A version of the letter contained in this post was sent by the parents of a trans-identifying daughter to the gender clinic where she received transition services. PADad, who is the young woman’s father, would like this letter to serve as a template for other parents, and encourages readers to participate in the letter-writing campaign he describes below. PADad is available to interact in the comments section of this post.
Note to 4thWaveNow readers: The letter as written by PADad has undergone lawyer review. Please see the April 10, 2018 update posted beneath the letter.
by PADad
Like many who congregate on 4thWaveNow, we are the parents of a young person (in our case, a 20-year-old daughter) who has recently and suddenly come out as transgender. And like most here, our daughter had never exhibited any gender dysphoria as a child.
We have been doing a lot of research and planning our steps carefully. We have decided that one thing we must do is to push back against the forces in our society that are encouraging young people to take potentially harmful medications and make irreversible changes to their bodies. We want to help ensure that, before they are given access to medical interventions, young people carefully explore why they believe these changes are needed and how the changes will affect their lives in the future.
The trans activists do not outnumber those of us who are concerned about this trend, and our inactivity is putting our children at risk. Right now, many clinicians prescribe hormones and surgeries for youth with little fear of repercussion. We can change the calculus for these clinicians. We must reveal to them how many parents have the same concerns, as well as our tenacity in calling them to account. We are not going away.
To that end, I have prepared a letter that I will be sending to all of the clinicians who are involved in my daughter’s care. Because she is on our health insurance plan, we have access to her actions and payments, so we know who these people are.
I have drafted a similar letter to send to our health insurance company, putting them on notice that they are complicit in this harmful trend and urging them to change their standards for the treatments and surgeries they will allow and cover. We are also pursuing legal representation to follow up on our letters.
If insurance companies see they may be exposing themselves to liability by covering interventions that may cause more harm than good, they can play an important role in limiting the number of young people who inappropriately undertake medical intervention.
This linked site contains a comprehensive list of gender clinics in the US., organized by state and easy to search. Please consider sending your own letters to no fewer than 10 clinicians on this list, if possible, by registered mail. You may choose to use/customize our letter (below) as a template. Choose the clinics who are closest to you and perhaps add in some at random. We need to get as many out there as we can.
If some of these clinicians and facilities change their ways, others will follow. The risk of lawsuits goes up for them if they allow themselves to be singled out. That can affect the cost of their malpractice insurance. If we act together, we can make a difference.
A Parent’s Letter to a Gender Clinic
You are receiving this letter because our child is a patient at your clinic or a clinic like yours. The purpose of the letter is to make you aware of a concern that many parents, including myself, and a large and growing number of medical professionals, share about the care you are providing for our children. Some of these young people are over the age of 18 and therefore do not have to include us in their health decisions. Regardless of their age, and regardless of whether or not we are involved in discussions between you and our children, you have an obligation to do what is best for their long-term health. We do not believe this is happening.
The increasing rate at which young people, aged 11-21, are coming out as transgender cannot be explained by the fact that the broader transgender movement in western societies is removing the social stigma around coming out. The evidence is very clear at this point, and becoming clearer by the day, that what is going on with at least some of these young people, particularly young women, has elements of a social contagion.
We are including links to multiple pieces of research at the end of this letter to support our statements and to elucidate our concerns. As medical professionals, you should be aware of this research, and you have an obligation to take it seriously. At a minimum, you should be raising the bar and making selection criteria considerably more stringent before prescribing “puberty blockers,” HRT and surgeries. Because these treatments have permanent effects on patients’ bodies and minds, you should be first requiring alternatives to these treatments which are more reversible. Unless social contagion and other underlying and preexisting factors (including other mental health issues) are ruled out, it is insufficient and negligent to place undue emphasis on self-reporting from the youths themselves.
We understand that you may be under the impression that existing law provides protection against future liability for prescribing these dangerous drugs and performing these surgical interventions. We disagree. Moreover, as human beings and responsible medical professionals, you can raise the bar for treatment, reduce future regret rates, and put pressure on your peers to be better informed and to act responsibly.
Be advised that through this letter, we are putting you on notice. So far as we know, the current course of medical transgender treatment for minors has never been tested in the context of medical malpractice liability, and we do not believe that these interventions will be found to meet the standard of care for the treatment of juvenile dysphoria.
If you do not act in the best interests of all of your patients, the day may well come that you will be held accountable. We are planning for that day. Clinics and doctors will be called out by name. We will call you out by name in legal proceedings, and in social and conventional media. You should assume that, particularly given the irreversible and (at least in some cases) unwanted changes that these young people will suffer, damages can reasonably be expected to be substantial.
