and Bari) for publishing these prominent doctors' comments on the sloppiness and rushed nature of the current standard medical approach to teenagers with gender dysphoria. I would love to have every doctor treating such teens read this article! If anyone has any ideas about how laypeople can help get the word out (besides sharing on social media), please share them.
At the top of the Wikipedia page for the Hippocratic Oath, it says, "Not to be confused with Hypocrisy." Hmmm.
Speaking of hypocrisy, thanks NYT for rejecting that op-ed. It's disgusting how much the Paper of Record caters to the Religion of Elite Opinion.
Also, although I'm sure I would disagree with these doctors on some issues, and even though they seem like part of the problem in some respects, I still have to commend them for going on the record against the Trans Orthodoxy in the current climate. Takes some courage.
Abigail, keep crushing it. Carefully reported truth is a beautiful thing.
At 2 years old, Jazz did not experience gender dysphoria, Jazz’s parents did.
Yes, exactly. Munchausen syndrome by proxy. According to Wikipedia,
"Munchausen syndrome by proxy is a condition where a caregiver or spouse fabricates, exaggerates, or induces mental or physical health problems in those who are in their care, with the primary motive of gaining attention or sympathy from others."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_another
Not impossible, but highly unlikely. It doesn’t take much development to interact with boys and girls and feel more comfortable thinking of oneself as one or the other (though obviously such feelings wouldn’t have anything to do with sexuality and presumably not even anything to do with genitals at that point). On the other hand, it sounds pretty difficult for a parent to either subconsciously or consciously make their kid align with the opposite gender at that age, given how hard it is to get a tot to do anything! It’s notoriously hard to remember what kids can do/ look like at various ages if you don’t live with representatives of those ages, so even though two does sound a tad early to me too, I don’t put much weight on that intuition. Also, Jazz has had a consistent identification as female since then, and it’s hard to imagine how that could just be the product of her parents manipulating her when she was two, without her ever figuring out that was going on. Even with childhood memories, it’s pretty rude to deny someone’s experience without a good reason.
I would say 2 is WAY too early for an individual to be thinking about what sex they are. This is a decade before puberty.
Jazz is a perfect example of a set of parents projecting personal interpretations on their child, and in doing so, did life long pathological damage to the individual through radical affirmation.
Actually, it is abhorrent for a dude to appropriate womanhood because he is homosexual and likes dresses and make-up. If it offends you when women point that out, it is your problem. “I’d rather be rude than a f*cking liar” (Magdalen Burns, the Queen).
If he is appropriating it by demanding access to resources/spaces meant to protect biological women from being raped/outcompeted/etc. by biological men, to help biological women handle menstruation/pregnancy, etc., then yes, it is abhorrent. If she just wants to be referred to with female pronouns and allowed to act feminine without excessive ridicule, then it's preventing her from doing this that is the abhorrent act.
act feminine: sure, go for it.
assert that you ARE a woman: no, reality says otherwise, sorry
Actually...seems like a problem exist
What offends me is the pestilence of your post, sunshine.
Maybe what actually happened at that early age was just that she wanted to wear dresses, play with dolls, etc. and was told that only girls can do that, so she decided that she would rather be a girl. In that case, it was only cultural factors that led to her thinking she was "supposed to be a girl" at that age, and without them she wouldn't have felt anything dysphoric like that until later, probably not until puberty.
So a girl that wants to play with trucks and play fetch should be encouraged to be a "boy" and eliminate their chance of ever having kids in the future due to forced hormone therapy?
At 2 years old, that level mimicking would be an aspect of mom and dad being reflected on the child.
Agreed, the best way to handle a little kid who wants to do stereotypically opposite-gender things is to just let them and not to teach them that this means they are necessarily transgender. If they are genuinely transgender, they will have plenty of time to realize this closer to puberty. I think I agree with your original comment now. I was initially interpreting it to be denying that Jazz could have independently developed an inclination towards girly things at that age, but I realize now that liking girly things is distinct from gender dysphoria, though trans activists often unhelpfully treat them as the same thing.
“… liking girly things is distinct from gender dysphoria, though trans activists often unhelpfully treat them as the same thing.”
Trans activists do many unhelpful things. They adopt absolutist positions and defend them (at times) viciously. They are not interested in “a conversation.”
Everything you posit here about Jazz’s reports could be factual. Even so, Jazz isn’t and never will be female. A surgically devised vagina is just a mutilation that fixes nothing.
It is troubling when trans advocates, counselors, and physicians discover lo and behold, their child is trans!
Children like to please parents. Parents like to direct their children toward their preferences.
