Jamie Reed is a 42-year-old former caseworker at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital from 2018 to 2022. She has described herself as a queer woman married to a trans man and “politically left of Bernie Sanders,” the U.S. senator from Vermont.
She became a whistleblower after alleging that she had witnessed “morally and medically appalling” treatment of transgender children and their parents during her four years working at the center. Reed has called for the center to be shut down and detailed her allegations in a sworn affidavit to Missouri’s attorney general, who launched one of three investigations into the center now underway.
She’s written a substack piece about a system that tore families apart. Don’t call her a hero, she says. For she waited too long to speak up.
Her account is a stark revelation of the practices within the gender center. She confesses to having been complicit in a system that prioritized affirmation over questioning, and in doing so, often tore families apart. The protocol followed by the center, she says, sides with affirming parents and maligns those who ask for more time or caution in the process of gender transition for their children.
She admits to using shaming tactics against non-affirming parents and disregarding their legal rights.
Mothers & Fathers Differ
Reed’s account reveals a notable difference in the reactions and approaches of mothers and fathers in the context of their children’s gender transition. She observed that it was often the fathers who were more skeptical and resistant to the quick affirmation of their children’s gender transitions. These fathers, she says, fought for more time in therapy, sought deeper exploration of their children’s desires to transition, and desired more comprehensive mental health assessments.
Conversely, she noticed that some mothers seemed more invested in the gender transition process than in the children themselves. She even suggested that some mothers showed signs of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological disorder where a caretaker seeks medical help for made-up or exaggerated symptoms in their child to gain attention or sympathy.
These mothers, Reed says, often stood against fathers who simply wanted their children to have access to real assessments and therapy. This created a significant divide within families, often leading to legal battles and further strain on the family unit.
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.”
Excellent commentary on this subject by David Harsanyi.
Begins like this…
Editor’s note: The following material contains explicit references and may be offensive to some.
Joe Biden recently hosted a Pride Month event for families with LGBTQ kids on the White House South Lawn. Ahead of the event, he announced that he’ll appoint a “banned book” czar whose job it will be to try to compel local communities to stock their libraries with race-obsessed pseudohistories and books depicting oral sex, rape, violence, and gender dysphoria.
Now, if that sounds like an unfair description, there’s an easy way for the president to debunk his critics: He can read selected outtakes from some of these “innocuous” books to prepubescent kids like those who showed up to the event.
Even better, he can do it on TV. After all, “book banning erodes our democracy,” says White House Domestic Policy Adviser Neera Tanden, and “removes vital resources for student learning, and can contribute to the stigma and isolation that many communities face.”
Perhaps the White House could set up a themed reading circle on the South Lawn where the president can recite selections from “Lawn Boy,” which describes 10-year-old boys performing oral sex on each other. It is, after all, on PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans. (PEN America is an advocacy group that promotes freedom of speech for writers.)
The School Library Journal praises “Lawn Boy” as an exploration of “race, sexual identity, and the crushing weight of American capitalism.”
