Almost all the distressed parents who tell me they think their kids’ trans identities are not authentic are liberals who find themselves drifting away from the Democratic party.
It really is only fair what with so many articles about parents fleeing red states that journalists should cover parents who are at the very least ambivalent about their kid having a trans identity.
Just wanted to recognize your bravery wading into this in a responsible way as it is such a shitstorm. I originally found you on Twitter several years ago during Covid and your perspective was always sober and evidence-based. Basic good science journalism! I have been so dismayed with the total journalistic, epistemic and scientific breakdown around this topic. I know you must have sacrificed a lot to do what you do.
This exactly! Thank you. I still did not vote for Trump - because he is disingenuous. Trump is for no one but Trump. I am hoping this is a wake up call to Democrats before more of our young vulnerable citizens are permanently damaged by gender “medicine”. Too late for my own son - I’m fighting for other families now.
" to seek life-saving health care for trans kids in bluer waters." should be in quotation marks. If these parents think they are giving their kids life saving care, they are being lied to, and if the kids needed support for such issues, they should be getting prevention support, not these drugs.
If the Dems really supported these kids, they'd be doing what the places following the evidence are doing. HHS sure isn't supporting them, neither are the sanctuary states--drugs and surgeries without informed consent, without caution, without checking outcomes? I guess this is like "supporting" someone struggling with opioids by fighting for them to get them any time, any way...supporting the MDs, more like it. And those who need to push this to feel important.
(Added: they didn't give informed consent because they were lied to about whether they were getting medical care or just some guess by someone, and the whole dead daughter live son or vice versa argument in some cases.)
All the talk about whether a kid is "really trans" is a large part of the problem. No one can define what the phrase "really trans" even means, except that a kid thinks he/she wants to be the other sex, or even thinks that he/she is a member of the other sex. Identity definition is fluid in people who are too young to know much of anything about who they are, which definitely includes adolescents. Identity is even more fluid in adolescents who have mental disorders, and based on what little information we have about the kids who are involved with gender clinics, is they have multiple psychiatric disorders.
The talk about "trans rights" is also perplexing. Exactly what does this mean? It is okay with me if a man dresses in women's clothes and goes to work that way. I believe that he should be evaluated on the quality of his work. On the other hand, dressing like a woman is not the same as dressing like a hooker, and I believe that men or women who dress like hookers should not be working with children. They should also expect to be talked to by the boss in most work settings about inappropriate attire.
I don't believe that teachers or children in a school should be forced to pretend that a child's sex is
different from what it actually is. I think that the intense social pressure that children put on each other to act normal probably helped a lot of kids get over fantasies that they needed to get over.
Roughly, think about religion. Say someone is Catholic. They have a right to not be discriminated against for that-jobs, how they are treated socially etc.
But in our liberal society, they don't have a right to make everyone else say they agree with Catholicism (for instance to forbid people to say there is no God), or to make everyone do mass, or to say decide that a different religious service should now be a Catholic one.
It's the latter where I think the big disagreement is. The first set of rights I think we want for everyone?
In the U.S. we still officially have freedom of speech, of expression, and certainly of thought. Over the course of our history freedom of speech has been limited by the SCOTUS, too much in my opinion, so that private corporations and other private organizations can restrict it. In the case of state licensed professionals like myself, freedom of speech has been curtailed to an extent that is unacceptable to me, and I hope that conservative justices will choose to address that issue. Cases similar to Jordan Peterson's disciplinary dispute with a Canadian licensing board also occur in woke areas of the U.S. In the so-called "trans rights" context, this means that the rights of mental health professionals to speak freely about "trans" issues, even in private settings, are framed as conflicting with the rights of "trans" identified people to express themselves, or even to "exist."
The article is interesting and presents a great example of systematic critical thinking about "gender identity." It clarifies the points of difficulty when trans-identifying people insist that other people in their environment agree with their beliefs about gender identity. The author's emphasis on the differences between "equality rights" and "belief rights" works really well, except in certain areas. One in particular is the right to freedom from discrimination in housing.