They're not creating a vagina by inverting a penis, anymore than a surgeon is creating a younger person by performing a facelift. At best it's a facsimile, at worst it's a disaster--the necessity for follow up surgeries is very high, from 40-60%, with as noted, limited function. Of course, a child doesn't understand what is at risk when they are 2, or 4 or 11. As Abigail has written elsewhere, some of these adolescent girls having breast amputated & taking testosterone haven't had a first kiss.
this is truly soul-crushing stuff
boys too...and girls can become infertile, but the boys, the drugs they are given are intended to castrate them chemically day one. Bowers is worried about their sex life, but Bowers has 3 kids. These children are giving up their chance to be parents way before they are old enough to consider it reasonably (just try to get a hysterectomy before age 30 for non-medical reasons, there's evidence of regret that is too high, so you will have trouble!).
I recently watched a couple of youtube videos about phalloplasty. This gruesome procedure disfigures the forearm, frequently fails, and provides no real benefits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF0TdTBW4CM
I've always believed doctors who have the hubris to perform these surgeries are modern-day Frankensteins. Now, offering confused pre-pubescent children life-altering hormone treatments, I feel they are more like Mengele.
As a post-menopausal woman who has been through both puberty and menopause, I know intimately that hormones do not just affect secondary sexual characteristics - they change your personality. These doctors have NO idea what the long-term affects are of these experimental hormonal treatments. This article touches on some possible detrimental outcomes, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. It's horrifying.
Just because you are technically able to produce some result from this or that plastic surgery, this or that experimental hormonal protocol - doesn't mean you should take that unknown path and pat yourself on the back. You are dealing with human beings - not guinea pigs. Mind-numbing hubris.
There are numerous videos on YouTube made by young women (even teens) describing their struggles to cope with the premature menopause which they experience from suppressing their natural hormones and taking testosterone. Horrifying.
Yes. It is horrifying. These unfortunate young women also end up with baritone voices, masculine jawlines, beards, and double mastectomies.
And that deepening of the voice is definitely NOT reversible.
Umm...what you are referring to now is kind of the point of "transitioning" - they can finally present as male.
They aren't men, and they will never be men. Never. These unfortunate girls and women have been conned into destroying their health and appearance by scarfing down dangerous hormones and having dangerous surgeries that will shorten their lives. ]
And when these girls and women come to their senses and realize they aren't men and never will be men, they will realize the enormity of the mistake they made, and they will file massive class action lawsuits against the doctors, surgeons, therapists, hospitals, drug companies, schools and universities that convinced them to wreck their lives. Hope you haven't played a part in this debacle. But if you have, prepare to lawyer up.
I understand that they can present as men, but can they function as men? From what I read, those who transitioned rarely achieve intimacy or even have sex. If that is the case, what is the point?
I just thought it was amusing , that given that we are discussing choices transgender people make in order to achieve an alternate identity, that nancy2001 is horrified that they are ALSO achieving "baritone voices, masculine jawlines, beards, and double mastectomies".
The "also" was funny because those ARE the desired outcomes, whether horrifying to her or not.
They want to be perceived as men, to live as men, to the best of their ability.
And yeah, the sad part of that is that the desire is so strong they would rather have the IDENTITY than working sex organs, if it comes to that. 😥
But what i think most of us here can agree upon, whether we agree with transsex surgery or not, is that when it comes to very young people, it's a horror show that doctors can be so easy about it - the stakes are just too high.
I honestly think this is tragic. These surgical transformations are essentially a substitute for a productive life, no? I am not quite sure how identity can be achieved if you really can never be who you think you want to be. 15 years ago, when I lived in New York, and before that when I lived in San Francisco, there were happy men dressed as women - transvestites and cross-dressers - shopping at Loehmann's and Fifth Avenue outlets. They presented themselves the same way as transgender people today as there in never a mistake about a true biological sex of these people. Yes, I agree, that is a horror show that doctors and school staff are allowed this to happen to very young children.
How is this any different from third-world genital mutilation? The Left more and more resembles a primitive cult who wields 21st Century technology in their service.
They force you to have that in the third world. It’s a choice that requires a diagnosis, costs a fortune, and has zero perfect solutions. People treating us like circus freaks is par for the course, also assuming we’re of the left. Btw I’m not on the left, neither is Caitlyn Jenner. Dummy.
Respect and dignity for trans individuals and open discourse on the topics of sex and gender, are not mutually exclusive. The idea that opinions are tantamount to violence is a narrative being pushed by trans activists (most of them whom are not trans individuals) for the benefit of their ideology.
does not take much fr you to start throwing insults . look in the mirror , got a problem , you're the only one mentioning circus freaks
I was referring to myself. Goople, Gobble! There’s a Rick and Morty line that comes to mind with regards to what I think about Jerry…I’m sure it will come to me sooner or later…
https://youtu.be/xX3JgSJ-dN0
Even the guinea pigs deserve dignity.. and all the animals used in testing.