In addition to the risk of legal action, you should think about your place in history and your reputation. This contagion will pass, as they all do. But due to its size and impact, you should expect this social contagion to be a topic for years to come. It is already large and catastrophic enough to garner significant interest and publication in medical, social and psychological journals. I urge you to think carefully about how your clinic and your name will be mentioned in the course of this crisis, and whether you protected or ultimately harmed young people; whether you acted out of concern for youth or for your profits. You can dismiss any single case or patient as justifiable, but history will be less kind when looking at the body of your work over time.
I would encourage you to read the referenced research and clinical opinion, including the multiple links to additional published research in these articles, and familiarize yourself with it. There is sufficient information there to warrant serious soul-searching in any practitioner involved in the medical transition of minors and young adults.
Update: April 10, 2018. A few trans activists have claimed that the letter as written amounts to issuing (possibly unlawful) threats. For clarity, here are remarks by two lawyers in the 4thWaveNow community. (Caveat: This statement should not to be construed as legal advice for anyone reading this.)
Any communication, such as the letter referenced above, that states “if you engage in X behavior, Y consequences may result” could be termed, in some sense, a “threat.” The issue is not whether “threat” is the correct appellation, the issue is whether that “threat” is actionable (i.e. potentially gives rise to civil or criminal liability). Here, the answer is no.
Start with the understanding that in the United States, there is extremely wide latitude for speech. We enjoy robust First Amendment protections that give us the ability to express our opinions quite freely and widely without government interference, compared to other countries. There are allowable restrictions for such things as defamation or criminal conspiracy, as one would expect, but generally speaking, such restrictions on speech tend to be very narrowly interpreted and difficult to fall within. In the U.S., there simply is no such tort or crime as “hate speech;” our Supreme Court so ruled last summer. Moreover, “hate crimes,” or crimes motivated by animus against a particular group based on group characteristics, are a sentencing enhancement, or an additional penalty that is added on to a pre-existing crime. Other than in a few very select instances that don’t apply here, there is no such thing as a “hate crime” standing alone (an underlying crime such as assault, battery, etc. has to have been committed to give rise to the “hate crime” add-on).
On the “threat” point, first, as to criminal liability. A “threat” only gives rise to criminal liability when it communicates or contains, for instance, the intention to use bodily harm against the recipient, to harm the person’s property (e.g. “terroristic threats”), or to obtain financial advantage by unlawful means specified in an applicable law. An example of the latter would be extortion (“pay me X or I’ll tell your husband you are having an affair”). The “clinic letter” does none of these things, and 4thWaveNow unequivocally and strongly condemns any revision to the letter that would threaten such actions.
Second, as to civil liability. It is generally permissible to threaten to take legal action against someone in order to assert or protect one’s legal rights. Lawyers send “demand letters” (letters that outline why a party should do, or not do, some action, and the legal consequences for refusing to comply) all the time.
Moreover, it is not 4thwavenow that is making any demand in the letter; and the letter, in the form contained on the site, does not identify any recipient.
Summing it up, at the very most the “clinic letter” could be viewed as containing a non-actionable “threat” by the individual at issue (a) that legal remedies may be sought, to the extent such remedies are now, or in the future become, available and appropriate, and (b) to advocate the subject positions with, and exert public pressure upon, medical providers and insurers.
Suggested References
“Evidence for Altered Sex Ratio in Clinic-Referred Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria,” Aitken et al, The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2015
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25612159
Analysis of article here:
The Canadian clinic saw nearly nearly three times as many female teens in the past 8 years as they had seen in the previous thirty. The Dutch clinic saw nearly twice as many female teens in the past 8 years as they had seen in the previous seventeen.
Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults: A Descriptive Study. Lisa L. Littman MPH., Journal of Adolescent Health, 2017.
http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(16)30765-0/fulltext
Parents online are observed reporting their children experiencing a rapid onset of gender dysphoria appearing for the first time during or after puberty. They describe this development occurring in the context of being part of a peer group where one, multiple, or even all friends have developed gender dysphoria and come out as transgender during the same time frame and/or an increase in social media/internet use. The purpose of this study is to document this observation and describe the resulting presentation of gender dysphoria inconsistent with existing research.
“Medicine must do better on gender,” Margaret McCartney, British Medical Journal, 2018
https://www.bmj.com/content/360/bmj.k1312
A clear rise in referrals of children to specialist gender identity services has been seen in recent years, particularly in teens. Yet the role assigned to medicine can’t be separated from societal attitudes and abilities. The debate on gender occurs in an environment where boys are seen as being boys, and girls as girls, because of how they behave rather than their biological sex…
…Therapists are right to be concerned about overdiagnosis and overtreatment. But this concern can be perceived by parents as a barrier rather than a caring, evidence based response.
