Category: Transgender Ideology

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Dr. Rachel Levine Is Uninformed, Or Worse

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
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.

Here’s a NY Post article with more details of her criticism.

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.

Reconsidering Informed Consent for Trans-Identified Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults. Published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.

A few important findings.

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 are often 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.

Full Article at this link.

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.

Abigail Shrier questions the Secretary…

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The New Trans-Activism

“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.

Here is her scorching criticism of the New Trans-Activism.

Allison Bailey

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Being Excluded From Your Own Body

Here is a 2018 YouTube video (approx 17 minutes) of Professor Michele Moore (Univ of Essex), editor and chief of Disability & Society, a peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of disability studies.

Moore has been a warrior for children and young people yet has been harshly denounced for disagreeing with Gender Identity activists who claim that self-identified “transkids” are always right and should always be “affirmed” in their belief that they are Transgender.

She touches on several topics discussed by this blog.

  • Rapid Onset Gender-Dysphoria (ROGD) – teenagers (mostly girls) suddenly identifying with G-D
  • Social Contagion – teens identifying as trans in “friendship groups” offline and online
  • Schools Deceiving Parents About Social Transition
  • Social Services removing children from “non-affirming” parents.
  • 4,500 percent increase in girls identifying as transgender over last decade in UK
  • “Conversion Therapy” Deception
  • 2/3 of Self-ID “trans” teenagers previously identified with mental health disorders
  • 35% of children referred to UK Tavistock Gender Clinic are on autistic spectrum
  • 80% desistance rate once they go through puberty using “watchful waiting”
  • Normalizing dissociation from your natural body
  • Lifelong Medicalization of Identity
  • New kind of Homophobia
  • Experimentation on the bodies of our children
  • No child born in the wrong body
  • Self-ID of gender is illusory

This is about inclusion. Listen….

Here are some of her final words in the video….

I argue that self identity is brought on by the things people say.  A backdrop of media, the internet, the increasing role of trans affirmative ideas in schools for children that affect our teachers and the parents....uncritical medical practice is recycling the idea that the cause of misaligned gender resides in the body.  Even though medical interventions bring lifelong physical and psychological difficulties that will actually deepen gender-based dissatisfaction and never actually change a person's biological sex....

It's not coincidental that children's interests are being undermined by the idea of self-identification.  There are a lot of stakeholders including Big Pharma who want them to identify as transgender and who don't want anybody to ask any sensible questions.  Very conveniently puberty blockers and hormone therapy compounds gender confusion.  First the child misses out on the puberty of their peers.  Next an already confused girl has a vagina and a beard.  The only way forward is more treatment, more treatment.  Allegedly to relieve gender-dysphoria.  

But the DeTransitioners that I'm working with and the people who regret transitioning tell us that gender-dysphoria doesn't go away with medical intervention because the problem doesn't reside in the body.  

My critique is not about exclusion.  It's about inclusion.  It's about allowing every girl to live her own kind of femininity without being excluded from her own body and without being excluded from a female sex class.  And it's about inclusion so that any boy wants to wear pink dresses to school can do that and not be excluded from his own body.  And his own sex class.  

The idea that children are born in the wrong body, that gender is biological and sex isn't, and that children should be allowed to self-identify their sex and their gender, functions as a tool for adult self interest.  Children are being confused in terrible ways...

Professor Moore puts her career and reputation on the line by saying what she says. She has “nerves of steel.”

Gender Ideologues animated by Queer Theory want to abolish the concepts of sex and sexuality. And they want to start teaching this to our kids at the earliest possible age. Please refer to the following “category” of posts: Schools and Gender Ideology for more information.

You can read about Queer Theory in the previous post: The New Homophobia, LGBTQ Activism & Queer Theory.

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As a Classic Christian I encourage everyone to “Embrace, Don’t Affirm.”

Individuals with a Gender Identity Disorder (Gender-Dysphoria) need Truth-filled Love. Please read this post for more details.

For anyone interested in an extended review of the Gender-Critical Pro-Creation argument presented on this blog, but without having to scroll through every post, please visit the Menu at the top of each page and click on the Top Posts link.