Just another ho-hum day in trans-kid news: Stanford to open specialty clinic for “trans” kids, Washington Post and UK Channel 4 tout transition narrative

There are now nearly 50 hospital-affiliated clinics diagnosing and “treating” kids who wish they were the opposite sex in the US.  A few days ago, the illustrious Stanford University, the Harvard of the west coast, announced that its children’s hospital division

has begun to offer medical and other services to transgender children and adolescents, with an eye toward opening within the next year a more comprehensive multidisciplinary clinic to support what health providers say is a growing population.

There it is again: the big increase in kids being sent to these gender clinics. The activists tell us, of course, that there were just as many “trans” kids in earlier years. (Hell, they love to claim strong women in history were actually trans men.)  It’s just that now, we can identify “trans” kids. We have treatments for them.

There is no way that the medical and psychiatric literature would not have identified these children as “actually trans” in years past. Because to hear the activists tell it, “trans” kids are all at immediate risk for suicide if they don’t get transition services–now. If this were not part of a contemporary medical/cultural trend,  young people would have been threatening or committing suicide in droves throughout recorded history, after telling parents and doctors they could not tolerate life in the “wrong” body.

Families who previously approached Stanford for care would typically be referred to the UCSF center, said Tandy Aye, a Stanford pediatric endocrinologist who started treating transgender children and adolescents about six months ago. She said she saw an “increasing need” and felt compelled to support local families.

Aye is currently seeing nine patients and receives several referrals per month. .. Her patients are as young as 4 1/2 years old and as old as 15 years old.

“We’re assessing the need, but it seems like the need is there and growing,” Aye said.

The need is growing. The need is growing.

Who is Dr. Tandy Aye? Her Stanford profile lists diabetes as the condition she treats, and her published research is all on that subject as well. Aye is obviously new to the whole puberty-blocker/cross-sex hormone thing, but then, the whole “field” is an experimental frontier, so maybe no surprise there.

“People are noticing, also, that if these children get the treatment they need even from an earlier age and not wait so long, the depression and suicide and other comorbidities … are improved,” Aye said. “Kids are happier.”

The diabetes specialist assures us that “KIDS are happier.”  But those kids will grow up to be adults and we know nothing–nothing–about how they will feel when the honeymoon period is over. Do these doctors really believe that every Jane who was born John will happily dilate their surgically-constructed “neovagina” every day for the rest of Jane’s life?  Do they not have even an inkling of a doubt that some number of the Jills who become Jacks will come to realize they are, indeed, women? Do they really believe that not a single one of these kids who was sterilized before puberty will regret it?

“People are noticing” that these kids are happier. Are any of these doctors parents themselves? Have they every witnessed how much “happier” most kids are when they are granted their every wish? Have any of them studied child and adolescent psychological development?

Teenagers with persistent gender dysphoria experience a high rate of psychiatric comorbidities, including depression, suicidal ideation and attempted suicide, according to UCSF.

The data that exist show that gender non-conforming young people are more at risk for self harm, suicidal ideation, and bullying. But that includes gay and lesbian young people, and others who simply don’t conform to stereotypes. And in fact, the most recent suicides of trans-identified teens, a cluster in San Diego, CA (the reasons for this cluster need to be identified) were kids who were fully supported in transitioning by their families, referred to by “preferred pronouns,” and so forth.

But at least the article refers to CO-morbidities. There is just as much evidence that the psychological problems experienced by these kids cause the gender dysphoria as the other way around. The trouble is, it has become taboo to investigate mental health issues as possible causal factors for GD.

Aye, along with Stanford child and adolescent psychiatrist David Hong, is also in the midst of a pilot study that will follow both children with and without gender dysphoria for two to three years as they go through puberty.

The study aims to examine the physiological effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, an area Aye said has not been studied before in the United States. They are currently accepting study participants.

Bingo: it has not been studied. And let’s remember: While the intent to study these kids is obviously a good thing,  the research will take place on children who are already being treated with hormones and possibly surgeries–and these children will be sterilized. Who is going to design a study to weed out the kids who will regret all of this in 20 years?

Who is Dr. David Hong? His publication history and a YouTube lecture reveal that his area of research interest is Turner Syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality in girls (single X chromosome vs the normal XX) that results in short stature, fertility problems, possible heart defects, potential cognitive issues in a minority of the girls.  Most girls with Turner Syndrome present with ovarian dysfunction, and according to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), “many affected girls do not undergo puberty unless they receive hormone therapy, and most are unable to conceive (infertile).”

So Dr. Hong has a fair bit of insight into girls rendered infertile by an inborn condition, and he will be participating in “treating” and studying girls who will be rendered infertile by the GnRh + cross-sex hormone treatments they receive from gender clinics like the one planned at Stanford. There’s an irony to this that I find very sad.


And on the “journalism” front…yesterday, another venerable institution, the Washington Post, churned out yet another triumphant story of a grade-school transitioner.  Actually, it’s a followup to a story they did 3 years ago on 5-year-old “Tyler,” who is now 8. Though born with two X chromosomes and still in the stage of life when children conflate reality with fantasy, gender specialists are on the case. And surprise, surprise, Tyler–who has been “socially transitioned” all this time–still wants to be a boy.

He and his parents would have to decide whether to visit the doctor monthly for shots or use a surgical implant to inject drugs to stop puberty and keep his body from looking like that of a young woman.

The implant. Definitely the implant,” the third-grader told the doctor. And Tyler is certain about one other thing: “I’m a boy,” he says.

From age 2, the Post dutifully reports, the kid insisted s/he was the opposite sex and

…felt as though God made a mistake and people were wrong when they said “she” and he hated, hated, hated wearing a leotard to gymnastics.

But it was also rough for his parents — solid, pragmatic, religious schoolteachers — who had a mountain to climb when faced with the extraordinary challenge he presented to them.