Many children with gender dysphoria will grow up without reassignment surgery but will be gay or bisexual. One concern is that gender reassignment makes homosexuality “disappear”: in Iran being gay is illegal, but the rate of gender reassignment surgery is the highest in the world.
“CBC Self-Censorship Part of Frightening Gender Identity Trend,” Susan Bradley, The Post Millennial, 2018.
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/cbc-self-censorship-part-frightening-gender-identity-trend/
In my own practice, I have seen a good many young women displaying the phenomenon known as “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” or ROGD, which overwhelmingly affects girls. Typically, the ROGD teenage girls I see have, wittingly or not, begun to experience homoerotic feelings about which they are conflicted. They tend to be socially isolated, and somewhere “on the spectrum.” They may have histories of eating or self-harm disorders.
They have found companions with the same attributes on Internet sites, which diminishes such adolescents’ sadness over their social isolation, but which can also lead to foreclosure of reflective thinking about their own feelings and situation. Some of these girls are depressed, afflicted with suicidal ideation. Because of the initial euphoria they experience in finally “belonging” to a well-defined kinship group, they tend to embrace the idea of transitioning wholeheartedly as the solution to their other problems.
“Transgenderism and the Social Construction of Diagnosis,” Lisa Marchiano, Quillette, 2018.
http://quillette.com/2018/03/01/transgenderism-social-construction-diagnosis/
Activists and certain clinicians who are sympathetic to the activist movement appear to feel threatened by the idea of rapid onset gender dysphoria because the suggestion that dysphoria might be influenced by social or cultural factors undermines the notions of innateness. If dysphoria isn’t innate, justifying medical intervention becomes more complicated.
“Early Medical Treatment of Children and Adolescents with Gender Dysphoria: An Empirical Ethical Study.” Lieke et al, Journal of Adolescent Health, 2015
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26119518
Seven themes give rise to different, and even opposing, views on treatment: (1) the (non-)availability of an explanatory model for GD; (2) the nature of GD (normal variation, social construct or [mental] illness); (3) the role of physiological puberty in developing gender identity; (4) the role of comorbidity; (5) possible physical or psychological effects of (refraining from) early medical interventions; (6) child competence and decision making authority; and (7) the role of social context how GD is perceived. Strikingly, the guidelines are debated both for being too liberal and for being too limiting. Nevertheless, many treatment teams using the guidelines are exploring the possibility of lowering the current age limits […]As long as debate remains on these seven themes and only limited long-term data are available, there will be no consensus on treatment.
“The Influence of Peers During Adolescence: Does Homophobic Name Calling by Peers Change Gender Identity” Delay et al, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2017
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-017-0749-6
Homophobic name calling emerged as a form of peer influence that changed early adolescent gender identity, such that adolescents in this study appear to have internalized the messages they received from peers and incorporated these messages into their personal views of their own gender identity.
“The Endocrinologist’s Office—Puberty Suppression: Saving Children from a Natural Disaster?” Sahar Sadjadi, Journal of Medical Humanities, 2013
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/46da/ae7559f1b49d4516b0eee5266ab24a6e739a.pdf
Currently, the health consequences of the treatment are relatively unexplored. The treatment is being implemented, however, under the pressure of the emergency of saving the child from the devastation assumed to follow the onset of puberty. It must be remembered that puberty suppression as the first step to medical transition, if followed by cross-sex hormones, which has been the case for almost all reported cases, leads to infertility due to the permanent immaturity of the gonads and the reproductive tract. The absence of the discussion of sterilization of children as a major ethical challenge in this bioethics article, and many other clinical debates on puberty suppression, is striking. For any other group of children, such an intervention would be discussed extensively with ethics review boards.
The annual number of referrals to the gender dysphoria specialist team at the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital in Stockholm. Referenced article in Swedish:
http://lakartidningen.se/Klinik-och-vetenskap/Klinisk-oversikt/2017/02/Kraftig-okning-av-konsdysfori-bland-barn-och-unga/ …
“A Different Stripe”, Renee Sullivan, Psychology Today, 2018
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201803/different-stripe
It’s been four years since I reidentified as a woman. My gender dysphoria was real and often painful, but the way for me to resolve it wasn’t by becoming a man. It was by questioning and rejecting the stories society had told me about what it means to be a woman.
Some charts illustrating the steadily increasing number of natal females presenting to gender clinics, worldwide.