Women have historically had the right to segregate themselves into separate housing based on sex, as have men. This is the basis of the fraternity/sorority system on college campuses, which has recently been undermined by administrative and legal authorities forcing women to accept trans identified males into their sororities. This problem has also affected the right of women to advertise for female roommates and housemates. In cities and states that include "gender identity" as a protected class identifier, a woman can't refuse to accept as a roommate a man who answers her ad. Her only recourse is to recruit a roommate privately through her social network, which she may not even have, and hope that a man doesn't hear about this and apply to be her roommate. I bring this up because a woman I know who advertised publicly was pressured by an openly trans-identified man to accept him as her roommate. She refused on the basis of him being a man, and he did not pursue the situation. This happened in California, where presumably his legal right to freedom from discrimination in housing on the basis of gender identity would have overridden any normative right the woman had to refuse him.
I think it is shorthand for people who will have the best outcomes if they go through their entire life being treated as the opposite sex, and perhaps who have the benefit of the drastic interventions outweigh the risk.
At this point it's not even clear MDs know how many have good outcomes, at any age. They certainly don't know how to identify people who might be better off. It's not like all those detransitioners were people the MDs thought shouldn't get treatment--both they and their MDs thought it was right for them...and the patients probably thought it was right for them in part because an "expert" told them it was. Not realizing that gender-affirming "care" means--they agree with you.
From the pitt essay about kids determining that they are trans from being online:
" My kid did not diagnose himself. Under the affirmative system, where doctors and therapists may not challenge or question, unknown actors have stepped into the authority void once filled by our trusted doctors and medical professionals. Children, thinking they are figuring themselves out, are in actuality being diagnosed by unknown entities with unknown motivations and qualifications, on the internet. When we bring them to a doctor or therapist, we are simply seeking a second opinion — and, in this world, medical practitioners are told to defer to the child.
In this way, the affirmative model is worse than no doctor at all: by requiring doctors to agree with a crowdsourced internet opinion, it stamps a seal of approval — a false authority — on a non-medical opinion rendered by an unknown party. We may as well bring our kids to any old person off the street for the amount of real medical advice we’re getting. "
Yes, the whole "trans" enterprise is about telling kids and adults what their experience means, in terms of an identity label. Most of our experience means simply that we are human. Harry Stack Sullivan, a psychiatrist who strongly influenced psychoanalysis, said in reference to people suffering from schizophrenia that "we are all more simply human than otherwise."
Your posts are well expressed and I completely agree.
In research the main question regarding the success of treatment outcomes is first of all, what is meant by a "good outcome." Second, how good is it compared with the other possible outcomes? It is obviously impossible to know how a kid would have done in life, whatever that is defined to mean in this context, if he/she had not been transitioned or had received some other treatment for gender dysphoria or whatever distress they were experiencing.
I live in Portland, where at least 2 of the top ranked gender surgery centers in the country are raking in millions of dollars. The state legislature plus governor have been passing legislation since 2015 to make it easier and easier for children to be castrated or have their breasts cut off without parental consent. Nothing is too crazy to happen here in the way of gender bullshit.
I didn’t vote for Trump this week, but I voted Republican in every single down-ballot race after 40 years as a registered D. Trans insanity is the reason. Thanks Ben for standing up for reason & reality. So many of these kids are just gay or lesbian, & they deserve a right to grow up with intact bodies.
Ben, I’m one of those parents, and I intensely feel the pressure not to speak publicly about my doubts. Thank you so much for your courage. No other issue draws as much utterly vicious opprobrium.
My son has desisted, thankfully, and I wish the same for other parents who rightly doubt that transition will help their kids more than her them. But I live in a small liberal college town and to make matters stickier, I teach in a women’s and gender studies program. Unfortunately, by the time these young people get to me, they’ve marinated in online discourse for about 10 years, and so I have to be a bit stealthy in order to keep my job. But I’m still trying to encourage nuance and critical thinking on gender identity ideology.