Hates leotards. Has “religious schoolteachers” as parents. I can think of a few followup questions, but never mind.

Tyler hasn’t hit puberty yet. What then?

Eventually, some older teens also begin taking hormones of the gender they identify with. So Tyler would get testosterone shots.

Those hormone injections, which typically begin at 16, would be a much tougher choice because they make the child sterile.

Just a small note in passing.  Not worth a few followup questions, like: Sterilization of children? Isn’t there some kind of international tradition of avoiding that?

Meanwhile, Tyler still a kid, has more mundane concerns than future fertility. Like sleepovers.

“Fortunately, sleepovers aren’t as popular with boys at this age,” [Mom] exhaled. And if he does a sleepover, he’ll do it with friends from his old school, where he was known as the transgender kid.

At some point, [Tyler’s mom will] have to face the request for a sleepover with someone who has no idea that he once had Kathryn in his name.

Sleepovers are one of the hot topics at the monthly transgender support group meetings that Tyler’s family hosts at their home. It’s a group that didn’t exist three years ago, and it’s growing every month.

At these meetings and at the transgender conventions and conferences and family weekends, Tyler is happy to talk about being transgender.

So many meetings, so many conferences, so little time. And they’re growing every month.

*************************************************************

Meanwhile, a major TV outlet in the UK, Channel 4, is featuring a series over the next few weeks on “trans kids” called “Born in the Wrong Body.” This YouTube transition time-lapse  (over 6 million views as of this writing) of a young woman magically turning into a young man is being used as a trailer for the Channel 4 series. Strange, though. As seems to often be the case with media portrayals of young transitioners, there are roughly twice as many negative comments as positive posted on this video.

It’s almost as if they’re trying to sell the public something they don’t want to buy.


I have come late to this party. Like many of my compatriots on the somnolent left, I slept through the initially slow, and now rapidly accelerating pediatric transition trend (or is it actually a “movement” as the Transgender Youth Equality Foundation refers to it?) While we were snoozing, a decision was made by certain activists and medical professionals to pretty much ignore decades of research indicating that the vast majority of kids with “gender dysphoria” grow out it and become (most typically) gay or lesbian adults.  Instead of leaving these children alone to play and learn and grow, without feeding the usually transient fantasy that they are (or should be) the opposite sex, we now have professionals and parents jumping to the conclusion that these kids need to change their pronouns, “socially transition,” and otherwise pretend to be something they are not. All in preparation for irreversible medical transition at puberty.

And for anyone new to my blog who thinks I’m just an ignorant transphobe who should trust the judgment of all these good doctors, a little reminder is in order.  As recently as 2013, none other than Dr. Norman Spack, founder of the first pediatric gender clinic and considered one of the biggest proponents of puberty blockers and early transition, had this to say in the weighty journal of yet another venerable institution, the American Medical Association (in the very last paragraph on page 484, after the rest of the article touts transition):

Mental health intervention should persist for the long term, even after surgery, as patients continue to be at mental health risk, including for suicide. While the causes of suicide are multifactorial, the possibility cannot be ruled out that some patients unrealistically believe that surgery(ies) solves their psychological distress.

Early intervention in young adolescents, including pubertal suppression, has been initiated only in the past 10 to 15 years; long-term follow-up is awaited to determine whether the outcomes are more favorable.

spack

You heard him:

  1. Depressed and suicidal people might actually not get any better after they hack away at their genitals.
  2. We’re going to keep on experimenting on kids. We don’t have any long-term followup, and we have no idea whether the outcomes will be favorable, but we’ll figure that out later.

This is Norman Spack, MD, talking here, not some nervous Nellie, unsupportive parent. You know, the same Dr. Spack who told the New York Times in June that he salivates at the idea of administering puberty blockers to little kids. If he feels the need to issue caveats like this (albeit at the end of an article promoting transition), you know we’re in uncharted waters.

But meanwhile, let’s celebrate “Tyler’s” upcoming GnRh implant, and Jamie’s magic transition. (I wonder: how many new “FTM” patients will be generated from that one glamorous transition trailer?)

No one knows how many of these kids would have grown up to be non-transitioned gay or lesbian adults. No one knows how many will grow up to regret what was done to them by trusted adults when they were children. No one knows. And though some profess to care, the ones with the power–the gender specialists and activists–don’t choose to stop it.  How many children is it ok to mistakenly sterilize and turn into lifelong medical patients with permanently altered bodies and brains?

The observation by Joseph Goebbels (who knew a thing or two about propaganda) that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” has become reality in the 21st century. We now have some of the most respected, prestigious university-based hospitals participating in experimental “treatments” of minors, most of whom will be sterilized in the process. We have a lapdog media that never bothers to question whether this is a good idea; which, in fact, by its refusal to question and probe, is tacitly operating as a propaganda organ for the gender specialists.

What is the big lie? That we have sufficient evidence to justify the ongoing and accelerating medical experimentation being perpetrated on children… in the name of another big lie: “born in the wrong body.”

45 thoughts on “Just another ho-hum day in trans-kid news: Stanford to open specialty clinic for “trans” kids, Washington Post and UK Channel 4 tout transition narrative

  1. 50 gender clinics for kids in the US now???!!!! Holy shit. Well, trans run all lgbt centers and are the establishment now, how long till the next cash crop of teens rebels against the trans adults and enablers who are pushing this medical experimentation? 5, 10 years maybe.

  2. Lordy, it’s relentless, is it not?

    A lot of days it feels like trying to swim up a waterfall, voicing concerns/cautions. A lot of nights I lie awake thinking of the people who post here, and their kids, and — knowing in my gut that some of our kids are going to take the transition route regardless of what we do.

