I have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue with a physician who works in a major children’s hospital in a blue city. This physician has witnessed firsthand how transgender ideology has captured the medical profession and jeopardized the first commandment of the healing sciences: do no harm.
He has now chosen to speak out, on condition of anonymity, because he is alarmed by the sudden corruption of the medical community. His colleagues, many of whom oppose transgender interventions, have so far chosen to stay silent. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
[one quote from interview]
Physician: There was a kid in the children’s hospital in his teens who had really bad Crohn’s disease, to the point where he’d already had multiple surgeries. And that kid would always be coming back to the hospital and the operating room. But one day, at the same time that we were rolling that kid back to the OR, another kid was headed to the other operating room to get an implant put into his arm so that his hormones could be suppressed. The first kid had no choice. He had no control over his condition of Crohn’s. He was born that way. There was no way to prevent it from happening. But the second kid was put into that situation because of the psychiatrists, the psychologists, the doctors, the politicians, and those in the media who convinced him that this was the correct thing to do to cure his mental anguish.
This should weigh heavily on the consciences of the doctors who did this to a child with the opportunity to live a normal life, to have a normal childhood. At some point, that child is going to wake up, and he’s going to realize that this was unnecessary, that his sexual organs are permanently mutilated, that the balance of his hormones is completely destroyed. He’s going to realize that there’s no going back, that the people who were supposed to protect him threw him to the wolves.
In seeking to overturn recent state laws opposing the sterilization of children, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health make false claims in court about the effectiveness of gender-transition drugs and surgeries.
These organizations argue that “the only effective treatment for individuals at risk of or suffering from gender dysphoria is to provide” sterilizing interventions.
Readers of this blog know differently. A synopsis of their legal strategy to overturn Arkansas’s SAFE Act is offered in this article by Christopher Mills.
The bill, if passed, would make it an offense for parents to refuse to affirm a child’s transgender identity, potentially leading to the loss of custody. This represents a dangerous shift in the definition of parenthood, not to mention an unimagined encroachment of the State into private family matters.
Obviously, State agencies like Child Protective Services (CPS) are in place to protect children from physical harm in the home, but these developments in California are different.
If passed, the state of California would consider any parent who rejected their child’s gender identity an abuser. It would be one “abuse” factor for the courts to consider in custody disputes, like parental drug addiction, or abandonment.
The bill is just one manifestation of the anarchic culture of identity, a societal trend where personal identity is judged to be fluid and wholly self-determined, often detached from biological realities. This identity culture is leading to a redefinition of parenthood from a biological relationship to a functional one, where parents are judged by their acceptance of their child’s self-identified gender rather than their biological role in the child’s life.
The bill defines this acceptance as intrinsic to the “health, safety and welfare of the child.”
Physical harm need not be present, only an unwillingness to use a preferred pronoun. According to AB 957 a parental unwillingness to deny reality becomes part of any future custody battle. Should the need arise. Typically custody battles are between two parents. But the language of this bill, and the assumptions built into that language, could one day be used by the State to take custody of a child over the objections of unaffirming parents.
Here we have a redefinition of the very essence of parenthood. “Parent” is essentially something you do. Not who you are. And is defined ideologically by the State. With this redefinition parental authority is diminished.
We shouldn’t question the motives of everyone involved. But, it must be said, some of them are like these sexual revolutionaries who seek to ‘re-educate’ our children.
Contrast this California bill with recent developments in Europe, developments my readers know well, where countries like the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, France, Norway, and the U.K. are reconsidering their stance on gender-affirming treatments for children and adolescents,citing unproven science and unclear benefits. For instance, Spain, despite its recent approval of a transgender rights bill allowing anyone aged 16 or over to change their gender on their ID card, has sparked a debate within its feminist lobby, with critics warning it could erode women’s rights. These European nations, once leaders in gender-affirming treatments, are now cautioning that such interventions may do more harm than good, especially for young people.
It seems this American push for gender affirmation is driven not by genuine concern for children’s wellbeing, but by a combination of radical, highly implausible, academic theories (Gender Theory, Queer Theory) and, it must be said, by the profit motives of the pharmaceutical industry.
Not that I would ever advocate for this, but if the State was really interested in protecting children’s mental health they should limit their exposure to social media and prosecute parents who give them smartphones. Social media is a primary tool through which the trans movement influences young minds. High levels of anxiety and low self-esteem spiked with the arrival of smartphones. Combine that with online pornography and you can see why many anxious girls give up on girlhood.
Parents, buy your children a flip phone. You'll still be able to text them short messages and they won't have the internet in their pocket!
The “trans madness” may end, but not without significant human cost. Those responsible for this “child abuse”—the doctors, clinics, and pharmaceutical companies—will hopefully face legal repercussions. Unfortunately this will only occur after the lives of many children have been irrevocably damaged.
The battle before us is a world-view battle. Many who do not share my particular world-view are recognizing, like the European nations I mentioned above, there are alternative approaches to these complex issues. We need to prioritize children’s mental health over political or commercial interests. The real problem resides in the mind, not the body.
Readers of this blog will know the work of Abigail Shrier. As a Californian and concerned parent she has a strong opinion about this bill and where it might take us.
Gender ideologues in California let the mask slip, or perhaps just tossed it away: A new bill, AB 957, directs family court judges to award custody based in part on “a parent’s affirmation of a child’s gender identity,” which the bill defines as intrinsic to the “health, safety and welfare of the child.”