I don't think they've done tests of what these drugs do to, e.g., longevity, or much, long term, on animals. Children first.
Exactly! My adult daughter sent me a couple of witty, brilliant rap videos which frame these issues perfectly. They really are worth watching and spreading:
CLOWNFISH https://youtu.be/rV-Exeal17s
"They let these kids consent to a sex change before they can legally consent to sex"
BOYS WILL BE GIRLS https://youtu.be/rV-Exeal17s
"The man who self identifies as a woman has but a man's grasp upon womanhood,
That is to say, next to nothing!"
Exactly. These are guys who watch porn and read novels where some misogynist author writes shit like, "Poledancerina the private investigator was acutely aware of her pert, firm breasts while she stirred her morning coffee," or some such garbage and think to themselves, "That's me. I want to be acutely aware of my pert, firm breasts while drinking my coffee, too!" without even entertaining the idea that these are actually a MAN'S IDEA OF WHAT A WOMAN THINKS AND FEELS INSIDE.
I've never once heard one of these people talk about how they once had to wipe the backside of an 80 year old with Alzheimer's on Medicaid for shit pay and no pension and felt oh so feminine afterwards.
When you listen to them talking about how womanhood equates to tits, stiletto heels, and lip gloss, that proves that they are men. Only men think that that's what womanhood consists of.
My wife who is also trans delayed her transition to care for her mother with cancer. I’ve never seen her in a pair of stilettos in my life. Who are you talking to?
Wow! Honestly, my head is spinning. Thank you for sharing. I previously didn’t have much of an opinion on this one way or the other. All I can say is WOW.
I don’t have to take anyone seriously that calls themselves News Nut. Why do you people always talk about your kids like I give a crap? What are you going to do when you kids come and say, “mommy I’m a girl?” Mine put me in the hospital for it. Ever have that happen on your slender grasp of reality?
I am sorry this happened to you. If my kids came out as trans, I would look for the best evidence-based compassionate treatment or intervention available. However, since scientists and researchers have been cancelled over this topic and I understand that good science should be (per definition) unbiased—then I would have a very hard finding who to turn to. This is why I think Ms Shrier’s articles and books are important—science doesn’t work on the basis of cancelling and intimidation from activists.
I agree. I’m mad at the comments section. I’m going on the Glenn Show to talk about these issues. Probably never going to get a job from doing that. Don’t talk to me about getting canceled, those people canceled me long ago. I was actually friends with them, can you say that?
I am not for cancelling anyone—I am all for open dialogue. One of my main issues with trans activists is that they are just as likely to turn on someone who identifies as trans if such person fails to toe the line. Are they really all about empathy for the marginalized or are these just empty platitudes?
They have empty platitudes of course. I’m a poet, not an activist.
YOU DIDN'T HAVE FRIENDS you had acquaintances a friend will stick by you no matter what , I sure never canceled a friend because they were gay trans or spported B-DET OR T-RUMP might not agree with their choices , not a deal breaker for me . Sorry you had to go through that
I appreciate the empathy. Funny thing happened when I first transitioned. Everyone I knew started asking me about trans kids like I had any, or knew anything about raising children. If we’re asking angry hurt people like me for advice on that, we’re in trouble.
Tosser.
The article interviews a surgeon who performs these surgeries to make its point, gonna call Dr. Bowers Mengele? I want to insult you, but I’m going to be better than you and let it go. A thirty year old tranny just made you look six years old.
Dr. Bowers' actions speak for themselves.
Agreed. "I mutilated dozens of likely mentally ill young people but now I regret it." Well, you still need to go to jail. We don't say that someone committed arson or mutilated people but admire them because they now feel really bad about it. I mean, it's a good thing for the world in general that this individual is now at least likely to mutilate fewer people than before, but the bar should be a little higher than that.
You mutilate the English language and you’re still allowed to speak. That’s the bar I’m afraid.
Agree. It’s takes strength to say you were wrong. We need that strength now
I’d like to thank these physicians for speaking out. I have a couple of issues with the current epidemic of non-cis/binary identification.
1-What other psychological conditions are treated surgically?