    A lot of nights I’m at least half sure that my kid’s going to be one of the casualties. Because I fear that her ability to think critically about the situation is lagging far behind her grasp of pop culture and the natural ‘I want what I want and this is a fix for what ails me’ impulse. Which is so loudly validated now, and is going to continue to be loudly validated as my kid heads toward college.

    People who are actually concerned about the long-term physical and psych ramifications of the whole early-transing movement, — we’re such little voices compared with the rainbow glitter happytalk going on out there. Sometimes I think we’ve all wandered into posthuman land. There are people who think that’s a fantastic idea, actually. You wanna be a wolf, you wanna be a double amputee, you wanna be some gender combo previously unknown to humankind — we’ll figure out some drugs and surgery for that. Sometimes I think it’s lofty woo-woo posthuman stuff, and sometimes I think it’s just … a dark hole of ‘follow the money.’ Same as it ever was.

    Sometimes I just have to go distract myself with stuff in order to stave off despair.

    But thanks for wading round in the morass, 4thwave. You can’t save the world but … you’re gonna save a few. You will.

    • I share the same fears, and my heart aches for my daughter. I worry that she just won’t be able to sort out her thinking, and that she’ll end up making a decision she regrets…and at some point there’s not much I can do about it.

      But I agree that any voice out there that keeps shouting words of reason over the cacophony of craziness helps. Thanks, 4thwave. And all of you.

    • Yes. I can’t sleep. My house is a wreck. I’m constantly worried about this. I spend half my days reading anything I can find and posting anonymously about what I’m seeing. Not to sound super dramatic here, but yes currently this is nearly ruining my life. I can’t even find a decent therapist to work on the fact this is making me crazy. They just tell me crap like I can’t come to terms with the fact my son is my daughter. That’s despite the fact he never actually said he wants to be a girl or that he was born with the wrong body. That’s ok though, in due time he’ll find a therapist who will help him create his “story” so he can get his meds and body mutilation surgery. They’ll tell him his mother was just paranoid and standing in the way of him “living his truth”.

      • gwen, you are doing what you can and you need, for your sake and for the sake of your son, to try and distract yourself a little. First, from everything you’ve said, he isn’t interested right now in transitioning and he isn’t interested in dealing with gender specialists, right? Take a breath. Now, take another. You are projecting too far in the future. You’ve had some upsetting revelations from your son, but he himself isn’t seeking this out, so relax a bit. It’s OK.

        I have been there and it’s just anxiety. I did go and talk to a therapist, but I only went to three sessions because, well, yeah — they’re ALL on the trans-trek and she kept saying, “You’re just grieving,” and I knew she was only concerned with gently convincing me that I had to go along with all of this. But, you know what? I don’t have to. And she did give me one useful tool (which I already kind of knew, but wasn’t using in this specific situation) — what’s the worst thing which will happen today? What’s the worst thing which will happen tomorrow? We can all concoct worst case scenarios of hormones and surgeries and far-future regret, but it’s the day-to-day which is going unnoticed.

        And, I took some deep breaths. I am doing exactly what I can to keep this from gaining a foothold. I am against hormones and surgery and therapy, so those things aren’t happening. But, by vibrating at such a high pitch and being unable to focus and be present RIGHT NOW, I was missing the opportunity to have positive connections with my daughter and demonstrate my love for her and restore some peace and normalcy to our home and family. In the day-to-day, NOTHING about this issue is going to happen. I know she’s pushing (and getting) her friends and teachers to go along with this. But, when she comes home? She’s hearing her name and I’m calm and joking and taking her places and nagging her about laundry and eating better and taking her meds. I’m watching TV shows with her we both like. I’m suggesting costumes this week for her for Spirit Week. (She wore something girl-y for 50s day and today for 80s day. I gently complimented her outfits.)

        In the long run, the world may win out with her. But I can’t live in the future, especially if giving up the present means I miss what’s wonderful now. So, yes, use your power as a parent to prevent or postpone the future from making an appearance too soon. But don’t miss today! (And, remember, your worst predictions? May not happen, either. And then you’ll really wish you’d enjoyed all the todays, even if they came with a little uncertainty.)

      • Those are very wise words, katiesan, and very like the daily lectures (I mean that in a good way) I force myself to give myself. The ‘what if’ is the killer of any possible joy in the NOW and … .the NOW is all we really have. If the ‘worst’ should happen, will it be any easier for having all had this premature suffering attached to it? I think not.

      • I can relate to your post so much katiesan. Right down to the therapist just claiming I was grieving. Yes, I’m grieving over the fact some people have lost their mind. Thank you and you are very right. I don’t want to spend so much time consumed by this that I stop living in the here and now.

  3. Thank goodness you woke up. Thank goodness that you specifically are one of the ones who woke up. We need you, your insights, your energy, your knowledge, your work, your perseverance, your insistence, your clear eyed understanding of what’s going on. It can feel like a cry in the wilderness, but you’re in good company. Mainstream political and media representations have been wrong hundreds of times in history, with the masses going along blindly and only a few brave souls to point out the problems, who were later vindicated. We are absolutely dependent on the brave souls to get us through the onslaught of propaganda that only benefits the usual powers that be: corporate medicine, corporate lawyers, corporate higher education, corporate media, and all who benefit downstream from them. We need you to be the voice for worried and cowed parents until they can find their own strength and voices. Thank you for doing this very hard work.

    • I need to hear this. Everyday I wonder if maybe I have just lost my mind and I’m completely wrong. It’s not a crazy thing to consider because so many people are seeing it differently than me.

  4. Good grief! If Tyler hate, hate, HATES wearing a leotard, then don’t put Tyler in activities that require a leotard! Sign the kid up for soccer, basketball, tennis, golf, or whatever. Hating leotards is not a medical condition.

    • Amen. Having a non- sex-stereotyped personality and interests is not a problem to be solved, by medical means or otherwise. It’s just a personality variation.

