Canadian specialist urges MDs to ‘slow down’ in treating transgender patients after U.K. clinic closed
Underpinning debate is a rapid increase in patients presenting as transgender over the last several years, dominated by girls just entering adolescence
“It begins!” by mckinney75402 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
As the number of youth presenting with gender dysphoria soars and their demographic make-up changes markedly, the health-care system should examine why those trends are happening while taking a thoughtful, “neutral” approach to each young patient, said Dr. Joey Bonifacio.
“I do have the same concerns the Tavistock clinic faced,” said Bonifacio, a pediatrician whose practice at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital focuses on gender identity.
The changes that have occurred in Sweden, Finland and now the U.K. should give us food for thought
Those who derisively labeled psychotherapist Stella 0’Malley a “conversion therapist” are facing hard questions now that the U.K.’s Youth Gender Identity Clinic, The Tavistock, has been closed down. O’Malley favors Gender Exploratory Therapy and not the narrow-minded gender affirmative model, the narrow model heavily criticized by the independent Cass Review, resulting in the shuttering of TheTavistock.
For someone like me, who has worked as a psychotherapist for many years, trying to explain why conventional talk therapy approach is more useful than blind affirmation is like trying to explain that water is wet. I get the splutters. For example, if a client seeks therapy for their fear of flying, I wouldn’t mindlessly nod along as he tells me that he should avoid all aeroplanes, and nor would I actively help him to try to remove aeroplanes out of the sky for fear that it might be triggering for him. Empathy comes very easily to me and I think my empathy is the trait that I value most in my psychotherapeutic work. So if a client had a fear of flying, I would gently engage in a collaborative therapeutic process that would work through the inner workings of his psyche. It is through reflective dialogue that helps the client to make their own decisions and this is why exploratory therapy is pretty much a fundamental aspect of every therapeutic approach – other than the affirmative approach.
The gender affirmative care model is an experimental approach to gender identity that has only been in existence since 2012. The Cass Review has recently described this approach as “not a safe or viable long-term option” for children. Gender affirmative therapy has been described as the “nodding-dog approach” where therapists act only as facilitators, without offering any exploratory thought or thought-provoking analysis, or encouraging the individual to consider their unconscious motivations. The gender affirmative approach is child-led rather than child-centered and promotes early and aggressive medical intervention for children. Advocates for this approach tell us that children between one and two years old can give a “pre-verbal communication” about gender. There are four stages to this approach: first the child socially transitions whenever they want, which entails a name change, a pronoun change and going to different toilets. Then puberty blockers are offered when the child reaches puberty. After that, cross-sex hormones are offered, and then finally when they’re an adult, surgery is offered.
Another Parent with an Inconvenient Truth about Trans.
When my daughter cut her beautiful locks, I thought it odd, but her new cut was super cute and, after all, hair does grow back. Right? Then came college and the target of my daughter’s angst became her own body. She began to believe the lie that is sold to young people today, that they were “born in the wrong body.” She began taking testosterone, a drug that happens to be a Class 3 controlled substance, not approved for use in women, and that carries a worrisome risk profile. Her voice became deep and strange. Her natural voice was now gone forever. Her breasts were excised. They too are now gone forever. Her nipples were rearranged. Her insides were ravaged—her blood, her uterus, her liver, her heart, her kidneys. Will these tissues and organs repair themselves to their former function when and if she wakes up? Unlike hair, some things don’t grow back.
She was healthy before all of this after all. With the help of her campus peers, the university she attended, and the so-called “experts” of this new thing called “gender” medicine, who at one time took vows to do no harm, my daughter was being harmed. This happened years ago, before there were organizations and groups of parents and professionals trying to piece together what was happening. It was, however, painfully obvious to me: Medical identities were being used as a weapon—by medical professionals—against the minds and bodies of an entire generation of young women—and my gullible daughter had been a target.