I can really only think of lobotomies and those have a ‘glorious’ history that may actually look better than our current physicians will in 50 years. Deep brain stimulation is relatively new and not nearly as commonly performed. Also, what is the malpractice risk of the physicians/surgeons when these kids realize they were treated with permanent sterilization for a temporary dysphoria? Even those that are happy with their transition essentially become wards of the medical establishment. No wonder so many doctors see transgender medicine as a growth field. But I can totally see hundreds of juries awarding plaintiffs vast sums for premature medical/surgical interventions before psychological treatment options were adequately attempted.
2-Recent surveys report up to 20-20% of teens are identifying as something other than cis & straight. Can someone explain an evolutionary advantage that would lead to 20% of a population taking itself out of the gene pool?
The 1000x rise in gender dysphoria over the last 20 years suggests to me a social phenomenon. Which takes the medical malpractice beyond surgically treating minors with a temporary psychological dysphoria (in most cases) to treating a social phenomenon with permanently sterilizing major surgery.
Some European health systems have started to realize this and restrain their cavalier physicians. Hopefully, through a combination of legal risk and education we can do the same in the US before more harm is done.
We're going to see a tsunami of class action lawsuits against doctors, surgeons, drug manufacturers, hospitals, therapists, and transgender activists.
God, I hope so. But we must start with the medical schools and medical societies that not only pressure, but threaten doctors who refuse to conform and practice the "affirmative care" model! This is reminiscent of the proliferation of "pain clinics" in the mid 90s/ early 2000s when Oxycontin came on the market. At that time many medical societies (the ACP, American College of Physicians, is one) insisted that its members treat pain with addictive opioids.
The AAP insists on the affirmative model, even though James Cantor (2019 article called Fact Checking..., peer reviewed and published) tore apart their reasons (mostly based on conflating trans and gay, or quoting papers for the opposite of what they said) close to immediately. The Endocrine Society has similarly come out with a position paper not based in reality (Dec 2020) which has been debunked, there is no better word, by Malone et al (2021). It claimed false things like a there's a biological basis for gender identity and that gender identity can't change due to external influences (let's not forget Olson-Kennedy convincing a tomboy that she's a boy when she thought she was a girl, "pop tart"), and that current treatments are conservative (that is, sterilizing people, cutting off healthy organs, and the rest, based on low quality or very low quality or ungraded quality evidence, where no one even knows the likely outcomes for any given person).
I understand why endocrinologists might want people to think that they need hormones and why surgeons might want people to think they need surgery, maybe, if they are uniformed, but why everyone else is going along with it and not looking at the evidence, or refusing to print it (why isn't this information in the New York Times instead of those pieces telling everyone, well, lies, that medical transition is the only way forward and that the problem is just people not getting drugs and surgery fast enough??).
Thank you Abigail for speaking up over and over and over again for these kids (girls and boys, 20% are boys)!!!! And thank you Bari for hosting this incredibly important essay!
Europe already has shrinking population; last thing they need is to sterilize the kids
If they are acting in accordance with medical guidelines can it be malpractice ?
We’ll find out.
The statute of limitations can run up to 10 years from when medication was administered or surgery was performed.
Physicians aren’t tried by a jury of their specialist peers or even highly educated peers, they’re tried before the general public.
Won’t be long before the billboards from ‘Slick & Dick, Attorneys at Law, LLC’ start asking “Do you regret transitioning?”
I am gay and 65. I was an effeminate child, and still have a few mannerisms. I never was dissatisfied being male.
I see what is happening today and it horrifies me. What would have happened to me had I been an effeminate child today? Would I have been told by teachers, psychologists that I was really a girl and should change my body?
I understand that effeminate male children can be targets for suggestions from authority figures about eventual transitioning. And parents can be purposely kept out of what's going on with their children.
Just frightening.
What on earth is wrong with being an effeminate male, I'd like to know? Surely it is our definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" that need to change, not surgically altering children's bodies. If you are a biological male, whatever way you are is masculine enough- and perfectly fine. Men have to be John Wayne and women have to be Marilyn Monroe now, or what? This isn't progressive.
If you are a gay man in Iran, they will put you to death. If you are a gay man in Iran who is willing to become a "woman", the Iranian government will pay for your transition. As long as the coupling can be considered "heterosexual", the Mullahs are fine with it.
This trans-mania is homophobia and misogyny in a new getup; same shit, different day.
Trans ideology is homophobic and misogynist. (Not all trans people buy into trans ideology.)
YES. When I was little, it was "You can't be that smart at science, you're a girl." Now it would be, "You can't be a girl, you're that smart at science."
When I got my first job as an orthopaedic surgeon (2000), I was regularly asked, "Are you married, or are you gay?" Not I'd be asked, "Are you a man?"
""When I was little, it was "You can't be that smart at science, you're a girl.""