    • When I read about the hatred of leotards, I wondered if this child had sensory issues. Not everyone likes clingy, stretchy clothes (or scratchy lace or unruly ruffles which a lot of “girl” clothes have). If she was told the comfortable clothes were boy clothes it wouldn’t surprise me if she made a mental leap.

      • I don’t care for a lot of clothing worn traditionally by women. I don’t own heals. I don’t own a dress or a skirt. I prefer t-shirts from the men’s department. I am still a woman. And I don’t worry about what anyone thinks. It’s not about the clothing. I mean really we are reduced to what we wear? Some transwomen come across as quite strange in this department. I even had one tell me she was tired of women being objectified and her feeling the pressure to dress a certain way. Uh huh. You were a man for 50 years and now you are an authority on the plight of women? That feels rather insulting. I still see him as a human being. Probably enduring some kind of mental health problem that sucks. But come on.

      • Ahh. Sensory “issues”.

        The slippy fabric they’d make the dresses from and all the beads and hair bobbles were just too, too much. Like, treading barefoot on a squashed toad level overwhelming digust.

        But the other girls loved these things.

        Thing is, as an autistic kid, you have no idea that these kids are not thinking what you are thinking. From my end, they’re dressing up in some untenably awful things, like decking a christmas tree in guts, but they looked to be unphased and wanting more of this treatment, Like so much of being a kid, you have to figure out why this might be.

        “Because nobody but you is frightened of cloth with buttons sewn to it” never figured into my rationalisation.

        Flashback over. Sensory Issues on a Leotard. Scratchy can be a problem, plus they’re tight and you can’t move your arms about unresticted by elastic. Yikes. They’re also not the easiest thing to take off if you need to go toilet. If you’re put into a state of fight or flight by something as dumb as shiny cloth, you’ll be sh***ing yourself quite a lot. Maybe you’ll want a level of control over that, be stronger than that.

        Etc.

      • I had A LOT of sensory issues as a child (still do) and I can easily see this happening. In my case, it was the 1970s and I absolutely could not stand all that polyester next to my skin, especially if a scratchy tag was part of the package. I actually preferred dresses when I was around 5-6 because they were more often made of cotton and the fit was looser. There was also this fuzzy wool sweater I refused to let my mom put on me.

        It worked out fine in the end. Every other member of my generation has embarrassing kid pictures of themselves wearing tacky plaid polyester Brady Bunch pants, but I have none! 🙂

  5. This is surely a cure that has created the disease- and the lucrative practices now being implemented to “treat” it. I do not understand how the psychologists and surgeons and endocrinologists participating in the experimentation upon children can stand to look at themselves in the mirror, I really don’t.

    • Yeah no kidding. I’d have to rob a bank to get the money to afford these treatments. The cost of this would put me in debt probably for the rest of my life. If my kid were dying, that would be worth it. Medicating and mutilating an otherwise healthy kid, not worth it.

  6. One thing I’ve seen in the last few years are articles posthumously transing women in past centuries who were known to have disguised themselves as men. These include women who disguised themselves as men to fight in wars, to be pirates, to simply live lives unfettered by the severely limited roles available to women of their time, and so on. But what they fail to note that in centuries past, it was.invariably WOMEN doing this, and not men disguising themselves as women, in reverse of today’s typical transgender person, who tends to be male, by a significantly wide margin.

    This, of course, begs the question as to why women disguised themselves as men. Was it because they thought they were actually men in the wrong bodies? No one can say for sure, but people back then really didn’t think like that. Rather, the true reason was much more likely to be that they simply wanted to engage in the activities limited to men of their time, and which they were forbidden from doing openly as women. Unlike today, where women may engage in any activity she chooses, openly as a woman, women of past centuries didn’t have this luxury. They risked consequences ranging from simple ridicule, being shunned in her community, being jailed, being committed to an insane asylum, being assaulted or perhaps killed, and so on. So, in order to engage in a desired activity for a temporary period of time, such as fighting in a war, or for a lifetime, such women had to disguise themselves as men for their own safety. Those trans activists who write articles claiming such past women were really trans, conveniently forget just how different societies were from our own in past centuries.

    Returning to the present, I believe there needs to be an organization formed to protect so-called “trans kids” from this human rights violation, which I consider a modern form of eugenics, and to protest the widespread violation of medical ethics by those medical professional who run these gender clinics. People need to be picketing these clinics and bring attention to these children being experimented on with untested and likely unsafe procedures that render children sterile before they are old enough to give informed consent. Such an organization would push for laws to shut down these gender clinics. Whatever happened to , “First, do no harm”?

  7. A phenomenal post. Articulate, clear, everything we need.

    If I was having surgery I would want to know what all the potential downside of it was. The worst case scenario. I’d want to know how likely it was to help and how likely to harm. If we had a pamphlet that laid all that out for pediatric transition we would have a ‘demand’ to make to these hospitals and universities. That they require people as part of their signing the informed consent forms for the treatments also read and show that they read this pamphlet. We could make our demand via a change.org petition. And the point we would be making is Why are you not willing to tell parents the downside? If you are willing to, give them this pamphlet. That’s something that I think a lot of people who have not yet reached peak trans would be willing to support. If we got a petition with 500,000 signatures asking Standford, the Boston one and UCLA to do this they would at least have to say why they’re not willing to. And that might get some reporters to actually think about this as a medical expose type story and not just a celebration of whatsit story. It would also give the news outfits an event to cover. We have the information we need in fourth wave now’s posts. We need someone who can write capably (that ain’t me) to cook it down into that sort of presentation.

    1) the evidence this is effective

    2) the evidence it’s needed. So the fact that there are copious studies showing kids grow out of it.

