A leading clinical psychologist with 16 years’ experience in child mental health say more than half of her patients now identify as transgender.
She saw a sudden rise after the coronavirus lockdowns. And parents are letting their kids transition at ages five or six. But parents had been “sold a lie.”
'When we disconnect them from their biological sex we set up patterns of denial and secrets. We set them up to hate their bodies at puberty, to beg for [puberty] blockers and binders, because for years we told them they could change sex and they believed us – but their body knows otherwise.
'They become desperate to go back to the years when no one knew any different, but that time will never come again. Time is not reversible. What we grow up being told in our childhood matters for our whole lives.'
She reports this anonymously because she said:
“she feared being accused of ‘transphobia’ or even conversion therapy if she questioned or explored the child’s decision to swap gender.”
Sixty out of 1,000 students at a secondary school declared their gender to be different than their birth sex.
The majority have done so since most Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were lifted last summer, raising concern about the impact of online trans ‘influencers’ on youngsters who were largely confined to their homes for months.
“Transformers Lockdown Animated Deluxe – caja” by mdverde is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
People with Gender-Critical views like mine are constantly told that “the science” is unequivocal on this issue and in favor of “gender-affirmative care.”
Dr. Rachel Levine
Assistant Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine, who is a Trans-female, and the highest-ranking transgender member of the federal government dismisses those of us who criticize new federal guidelines that recommend “gender-affirming” care for transgender minors — saying that no responsible doctors oppose it.
A few days ago, Dr. Levine made the following comment to National Public Radio (NPR)
"There is no argument among medical professionals - pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc -- about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care."
To suggest that “the science is settled” on this issue is patently false.
Here is a recent peer-reviewed and heavily researched article with links to more studies than you could ever read on the subject.
In less than a decade, the western world has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the numbers of children and adolescents seeking gender transition. Despite the precedent of years of gender-affirmative care, the social, medical and surgical interventions are still based on very low-quality evidence. The many risks of these interventions, including medicalizing a temporary adolescent identity, have come into a clearer focus through an awareness of detransitioners.
When uncertain parents of children and teens consult their primary care providers, they are usually referred to specialty gender services. Parents and referring clinicians assume that specialists with “gender expertise” will undertake a thorough evaluation. However, the evaluations preceding the recommendation for gender transition areoften surprisingly brief(Anderson & Edwards-Leeper, 2021) and typically lead to a recommendation for hormones and surgery, known as gender-affirmative treatment.
Despite the widely recognized deficiencies in the evidence supporting gender-affirmative interventions (National Institute for Health & Care Excellence, 2020a; 2020b), the process of obtaining informed consent from patients and their families has no established standard.
Social transition, hormones, and surgeries are unproven in a strict scientific sense, and as such, to be ethical, require a thorough and fully informed consent process.
...the dramatic growth in demand for youth gender transition witnessed in the last several years that has led to a perfunctory informed consent process. A rushed process does not allow for a proper discussion of not only the benefits, but the profound risks and uncertainties associated with gender transition, especially when gender transition is undertaken before mature adulthood.
Although the incidence of natal males asserting a trans identity in adolescence has significantly increased, the dramatic increase is driven primarily by the natal females requesting services. Many suffer from significant comorbid mental health disorders, have neurocognitive difficulties such as ADHD or autism or have a history of trauma.
To respond to growing demand, an innovative informed consent model of care has been developed. Under this model, mental health evaluations are not required, and hormones can be provided after just one visit following the collection of a patient’s or guardian’s consent signature....we believe this model is the antithesis of true informed consent, as it jeopardizes the ethical foundation of patient autonomy. Autonomy is not respected when patients consenting to the treatment do not have an accurate understanding of the risks, benefits, and alternatives.
It is common for gender-affirmative specialists to erroneously believe that gender-affirmative interventions are a standard of care. Despite the increasingly widespread professional beliefs in the safety and efficacy of pediatric gender transition, and the endorsement of this treatment pathway by a number of professional medical societies, the best available evidence suggests that the benefits of gender-affirmative interventions are of very low certainty and must be carefully weighed against the health risks to fertility, bone, and cardiovascular health.
The ‘transition or suicide’ narrative falsely implies that transition will prevent suicides. [N]either hormones nor surgeries have been shown to reduce suicidality in the long-term.
For those of you sitting on the fence about where the science comes down on this issue (forget the ethical-religious questions for a moment), you need to read this article published in a medical journal.
Rachel Levine transitioned as an adult in 2011. Rachel Levine had the chance to have a fully functioning body with capacities for arousal and reproduction. And now the Secretary wants to take risks with other people’s children.
“Taken to the woodshed” by someone who could never be accused of being a fascist, or right-winger. Allison Bailey is suing Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ rights organization in the U.K. Bailey is a Lesbian, a political leftist, and fed up with the idea that we must replace the concept of sex with gender.
You might not agree with everything she says, but she highlights many of the concerns I’ve blogged about in the past year.