Can I ask how old you are? This cartoony attitude toward women is so very contrary to my own family history (4 generations of STEM educated women) that it's a little difficult to believe.
I'm 55, and are you really serious that you think that a four-generation long streak of STEM-educated women is the yardstick of normality? Might I ask how much money your family is worth?
Depends on your socioeconomic group. I’m a little older than the original poster, but I was absolutely told girls don’t need college.  My husband‘s family - the same thing. He was pushed into college, and his three equally bright sisters became secretaries because “girls don’t need college.”
Agree. Thank you for your story. Gender nonconformity is not a disease. It’s a feature of a diverse population
A LOT of us who grew up pushing against gender stereotypes feel the same way you do.
The bigger problem, the one Abigail Shrier wrote her book about, is the astronomical rise in the number of girls who are experiencing rapid onset of gender dysphoria.
I was a girl who climbed trees, rode horses, and liked cars. I grew up to become a feminine female orthopaedic surgeon, very much a man's job. I've restored several antique vehicles. At no point in my life did I believe my "non feminine" interests meant I was a boy. I thank my parents for allowing me to be a girl with the audacity to pursue traditionally masculine pursuits.
At some point someone has to point out the emperor's naked arse. I don't know how this "transitioning" nonsense ever got out of the starting gate.
There is no transition, any more than there is a "gender assigned at birth." Nonsense. First, it is sex, not gender. Gender is a language construct; people belong to a sex unless they are among the fortunately-rare individuals who have a chromosomal abnormality such as XXY, XYY, XO, etc. Those patients are called "intersex" and may have ambiguous genitalia and can receive benefit from surgery.
Patients who have the normal XX or XY chromosomal pattern are, respectively, female and male. This pattern is not "assigned at birth;" it is DETERMINED by biology at the moment of conception nine months earlier, and cutting off cranks, making an outie from an innie or vice versa does nothing to change the blueprint that still resides in every nucleated cell in the body. Is that person a "trans?" Trans what, for God's sake? No he/she is most certainly not. If he was a man, now he is a postoperative man and nothing more. If a woman, she is still a woman - a genitally-mutilated woman, but a woman nonetheless.
If we acknowledge the first jot or tittle of this foolishness, then we are just fooling ourselves. Some things are actually known. Sex is one of the ones about which we are pretty sure.
I think the whole idea of "sex assigned at birth" originated from those unfortunate people who were born with the sex organs of both male and female and the medical practitioners decided which sex that child would be surgically, often times disastrously so. In those cases, I fully support waiting until the child displays the sexual proclivities or one or the other sex prior to medical intervention (unless I'm completely unaware of the hazards of doing so, which I may be). Otherwise, we are born male or female, period. We are not assigned a sex at birth. So much going on in the West currently is just so completely crazy.
An example of disastrous surgical intervention is the past procedure of feminizing male infants after botched circumcision. The lives of those boys surgically altered to appear feminine were destroyed. You can look it up.
In the early 80s anorexia nervosa was something that seemed to come out of nowhere and seemed to take the world by surprise. "Why all of a sudden are there lots of young girls starving themselves to death?" many people asked. Years later many experts came to believe this was a social contagion. It seemed to me the "trend" of anorexia nervosa seemed to peter out over time. What concerns me with gender dysphoria is instead of giving young girls the type of support they need there really seems to be full on support of their dysphoria including questionable medical intervention. This would be like supporting a young girls eating disorder instead of getting her the help she needs.
Yes. Imagine a weight loss doctor giving a 90 pound teenage girl appetite surpressants, liposuction and a gastric bypass.
But she identifies as an overweight person and if she doesn't get what she wants, she might kill herself.
It is a perfect comparison.
Exactly. Then, it was self-mutilation and cutting. Now, the girls can get a surgeon to cut their bodies up, and they get praised for it.
Yeah no money go to made in starving cutting girls. Better move on to hormones
You do realize that this is the subject of Abigail Shrier's book?
No. Never read it.
The thing is it's not "Live and let live." The transgender activists now push an extreme ideology on the rest of society, and their demands grow more extreme (and patently insane) with each passing day.
Biological male inmates with intact penises who merely declare themselves to be women are now housed in women's prison cells in California. Medical students no longer learn the basic biological differences between diseases in men and women. Women are now routinely referred to with highly insulting terms such as "chest feeders," "menstruators," "front holes," "birthing people," and "pregnant people."
This is not a step forward. It is a giant step backward.
Nancy2001... you left out "bodies with vaginas" from The Lancet.
And it's not "bodies with penises," notice. The word "men" is just fine. It's only "woman" that appears to be hate speech.
Men would never stand for these insults, and women shouldn't stand for them either.