    3) the side effects, the dangerousness of the drugs. Including from studies of Lupron used in other contexts and all that stuff about blood clots from the cross sex hormones. And of course the fact that children can wait until they are adults to transition. The reasons given to transition younger are of an ‘I won’t be pretty’ sort. Those are not medical reasons. And who knows how many parents who are being told her child needs will be emboldened by the simple statement that the child will NOT die if they wait. And indeed if they allow the child to go through puberty the child might then be all better.

    4) the dubiousness of the diagnostic process. The fact that “gender dysphoria” is so elastic. And again something authoritative saying diagnosing children on the basis of toy preferences is not an OK thing may help parents with misgivings to say “No I think I’ll wait’.

    5) the fact that there has been no long-term follow-up research on children being transitioned. So their kids would be part of the generation that is the experiment. Imagine being a parent in that situation and being told that in unvarnished language? “Your child is being used in an experiment”. And the long-term follow-up of adults has also not been done. This has been around since the late 60s, nobody bothered to do ‘A’ list medical research on it. And that is what they are now palming off on your kid.

    If somebody wanted to put that together, with citations, we would really have something. By asking for doctors to handed it out we would get attention for it. Then whether they hand it out or not, although the handing out would be preferred, it could be available on the Internet and people could get it themselves. Their friends could give it to them. We could make it a PDF pamphlet with cover illustration everything. And call it something like Transgender Children Informed Consent Guideline. And because our guidelines would be based on actual research we should be able to get some other doctors to support it. They don’t have to make an analysis, they can just say ‘Oh I think these guidelinesis are very good’.

    We could set up an organization — I know nothing about the nuts and bolts of doing that — and call it something like The Medical Ethics and Children Association.

    So that’s an idea.

  8. One last comment, a friggin diabetes doctor? Soooo, not board certified in Gender Medicine, then. Aaaaand she’s decide if people’s kids should have life altering surgery. Diabetes is a disease where you take a drug. There’s no surgery. (Until later.) There’s no psychiatric component. And because it’s biologically real there’s none of this sociological overlay. There’s never been a ‘semantic contagion’ of people thinking they have diabetes when they don’t. Oh, and type one diabetes really IS a disease that if you don’t treat it the person dies. Usually within 24 hours. How can Stanford or any of these university hospitals justify this degree of medical slovenliness? Doctors only get to change their specialty whenever they want in TV shows.

    • Anyone else struck by the fact that endocrinologists- not Child Psychologists or anyone else knowledgeable about childhood development- seem to be the main pushers of this phenomenon? (I actually read a paper by one that claimed that there was “proof” that ‘gender’ [a social construct] is innate.) This is something that no reputable scientist- even those sold on the concept- would claim since it’s in no way proveable. One of the things that we do know, however, is that the likelihood of *being* transgendered is exponentially higher the closer one lives to a gender clinic. No coincidence there.

      A pediatrician, in the American Pediatrics Journal, after having noted the high frequency of cross-gender behavior in children historically (prior to the current gender craze) stated: “… combining this relatively high prevalence of cross-gender behavior with widespread information in the public domain concerning the availability of a new early treatment using puberty blocking hormones has produced a rapid increase in the number of referrals, as noted in the paper by Spack et al.1 His experience is not unique; I have also seen a similar increase in Texas. The more parents hear about childhood GID, the more they question if their child may need to change gender. Many of the presentations in the public media concerning childhood GID give the impression that a child with cross-gender behavior needs to change to the new gender or at least should be evaluated for such a change. Very little information in the public domain talks about the normality of gender questioning and gender role exploration and the rarity of an actual change. The burden of that education is going to fall on the pediatrician.”

      Unfortunately, the need for this “education” is not being met- not by pediatricians or anyone other than those who directly profit, either financially, professionally, or politically, and even those professionals who do manage to resist the professional and social pressure and are able to maintain a realistic sensibility regarding this social phenomenon are being shouted down and denigrated by those same people. As a result, it becomes the task of those mothers and families suffering the direct and immeasurable harm from these practices- those with the least time, energy and resources- to counter the profit motivated media driven nature of this ‘disorder.’

      It’s a travesty. My heart goes out to all of the parents AND children suffering at the hands of those professionals that are supposed to be there to help.

      • Excellent comments. Can you please provide a citation for that quote you gave? I would like to read the entire article, as I’m sure many others would.

      • Man! fightingunreality, that was good. Really living up to your username there.😊 It kills me that some endo said that gender is innate and that there’s proof. WTF? On the other hand I’m not that surprised. Doctors are not real bright people taken collectively. They’re not like university profs who have to spend years and years reading stuff, doing research, looking at the other research etc. And profs are in a work culture where you will get a lot of crap from your colleagues if you say something stupid. Including claiming there’s evidence for something when there’s no evidence for it. Academics learn to care about whether or not there’s evidence for something even that they have a strong intuitive feeling is true. Like lawyers sort of. Whereas doctors are allowed to treat their opinions as fact. Their work isn’t scrutinized by colleagues. And only a tiny tiny number of them ever even consider actually publishing a paper. Medicine is a guy or gal in an office who is the god of that domain.

  9. What alarms me (well, amongst other things) is just how often these “supportive” parents are said to be deeply religious. Don’t people connect the dots? This is medical conversion therapy for gay kids by parents who can’t stomach the idea of their kid being gay, but have found an escape by “brain-sex” theory. Worried by your kids distressing incipient gayness? Well, take them to the gender identity clinic, their brain is really straight you see, their body just needs to be sterilized and cut up to sort things out. It’s insane that very much the same people who would freak at some fundies trying to “pray away the gay” cheer on people actually physically brutalizing gay kids.