Well said. For a normie/classic liberal like me, the takeover of the Dem agenda by the progressive/woke/extreme left, esp on gender conversions for children, is several bridges too far. That it has no basis in science (as shown by the Cass report and whistleblower reporting of the WPATH process) is just the figurative kick-in-the-nuts cherry on top.
Kudos to this mom, and those like her, to put her foot down against this insanity.
You have been a breathe of fresh air on these issues (I'm just one more normie Democrat who agrees with what you've outlined here) and it's a damn shame that it has had to come to a personal cost to you. I've grown ever more convinced that the hectoring, preaching, self-righteous tone of Democrats on this and other cultural issues is increasingly resulting in losing potential voters.
Toward the end, the dude having the meltdown mentions the American Medical Association, etc. Did you see the entire discussion and know why he even brought that up? And it's pretty clear now that the "evidence" of what the AMA and others base their pronouncements is faulty.
I enjoyed your podcast discussion with Buck Angel. Really good.
This is our family's story as well. I couldn't bring myself to vote for Trump, but Congressional Representative Mike Levin (D- CA) lost my vote this time around...and it may actually matter because it remains a very close race. I just couldn't vote for him after his insipid response to my letter asking him to be part of a bipartisan investigation into the medicalization of gender distressed youth. The Dems simply aren't listening. They're too busy hating Trump and value-signaling to hear us.
Thank you for this piece!
Not only does MSM not cover our stories, the affirming parents are a noisy bunch. They are invested.
There are many excellent interviews with Helen Joyce on parents of trans-identified youth.
It really is only fair what with so many articles about parents fleeing red states that journalists should cover parents who are at the very least ambivalent about their kid having a trans identity.
currently having a trans identity....
Just wanted to recognize your bravery wading into this in a responsible way as it is such a shitstorm. I originally found you on Twitter several years ago during Covid and your perspective was always sober and evidence-based. Basic good science journalism! I have been so dismayed with the total journalistic, epistemic and scientific breakdown around this topic. I know you must have sacrificed a lot to do what you do.
This exactly! Thank you. I still did not vote for Trump - because he is disingenuous. Trump is for no one but Trump. I am hoping this is a wake up call to Democrats before more of our young vulnerable citizens are permanently damaged by gender “medicine”. Too late for my own son - I’m fighting for other families now.
" to seek life-saving health care for trans kids in bluer waters." should be in quotation marks. If these parents think they are giving their kids life saving care, they are being lied to, and if the kids needed support for such issues, they should be getting prevention support, not these drugs.
If the Dems really supported these kids, they'd be doing what the places following the evidence are doing. HHS sure isn't supporting them, neither are the sanctuary states--drugs and surgeries without informed consent, without caution, without checking outcomes? I guess this is like "supporting" someone struggling with opioids by fighting for them to get them any time, any way...supporting the MDs, more like it. And those who need to push this to feel important.
(Added: they didn't give informed consent because they were lied to about whether they were getting medical care or just some guess by someone, and the whole dead daughter live son or vice versa argument in some cases.)
All the talk about whether a kid is "really trans" is a large part of the problem. No one can define what the phrase "really trans" even means, except that a kid thinks he/she wants to be the other sex, or even thinks that he/she is a member of the other sex. Identity definition is fluid in people who are too young to know much of anything about who they are, which definitely includes adolescents. Identity is even more fluid in adolescents who have mental disorders, and based on what little information we have about the kids who are involved with gender clinics, is they have multiple psychiatric disorders.
The talk about "trans rights" is also perplexing. Exactly what does this mean? It is okay with me if a man dresses in women's clothes and goes to work that way. I believe that he should be evaluated on the quality of his work. On the other hand, dressing like a woman is not the same as dressing like a hooker, and I believe that men or women who dress like hookers should not be working with children. They should also expect to be talked to by the boss in most work settings about inappropriate attire.
I don't believe that teachers or children in a school should be forced to pretend that a child's sex is
different from what it actually is. I think that the intense social pressure that children put on each other to act normal probably helped a lot of kids get over fantasies that they needed to get over.