We do, though. We're constantly expected to push down and make room for men, and we do it even without thinking. We have been second-class humans behind the ones with penises for 400,000 years, and now we're even second-class WOMEN behind the ones with penises. This is INSANITY.
Men are now “insiminators”. The elite have reduced us to baby machines where they think they own our offspring.
But men can become pregnant now so that is a change.
LOL! No biological human male in the history of the world has ever been even "a little bit pregnant," with the possible exception of the 38th Governor of California, Arnold Schwartzeneggar.
LOL. I left out "lactators," too! What's next, describing women as "bodies that sit down to poop and pee?"
All these terms are just SO insulting! I am more than my genitalia! Plus, I've never had children, so I'm not a "Chest feeder" or "birthing person". STILL A WOMAN!
Google WHRC
Chest feeders? That is absolutely crazy that this terminology is being mainstreamed.
Google WHRC
"And the only form of treatment that works for most of them is to change their sexed phenotype."
This is true for that rare .01 percent of people. The trouble is the meteoric rise in diagnoses, the sloppy diagnoses noted in the article, social contagion, and applying the Dutch Protocols (Spak Protocols) to children.
Watch and wait resolves an overwhelming number of cases. The Dutch Protocols toss that out on its ear and now the rate of resolution is near zero, meaning most proceed to transition. And most often without addressing any underlying co-morbidities which are frequently there.
The operative word is "adults". What are we doing experimenting on children when neither we nor they can fully appreciate what may come of it? If Fernanda G above is correct, children age 12 in California can transition without their parents' approval. I'm sure you wouldn't support that. While there are no doubt real cases, there appears to be an element of social media contagion as well. We have to look out for our kids.
It's true that some people have an overwhelming sense that they are the opposite sex. It doesn't follow from that that because of this group with a rare and peculiar condition, there is then a thing called "Gender Identity" that we all have. It's a term so common that we have forgotten it's new and there really is no evidence for it. The idea that we all have a "gender soul" and that when we are very young we "just know" which is our gender soul, it's just religiously-tinged claptrap. It would be like justifying child marriage by saying every child has a "soul partner" and it's right to marry the souls at a young age, and the child can agree as they "know" who they are meant to be with, although it's always just the parents whispering in the ear what the child is expected to say. If you came across such culture you wouldnt think for a second there's any scientific validity to the "soul partner" stuff, but many fail to see the insanity of gender soul myths because it's our own scientists and leaders laundering the cult tenets info respectability.
They may have that Desire but can never have that reality. We need to learn distress tolerance and acceptance. We can overcome out distress if we don’t promise people the impossible it’s unkind to lie to people about the ability to change Sex.
Wait, they cut up perfectly healthy young bodies, and it's "live and let live?" Are you seriously proposing that that's a reasonable reaction to the mutilation of young bodies? To say nothing of letting fully intact males into women's safe spaces? "Live and let live?" I'm sorry, it's not live and let live when someone is cutting up and medicalizing healthy bodies and demanding access to private all-female spaces.
Yes. Today's teenage girls and young women shoot themselves up with testosterone and hack off their breasts and reproductive organs so they can turn themselves into boys. But what they want is impossible. They will never be boys. They will never be men.
No matter how many drugs they take, how many surgeries they have, or how many "theys" they use, they will remain what they always were. Until the day they die, they will be biological women.
Yes. Today's teenage girls and young women shoot themselves up with testosterone and hack off their breasts and reproductive organs so they can turn themselves into boys. But what they want is impossible. They will never be boys. They will never be men.
No matter how many drugs they take, how many surgeries they have, or how many "theys" they use, they will remain what they always were. Until the day they die, they will be biological women.
Really well said.
Right now, there is an act before Congress, THE EQUALITY ACT, already passed by the House, which would give any male who "self identifies" as a woman EQUAL RIGHTS and EQUAL ACCESS to all the rights, protections now afforded to biological women!
In other words, if this act is passed, women WILL be erased!
Yes. The Equality Act threatens the health, safety, and emotional well being of all biological girls and women in the US. If this monstrous, woke legislation ever becomes law, it would allow any (any!) biological male, even those with intact penises and not on cross sex hormones, to declare himself a "woman" and gain unfettered access to woman's shelters, women's prisons, women's locker rooms, women's dormitories and women's sports.
California now has its own version of this law, and women prisoners in that state have already been raped, assaulted, and impregnated by their biological male cell mates. Moreover, the women inmates can't complain because if they do, the authorities mark them as "transphobic" and their jail terms are lengthened.