    • Seems to me there’s a good mix of parents that claim to be religious and parents who claim to be progressive and super-supportive of LGBT rights(mostly the T). It’s worth noting anyway, that there have been religious parents that have been attacked in social media as child abusers and bigots(Leelah Alcorn comes to mind) as well as progressive parents afraid of the same thing. Social contagion, fear of public condemnation and the desire to be famous likely has more to do with this than religion… there are some fundamentalists going along with it, but there’s a significant number that find all parts of the LGBT abhorrent.

    • It’s not just the pressure by the religious parents to conform ‘or else.’ As someone who was raised in a “deeply religious” household and who experienced what is now labeled ‘dysphoia/dysmorphia,’ I believe that a lot of the feelings of being ‘other-sexed’ may have resulted from my own internalized understandings of compulsory heterosexuality and religiously ordained gender roles in conjunction with the message that sex, itself, was “dirty.”

      • I don’t think the causes of gender-stress are so clear. I hear many stories of people from deeply religious households where gender was not an issue and they were free to participate in any type of play or gender roles they wanted- at least as children, and we already know that most adults don’t have this issue. My parents were “religious” in the sense that they occasionally attended church, but I don’t remember either one ever particularly caring what I did or how I played. Yet, I also had a lot of gender-anxiety as a child and the strong desire to be a boy. I can identify a lot of it as having been caused by social factors, but I never had the sense(as a child) that religion had anything to do with it. Mostly it was other children, and the fact that the way girls played was different from the way I wanted to play.

      • well, y’all, I’d consider myself reasonably religious … a Jesus follower at any rate, or I try. We attend a super liberal church, we have a gay pastor, and my kid in no way got any anti-gay input from people there, or from her parents. What she did get, relentlessly, from society, is a message that if you are female-bodied but just can’t do ‘princessy’ and you prefer ‘boy toys’ and ‘boy clothes’ and ‘boy hair,’ and you’re embarrassed by your growing boobs and mortified by your period, and you cannot figure out the whole boiling boy-girl insanity that commences in about 5th grade, these days — then you might Actually Be a Boy.

        Everybody’s different, but wherever my kid’s idea of ‘other sexed’ is coming from, it’s not from homophobia emanating from the household or the church. I think, as LC says, there’s a mix of family types on board.

      • I did not interpret the comment by fightingunreality at 3:46pm as meaning that she thought that all children who are dysphoric are raised in a religious family; only that she thought that this had affected her as a child. My own parents were Biblical literalists and I certainly recognise what she is talking about.

      • Thanks, Artemisia, for that clarification-
        My point was not that *all* religious households *cause* GD, etc., but that in households such as mine which ascribed to a literal interpretation of the bible , the promotion of biblically established sex and gender roles can CONTRIBUTE to internalized homophobia as well as rejection of ones sexed self because of the taboos surrounding sexual activity, alone. Lust, after all, is from the devil, and it was Eve, the weak and easily tempted one who brought about the fall. What freestyling hard playing girl child indoctrinated into such beliefs sees herself as belonging to the sex whose role the bible mandates that she take? Certainly, not I.

        It can be easy, as an adolescent or an adult, to discard such beliefs as stupid or sexist or unbelievable, but if these ideas are the very basis of your formulation of understanding of the world from your earliest memory, I assure you, they are not benign.

        The defensive responses to my initial comment are ironic, since my original intention was to point out that parents in such households do not need to resort to draconian enforcement or practices such as religion-based anti-homosexual ‘conversion therapy’ in order to instill these feelings of internalized homophobia as someone suggested. It so happens that my religious indoctrination was given to me by one of the most loving and caring people that I’ve ever known. It was not mean-spirited in any way. It was out of love from a Woman who wanted to spare me from the hellfire which she believed was real- someone who admitted that she found many of the tenets of the bible to be unfair, but beyond question by a mortal such as herself.

        I, too, was much bothered by the blame heaped upon the Alcorns for what their son described as “conversion therapy,” since we know that *any* therapy other than ‘transition’ on demand is being portrayed as such. We have no way of knowing what his therapy consisted of, other than his own statement that he was told that “god didn’t make mistakes.” Even as a non-believer, I have difficulty finding fault with that statement within the context with which it was given.

        I do not, nor will I ever claim that religion alone is responsible for dysphoria/dysmorphia. We are all subjected to many and various influences which shape our understandings of our social and sexual selves, and no two people are the same in this regard. I do believe, however, that many if not most of the social forces which contribute to GD can be identified and their effects unraveled if we are given the opportunity to do so- an opportunity that the current psychiatric establishment actively denies.

      • Artemisia, I didn’t interpret it that way either. My point is that that’s not necessarily the common link between the families that are attempting to transition their children, and at least from my perspective, I find it difficult to believe it as a primary cause. Religion(Christianity) is ingrained in our society and influences even those who don’t believe in it- that I agree with. But so is misogyny and gender role stereotypes, and those I think are far more direct and a more insidious source of these kid’s confusion. No one told me or gave the impression that God had a problem with girls liking math, but it was frequently stated overtly as abnormal because of sex roles and brain gender. That was, as a child, very easy to grasp. Religion, not so much.

        But again, this was just my experience, so I don’t agree that my comments are defensive, fightingunreality- yours is just not part of my own experience, so it’s difficult to accept it as the driving force behind this movement. Would most religious parents really want a mutilated, sterile kid as opposed to a gay one? I don’t see evidence that that’s a common feeling, and that parents who are that overtly anti-gay would be more likely to pursue actual conversion therapy than to go along with transgenderism. On the other hand, most of the people who have been blindly supportive or throwing about accusations of bigotry were on the progressive side. Having once considered myself a part of that side, I think that’s deeply unfortunate, worse so because the conservative solutions don’t seem to be any better.

        I agree with you about the Alcorn’s situation, and brought up that same point myself at the time. We know so little about the family or how they tried to help their son, and the only information anyone based their rage on was the rambling, narcissistic protests of an angry, confused teenager. I work with teens- I wouldn’t take their word alone for -anything-. To say nothing of younger children.