There is a really good essay about belief rights vs other rights.
https://philosophersmag.com/the-transgender-rights-issue/
Roughly, think about religion. Say someone is Catholic. They have a right to not be discriminated against for that-jobs, how they are treated socially etc.
But in our liberal society, they don't have a right to make everyone else say they agree with Catholicism (for instance to forbid people to say there is no God), or to make everyone do mass, or to say decide that a different religious service should now be a Catholic one.
It's the latter where I think the big disagreement is. The first set of rights I think we want for everyone?
In the U.S. we still officially have freedom of speech, of expression, and certainly of thought. Over the course of our history freedom of speech has been limited by the SCOTUS, too much in my opinion, so that private corporations and other private organizations can restrict it. In the case of state licensed professionals like myself, freedom of speech has been curtailed to an extent that is unacceptable to me, and I hope that conservative justices will choose to address that issue. Cases similar to Jordan Peterson's disciplinary dispute with a Canadian licensing board also occur in woke areas of the U.S. In the so-called "trans rights" context, this means that the rights of mental health professionals to speak freely about "trans" issues, even in private settings, are framed as conflicting with the rights of "trans" identified people to express themselves, or even to "exist."
Thanks for the link, I'll read it!
The article is interesting and presents a great example of systematic critical thinking about "gender identity." It clarifies the points of difficulty when trans-identifying people insist that other people in their environment agree with their beliefs about gender identity. The author's emphasis on the differences between "equality rights" and "belief rights" works really well, except in certain areas. One in particular is the right to freedom from discrimination in housing.
Women have historically had the right to segregate themselves into separate housing based on sex, as have men. This is the basis of the fraternity/sorority system on college campuses, which has recently been undermined by administrative and legal authorities forcing women to accept trans identified males into their sororities. This problem has also affected the right of women to advertise for female roommates and housemates. In cities and states that include "gender identity" as a protected class identifier, a woman can't refuse to accept as a roommate a man who answers her ad. Her only recourse is to recruit a roommate privately through her social network, which she may not even have, and hope that a man doesn't hear about this and apply to be her roommate. I bring this up because a woman I know who advertised publicly was pressured by an openly trans-identified man to accept him as her roommate. She refused on the basis of him being a man, and he did not pursue the situation. This happened in California, where presumably his legal right to freedom from discrimination in housing on the basis of gender identity would have overridden any normative right the woman had to refuse him.
And yes, really trans means what?
It's a way of viewing yourself.
I think it is shorthand for people who will have the best outcomes if they go through their entire life being treated as the opposite sex, and perhaps who have the benefit of the drastic interventions outweigh the risk.
At this point it's not even clear MDs know how many have good outcomes, at any age. They certainly don't know how to identify people who might be better off. It's not like all those detransitioners were people the MDs thought shouldn't get treatment--both they and their MDs thought it was right for them...and the patients probably thought it was right for them in part because an "expert" told them it was. Not realizing that gender-affirming "care" means--they agree with you.
Also this great PITT essay: https://www.pittparents.com/p/dr-google-does-not-know-if-youre-5ec
From the pitt essay about kids determining that they are trans from being online:
" My kid did not diagnose himself. Under the affirmative system, where doctors and therapists may not challenge or question, unknown actors have stepped into the authority void once filled by our trusted doctors and medical professionals. Children, thinking they are figuring themselves out, are in actuality being diagnosed by unknown entities with unknown motivations and qualifications, on the internet. When we bring them to a doctor or therapist, we are simply seeking a second opinion — and, in this world, medical practitioners are told to defer to the child.
In this way, the affirmative model is worse than no doctor at all: by requiring doctors to agree with a crowdsourced internet opinion, it stamps a seal of approval — a false authority — on a non-medical opinion rendered by an unknown party. We may as well bring our kids to any old person off the street for the amount of real medical advice we’re getting. "
Yes, the whole "trans" enterprise is about telling kids and adults what their experience means, in terms of an identity label. Most of our experience means simply that we are human. Harry Stack Sullivan, a psychiatrist who strongly influenced psychoanalysis, said in reference to people suffering from schizophrenia that "we are all more simply human than otherwise."