Bari and Abigail, if you're reading this, please do a piece on the insane and infuriating Equality Act. The overwhelming majority of people, regardless of politics, would be outraged if they knew the full implications of this dangerous, dystopian, and Orwellian Equality Act.
I used to ask myself, "what could be worse than Trump." I think I have the answer.
“And the only form of treatment that works for most of them is to change their sexed phenotype.”
Sadly that is far from true. Suicide rates of people with gender dysphoria (around 40%) go up during the start of transition (to just under 50%) and then go down to where it was prior to starting transition.
At this point, there is no treatment which seems to help. There is little chance radical affirmation is the answer which will simply leave far more people confused.
There is no way to level the playing field between men and women in sports. The best explainer for this is sports physiologist Ross Tucker: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/why-transgender-athletes-threaten-fairness-in-womens/id1461719225?i=1000522515770
Rats running from a sinking ship
This is a deeply tragic situation for the people described. I have seen as a physician, colleagues who have drunk the cool-aid. The contention and division around this reminds me of the recovered memory debacle of the 80's, which likewise destroyed or damaged many lives and families. First do no harm should guide us. That there can't be reasoned evidence-based discussion without efforts to cancel people out is an indictment on our society and aspects of my profession.
Someday this procedure will be illegal, and discredited as inhumane. It'll go the way of lobotomies. This is not medicine; this is satanism.
It won't. But hopefully this unethical experimentation on children will be.
The saddest (and truly most frightening) aspect of all of this is that parents are held hostage by medical professionals to the threat of suicide.
I can’t even imagine…..
Oh my goodness. I’m a parent and it’s a nightmare. We trusted these people and now we can’t find a way out
Fight for your child! Don’t let them send them down a one-way street..
Every doctor who did this type of stuff to a minor, especially without parental permission (which happens), should be locked up for the rest of their lives. And throw away the fucking key. Just another example of the devastation wrought by progressivism.
To add to that, here in California, our "beloved" Governor signed a law where a 12 year old minor can make those changes w/o parental permission or knowledge...
Unbelievable.
It’s criminal. That should be illegal
How about forcing those doctors to transition themselves?
Hah, that’s what those two “esteemed “ doctors already did.
No, too barbaric. Just take away their medical licenses.
Unfortunately they have the medical guidelines and often the law on their side.
We're in the middle of the largest medical experiment on CHILDREN because we have a society bent on this extremism and it's scary! When the rate of teenage girl's saying they're boy's increases a 1000% come on people something is going on....when a political party is encouraging and threatening doctors to prescribe hormones to 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 year old children something is clearly wrong. If we're not listening to doctors who are questioning this then we're NOT FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE! ....
I think the girls number is closer to 4000% increase
In 2009, in the 12-18 age group, there were 24 natal boys and 15 natal girls presenting at GIDS Tavistock.
In 2016 there were 426 natal boys and 1071 natal girls in the same age group. )de Graaf et al 2018.) That is, the number of boys went up by a factor of 17 and the number of girls by a factor of 71.
The article notes that the boy/girl ratio has changed, but it is also true that the numbers have gone up by an insane amount. Again, 17x as many boys and 71x as many girls in the uk, just between 2009 and 2016. There is a crazy rise in both boys and girls. Both boys and girls are showing up in huge numbers compared to earlier, and getting drugs quickly, even those who try to get psychological evaluations can end up with an evaluator who is a "yes-man" who doesn't evaluate at all.
Lonely, traumatized, etc., kids can lock on this, that is what some report later when they detransition. They see all these happy videos and get all this encouragement online. Examples are in Littman's great exploratory paper trying to say what she found (and for those who criticize ROGD, check out Cantor's great response about it at sexology today, earlier this year, "CAAPS, ROGD, and the science neglected" ).
Back to boys and girls: it isn't clear whether boys or girls are more likely to detransition, no one knows how many have detransitioned, no one is keeping track of outcomes. Regret after starting hormones or getting surgery seems on average to be anywhere between 4 and 9 years, depending on the protocol for transitioning (affirm or not) and how regret is measured.
I'm glad these doctors are speaking up, but they need to start collecting the data on outcomes. If someone has done 2000 of these surgeries on MTF, where are they now? 5 years later? 10 years later? 15 years later?
Do either of these doctors have follow up on their patients from 10 years ago, to find out how they are doing? All of them? (Sometimes studies quote low regret rates, but it's because they didn't include everyone when they surveyed to check regret, see D'Angelo et al, 2018.) Many people have euphoria a few years later (the only time the Dutch in their study which everyone quotes, from 2014, evaluated), so the study really has to be long enough.