        Maybe latent homophobia plays a role in some of the cases. I just think that far greater influences come from the (terrible) culture online, suppressed sexism and reactions to 2nd wave feminism, the desire to be seen as tolerant and progressive, and emotional blackmail.

      • I think there are at least two issues here, getting tangled up.

        First: are girls from fundamentalist Christian families more likely to experience what I think I will call an intense emotional rejection of traditional femininity and female gender roles, and a corresponding identification with masculinity? There is anecdotal evidence to support this; I base that on the histories of some of the women who have blogged about detransitioning, and of women like fightingunreality and myself, who never transitioned. (It wasn’t really an option when I was young and impressionable, for which I am grateful.)

        Secondly: are religious parents more likely to promote transition for a ‘gender nonconforming’ child? I can only say that I believe that a strict Biblical literalist could not countenance transition. My parents understood Deuteronomy 22:5 as a prohibition on cross-dressing by either sex (including a general ban on women wearing trousers). Deuteronomy 23:1 forbids eunuchs from ‘enter[ing] the assembly of the Lord’, which I am sure they would have seen as a divine injunction against what were then called ‘sex change operations’. I do remember that they were scandalized when the April Ashley story hit the news (though I think that was quite a common reaction at the time).

  10. Yes yes yes! And at least among girls plenty who aren’t even gay. The brain AND the jock girls. From this homophobic motivation.

  11. I’d like to have this repeated here. So far I have had one person e-mail me. I really appreciate it!

    —–

    I have a friend who is a writer. She wants to write a story about what I’ve gone through with my son and what I’ve dealt with when I went to see a gender therapist and my concerns for the direction these treatments are going. She would like to know if any other parents are willing to talk about what they have dealt with. She is keeping me anonymous. So you do not have to give your name or name names of any person you have dealt with along the way. I created an e-mail account using a fake name (using a mask-me address). You can do the same and send me anything you are willing to share. Or maybe even share here if that works better for you. I have passed along some of the information from here as well.

    The address is janetsmithsonian@mail.com

    Please, anything at all you’d like to share related to this would be very helpful. I am in the US; she is in Europe. So anyone in Europe or in the US…that works.

    She plans to write the piece and approach various news outlets to find one that will publish it.

  12. There are a lot of parallels between this and the pediatric use of bariatric surgeries. Patients are objectively less healthy and require life long monitoring but the self reported patient satisfaction combined with social prejudice allows physicians to perform the surgery anyway.

  13. “The study aims to examine the physiological effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, an area Aye said has not been studied before in the United States. They are currently accepting study participants.”

    In other words, they are knowingly going to sterilize children with GnRH agonists and/or cross gender hormones and potentially endanger their health. No where in this article were ethical issues addressed. There is a reason why most rational people view sterilizing children as a human rights abuse. Children lack the maturity and judgment to give informed consent. The prefrontal cortex of the human brain sometimes called the judgment center of the brain isn’t fully developed until the early to mid-twenties. Below is a standard “Informed Consent for Testosterone Therapy” for adults. Not only are children being sterilized, children lack the cognitive ability and reasoning to understand all the potential side effects from these drugs. How does one explain this to teenagers? Can parents knowingly sterilize their healthy children and allow drugs to be administered that could impact their normal brain development? Read #3 that states, “I understand that there are brain structures which are affected by testosterone and estrogen, and that current medical science does not understand these adequately. I understand that taking a hormone may have long-term effects on the functioning of my brain which are impossible to predict. These effects may be beneficial, damaging, or both.”

    It’s obvious that doctors are afraid of liability issues and being sued, but experimenting on children is an entirely different issue. Children can’t give informed consent. This is the ethical issue that they will not address. All it takes is a couple of drugged and damaged adults suing doctors and parents to halt this ghastly experiment on children.

    Informed Consent for Testosterone Therapy
    For Female-to-Male Transition

    This form refers to the use of testosterone by persons who wish to become more masculinized as
    part of a gender transitioning process.

    You are being asked to initial the various statements on this form to indicate that the risks as well
    as the changes which may occur as a result of the use of testosterone have been explained to
    you and that you understand them. If you have any questions or concerns about the information
    below, we encourage you to take all the time you need to: ask questions, read, research , talk
    with clinic staff and think about these important aspects of your treatment.

    Please initial and date.

    Patient Provider Date
    1. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I have been informed that masculinizing effects of
    testosterone may take several months to become noticeable, up to five years to be
    complete. Some of these changes will be permanent, including:

    Hair loss, especially at my temples and crown of my head and, possibly,
    becoming completely bald
     Beard and mustache growth
     Deepening of my voice
     Increased hair growth on my arms, legs, chest, back, and abdomen
     Enlargement of my clitoris