Your posts are well expressed and I completely agree.
In research the main question regarding the success of treatment outcomes is first of all, what is meant by a "good outcome." Second, how good is it compared with the other possible outcomes? It is obviously impossible to know how a kid would have done in life, whatever that is defined to mean in this context, if he/she had not been transitioned or had received some other treatment for gender dysphoria or whatever distress they were experiencing.
"trans rights" have morphed to mean two things:
1) trans women are women/trans men are men
2) the government shall not disallow any type of treatment of dysphoria at any age and it shall ban any treatment that involves questioning transition
The "are" men/woman phrasing is meant to be a complete rewrite of every sex based law.
The "ban" I refer to may sound crazy, but it is already on the books in numerous states.
These are the "rights" that TRAs are staking a claim to.
I live in Portland, where at least 2 of the top ranked gender surgery centers in the country are raking in millions of dollars. The state legislature plus governor have been passing legislation since 2015 to make it easier and easier for children to be castrated or have their breasts cut off without parental consent. Nothing is too crazy to happen here in the way of gender bullshit.
100% my story and what happened to me.
Our family exactly! It’s so painful to feel alone and told I am the problem.
I didn’t vote for Trump this week, but I voted Republican in every single down-ballot race after 40 years as a registered D. Trans insanity is the reason. Thanks Ben for standing up for reason & reality. So many of these kids are just gay or lesbian, & they deserve a right to grow up with intact bodies.
Ben, I’m one of those parents, and I intensely feel the pressure not to speak publicly about my doubts. Thank you so much for your courage. No other issue draws as much utterly vicious opprobrium.
My son has desisted, thankfully, and I wish the same for other parents who rightly doubt that transition will help their kids more than her them. But I live in a small liberal college town and to make matters stickier, I teach in a women’s and gender studies program. Unfortunately, by the time these young people get to me, they’ve marinated in online discourse for about 10 years, and so I have to be a bit stealthy in order to keep my job. But I’m still trying to encourage nuance and critical thinking on gender identity ideology.
What a unique perspective you hold.
Ben, your intelligence, courage, and perseverance are a light in my dark world.
Thanks, that's very sweet of you.
When will journalists in msm do their jobs on this issue? Lay the facts bare on the USA and let us debate and settle it?????
Well said. For a normie/classic liberal like me, the takeover of the Dem agenda by the progressive/woke/extreme left, esp on gender conversions for children, is several bridges too far. That it has no basis in science (as shown by the Cass report and whistleblower reporting of the WPATH process) is just the figurative kick-in-the-nuts cherry on top.
Kudos to this mom, and those like her, to put her foot down against this insanity.
You have been a breathe of fresh air on these issues (I'm just one more normie Democrat who agrees with what you've outlined here) and it's a damn shame that it has had to come to a personal cost to you. I've grown ever more convinced that the hectoring, preaching, self-righteous tone of Democrats on this and other cultural issues is increasingly resulting in losing potential voters.
Biggest medical scams of the 21st century
Thank you for this piece and for enduring the abuse from writing honestly.
I know you have seen this clip from a CNN show.....
https://x.com/thomaschattwill/status/1855252627996488082
Toward the end, the dude having the meltdown mentions the American Medical Association, etc. Did you see the entire discussion and know why he even brought that up? And it's pretty clear now that the "evidence" of what the AMA and others base their pronouncements is faulty.
I enjoyed your podcast discussion with Buck Angel. Really good.
This is our family's story as well. I couldn't bring myself to vote for Trump, but Congressional Representative Mike Levin (D- CA) lost my vote this time around...and it may actually matter because it remains a very close race. I just couldn't vote for him after his insipid response to my letter asking him to be part of a bipartisan investigation into the medicalization of gender distressed youth. The Dems simply aren't listening. They're too busy hating Trump and value-signaling to hear us.