Also, as far as benefit, it seems that long term there isn't on average a benefit to surgery or hormones in general, according to a Yale/Karolinska study (which first tried to say there was benefit, but then was corrected). No one knows who might actually get over gender dysphoria without medical intervention, and who will have intervention and still have gender dysphoria. They don't know. And these children and young people are having their sex organs cut up, off, taken out, based on this "evidence".
The way to be careful isn't only to do evaluations, it is to do follow up. Maybe, like Sweden's Karolinska, restrict these interventions unless they are part of studies, or be super super careful like Finland which is restricting under 26 I think. Check out segm.org/news to find out more.
I'm so glad they spoke up but there is so much more that needs to be known.
'Gender dysphoria' is itself a faddish new term, only recently entered public consciousness (mostly since the compilers of the DSM were pressured by activists to get rid of 'gender identity disorder' in 2013), with teens susceptible to being led to re-interpret themselves under its vague label. It's become a trendy catch-all for typical teen angsts and human struggles. The changes of puberty, body issues, anxieties about sexuality, social awkwardness or unhappiness, traumas such as sexual assault, rape, abuse among them.
'I hate having periods' or 'I don't like how men stare at my boobs, they're too big' or 'I hate wearing dresses' or 'I don't like the things my sex/gender is supposed to like' morphs into 'I have gender dysphoria' and being celebrated for 'coming out'.
Young people on the autism spectrum are especially vulnerable to being led to misinterpret their sense of difference as 'having gender dysphoria', when they are just on the spectrum.
Yes, there is SO much more that needs to be far, far more conscientiously examined, questioned, and understood.
Gender dysphoria is the actual medical term. Just thought I throw that out there. I learned the term in 1992 in a human sexuality course in my first semester of college. Not sure what makes you say is new or “radish”. Your take caught my attention. I agree otherwise. That’s all.
The term "gender dysphoria" may not be new, but what TJ37 is saying above is that in previous editions of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--the "Bible" of psychiatry), people with gender dysphoria were classified as having "gender identity disorder," but in 2013, the DSM dropped that term, under pressure from activists, and began exclusively using the term "gender dysphoria."
Yes, and following from that, 'gender dysphoria' as a term and concept spread to the mainstream, no longer restricted to academic gender studies/gender medicine circles.
Crucially, ‘Can a mere description of a condition make it contagious?’
This key observation – vitally important to our understanding, and of many phenomena – is beautifully examined by bioethics professor Carl Elliott in his essay in The Atlantic, ‘A New Way To Be Mad’ (link below). Primarily enquiring about apotemnophilia, in which physically healthy people develop determined desires for limb amputation, he also writes
‘Fifty years ago the suggestion that tens of thousands of people would someday want their genitals surgically altered so that they could change their sex would have been ludicrous. But it has happened. The question is why.
'...it is possible to imagine… that our cultural and historical conditions have not just revealed transsexuals but created them. That is, once "transsexual" and "gender-identity disorder" and "sex-reassignment surgery" became common linguistic currency, more people began conceptualizing and interpreting their experience in these terms. They began to make sense of their lives in a way that hadn't been available to them before, and to some degree they actually became the kinds of people described by these terms. [ ... ]
‘Many people seeking amputations are desperate and vulnerable to exploitation. … All they have is the Internet, and their own troubled lives, and the place where those two things intersect.’
Written in 2000. Twenty-one years of internet influence later, well, we have only to look around.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/
What a disturbing and insightful article. Thank you for the link, TJ.
Of course, the woke Atlantic would never publish this 21 year old article today because the transgender mob would pitch a fit.
I remember being wowed by that article in 2000, and have thought about it ever since.
I only learned of it later, but yes, it made a deep impression.
Due for a reprint, don't you think? Though publishers of today would likely deem it too full of no-longer-permitted truthful observations. Yet informed, reflective, critical thinking is precisely what's needed.
*faddish
Thank you, Abigail (and Bari) for publishing these prominent doctors' comments on the sloppiness and rushed nature of the current standard medical approach to teenagers with gender dysphoria. I would love to have every doctor treating such teens read this article! If anyone has any ideas about how laypeople can help get the word out (besides sharing on social media), please share them.
At the top of the Wikipedia page for the Hippocratic Oath, it says, "Not to be confused with Hypocrisy." Hmmm.
Speaking of hypocrisy, thanks NYT for rejecting that op-ed. It's disgusting how much the Paper of Record caters to the Religion of Elite Opinion.
Also, although I'm sure I would disagree with these doctors on some issues, and even though they seem like part of the problem in some respects, I still have to commend them for going on the record against the Trans Orthodoxy in the current climate. Takes some courage.
Abigail, keep crushing it. Carefully reported truth is a beautiful thing.