    These additional changes will not be permanent if I stop testosterone:
     Decrease of fat in my breasts, buttocks and thighs
     Increase of fat in my abdomen
     More muscle development
     More red blood cells in my blood
     Behavioral changes, similar to those experienced at puberty, and
    increased sex drive
    Acne, which may become severe and may cause permanent scarring if
    not treated
    2. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that it is not known exactly what the effects of
    testosterone are on fertility. I have been informed that, if I stop taking testosterone, I may
    or may not be able to become pregnant in the future.
    3. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that there are brain structures which are
    affected by testosterone and estrogen, and that current medical science does not
    understand these adequately. I understand that taking a hormone may have long-term
    effects on the functioning of my brain which are impossible to predict. These effects may
    be beneficial, damaging, or both.
    4. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that everyone’s body is different and that there
    is no way to predict what will be my response to hormones. There is a very complex
    interaction in each person between all the different hormones. I understand that the right
    dosage for me may not be the same as for someone else.
    5. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I will have physical examinations and blood tests
    periodically to make sure I am not having a bad reaction to the hormones. I understand
    this is required to continue testosterone therapy through this clinic.
    6. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I have been informed that using testosterone may increase
    my risk of developing diabetes in the future because of changes in my ovaries.
    7. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that the endometrium (the lining of my uterus)
    is able to turn testosterone into estrogen and so increase my risk of cancer of the
    endometrium. I have been informed that not having my period for prolonged times may
    increases this risk. In order to reduce this risk, another hormone may be recommended to
    induce a menstrual period (shed the endometrium) several times a year.
    8. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that through an interaction in the blood, my
    taking testosterone may actually increase the effectiveness of the estrogen in my body.
    The results of this are not known.
    9. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I have been informed that if my periods stop while I am
    taking testosterone I probably will not be able to become pregnant. I understand that
    testosterone should not be used to prevent pregnancy. Even if I have stopped having
    periods I should still use birth control (preferably barrier methods) if I am having sex
    where semen could enter my vagina or uterus.
    10. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand the effects of testosterone will not protect me
    from sexually transmitted diseases or from HIV.
    11. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that the effects of testosterone will not protect
    me from cervical cancer or breast cancer. It is important to continue to be alert to the
    health care needs of my body. I understand that annual breast exams and monthly selfbreast
    exams are recommended, even after chest reconstruction. My provider may also
    recommend periodic pap smears.
    12. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that fatty tissue in my breasts is able to turn
    testosterone into estrogen, which may increase my risk of breast cancer in the future.
    13. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I have been informed that testosterone puts a stress on the
    liver which may lead to liver inflammation. I will be monitored for liver problems before
    starting testosterone and periodically during therapy
    14. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I have been informed that if I take testosterone my good
    cholesterol (HDL) will probably go down and my bad cholesterol (LDL) will probably go
    up. This will likely increase my risk of a heart attack or stroke in the future. The rates of
    risks for FTMs on testosterone are similar to the risks that are found in non-transgender
    men.
    15. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that there are emotional changes I will likely
    experience as a result of testosterone therapy, and that clinic staff can assist me in
    finding resources to explore these changes.
    16. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that once injected, if I have any adverse
    reactions to testosterone I must wait for them to wear off.
    17. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I agree to tell my medical provider about any non-clinic
    hormones, dietary supplements, herbs, recreational drugs or medications I might be
    taking. I understand that being honest with my provider is crucial to developing a trusting
    relationship. Sharing this information will help my provider to prevent potentially harmful
    interactions. I have been informed that clinic staff will continue to provide me with
    medical care, regardless of what information I share with them.
    18. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I agree to take hormones as prescribed and to inform my
    provider of any problems or dissatisfactions I may have with the treatment. I’ve been
    informed that if I take too much testosterone that my body may convert it into estrogen.
    This may slow or stop the desired effects of the hormone.
    19. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that there are medical conditions that could
    make taking testosterone either dangerous or damaging. I agree that if clinic staff suspect
    I may have one of these conditions, I will be evaluated for it before the decision to start or
    continue testosterone therapy is made.
    20. ______ ______ ___/___/___ I understand that I can choose to stop taking testosterone
    at any time. I also understand that my provider can discontinue treatment for clinical
    reasons.
    All the above information has been explained to my satisfaction.
    _______I choose to begin testosterone therapy.
    ______ I do not wish to begin testosterone therapy at this time.
    __________________________ _______________
    Patient Signature Date
    __________________________ _______________
    Parent/Guardian Signature Date
    __________________________ _______________
    Medical Provider Signature Date

    http://www.dimensionsclinic.org/docs/trans/testosterone_ftm.pdf

    Why does it surprise anyone that Stanford is going to start sterilizing children with puberty suppressing drugs and cross gender hormones? Some of the most prestigious college and universities have conducted horrendous human experiments. From lobotomies to shock treatments to Stanford’s disturbing prison experiment, it has been going on for decades.

    As for the APA (American Psychological Association), it has no credibility. The APA collaborated with the Bush administration on its “enhanced interrogations”.

    • From the moment I began looking into this whole issue, I was stunned that no one anywhere seemed to be calling attention to the STERILIZATION of CHILDREN. The more this gets pointed out, the better.

      • The ridiculous thing is that adult women cannot get sterilized if they want to. You have to have children (plural) and be over 35 to get sterilization. But if you feel like you’re a man, apparently all this “But you might want to have children someday” vanishes.

        Come to think about that, why don’t those transgendered boys want to be fathers one day? Isn’t it part of their female brain sex to want children?

    • Thank you for the informed consent form! Holy crap. This is a terrible informed consent thing. They mention the liver inflammation but they don’t tell you what that can lead to. Personally I don’t know, but I know the liver FAILURE is fatal, rapidly. And they say testosterone ‘can lead to having more red blood cells in your blood’. That’s a disease call polycythemia that can lead to a stroke. And a stroke can kill you. This isn’t even as good as those drug warnings on TV commercials. WTF?!

    • That Testosterone Therapy Consent form is absolutely chilling. It deserves much wider circulation.

      I haven’t seen any of the Channel 4 ”Born in the Wrong Body” series, but it seems to be causing upset in the trans world. One of the participants, CJ, who was shown in the ”Girls to Men” episode has posted a piece in Autostraddle, 13th October, complaining about the sensationalism of the episode, but most of all about the name of the episode. CJ claims that it was to have been called the ”T(estosterone) Diaries” and was to have had an educational slant.

      Given the name of the series, ”Born in the Wrong Body”, I doubt very much if education was foremost on the Channel 4 production team’s agenda. If education was really the ambit of the programme then the side effects of T, known and possible, might have been aired.

      The mainstream media hyping of all things to do with trans issues has me so mad.

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