Canada, Netherlands, UK, Finland
Sweden
United Kingdom
New Zealand
Toronto and Amsterdam
Thank you for this post. I also have a 20-year-old daughter who suddenly decided to identify as transgender, and after a single appointment to a gender clinic, received a prescription for testosterone. I had to piece things together after seeing a claim by this clinic on my health insurance plan. I contacted that clinic to let them know my concerns, astonished to learn such “informed consent” clinics even exist, handing out T to an 18-year-old female like it’s going to do anything but create a more difficult life for her. Your letter writing campaign is an excellent idea – count me in.
I too have a 21 yr old that is experiencing ROGD. We have not been down the hormones road right now but it is her quest. I will be sending this letter far and wide in Canada. Thank you so much for articulating a parents love and fears for their children. We don’t want them permanently medicated for a social issue. Peace and best wishes for your family and all families going through this
You might want to seek your own legal counsel before doing so. I am no lawyer and this is not legal advice, but I believe that Canada has considerably fewer speech protections than the US as well as laws to which there are no American equivalents, such as the Canadian Human Rights Act, which has been used to prosecute hate speech.
Also…this informed consent gender clinic has their brochure in the counseling center of the university my daughter attends. I wonder how many other college students they are treating? universities should similiarly be put on alert….if they are referring students to these clinics, they bear some responsibility.
Information about universities which are enabling medical transition for their students can be found here:
//4thwavenow.com/2017/09/01/are-you-sending-or-losing-your-teen-to-college/
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!!!!!! In my city Planned Parenthood is selling trans ideology via school curriculum, even going so far as to list internal organs as “assigned.” In the US, at least, it’s illegal for schools to coerce children into political ideology. Schools need to be told that they will be held liable for any harm that comes to a child due to their inappropriate and illegal coercion. And Planned Parenthood needs to be held accountable too.
What is your city? I am gathering information on how Planned Parenthood has been turned into an agent of transactivism. People refuse to believe me when I say this, but there is lots of evidence. I see that Soros has been giving them lots of money, so I assume there is some pressure from that direction, but I need more information.
Albany, NY Planned Parenthood actively involved in providing transgender hormones. Not sure how this falls within reproductive rights, but you can go to any planned parenthood website and there is transgender info
I think in America because so many more people got on Medi-cal/Medicaid, that there was not so much need for PP – so I think they got this bright idea to now make money from trans people.
GILAW, when the report comes out I’ll share it here.
Thanks for your proactive stance and your efforts. I have received absolute silence from a similar letter I wrote to a psychologist and the clinic she works for, but who knows, maybe they are nervous. The links you supply are very helpful.
Thank you, PADad2018. When we knew that our daughter (then 20, now 21) was headed to a Planned Parenthood to receive instructions on how to inject the testosterone that they’d already arranged for her to get a prescription for, my husband sent a certified letter to their state headquarters. We let them know of her mental-health diagnoses, and that she had a treating psychiatrist whom we invited them to contact.
We got a response from their outside counsel, basically saying thanks for writing; your daughter is an adult; and we can’t say anything more because of HIPAA. I understand their legal position–it’s what I’d say too–but the moral and ethical dimensions of this leave me breathless.
Wow. Thank you for taking them on. I am so sorry it came to that for you. For those of us whose children hang in the balance and aren’t quite at that point, writing in advance about our children’s mental health diagnosis would be a violation of their privacy, so we can only write generically. It’s heart wrenching to have one’s child’s privacy used against one. And even more heart wrenching to know that for some it has gone beyond that point. I hope and pray that things look up for your daughter. It’s never too late, and there are young people in their 20s detransitioning and growing wiser every day. And I’m glad to know that when your daughter needs you, you’ll have her back. Best to you.
Well at least your letter is on file for when the deposition comes
I work for an insurance brokerage firm in the US; I’m not high up on the totem pole, and we are basically the go-between for our clients (large and small companies) and the insurance companies, but in addition to my many concerns about the trans issue, I wonder if the inevitable collapse of this house of cards will affect my company. Should I broach this with our legal department? Any suggestions on how? I know that we are increasingly providing for this coverage. And it makes me very uneasy.
That’s a great question, Joseph. While no one knows how this will play out, I can tell you as someone who worked in the legal malpractice industry that such things have played out many times before, such as with breast implants or TMJ surgeries or other fads. When the insurance industry gets hit with a lot of liability on something, they’ll defensively revise their policies not to cover it, or to cover it only under more restricted circumstances. But the insurance industry is still with us, so hopefully your job is safe. I would also hope that the insurance industry would do something proactively about this rather than waiting until maximum exposure.
One always has to weigh where one is on that proverbial totem pole in deciding how vocal to be at work. Sometimes legal departments are more interested in their own bottom line than getting scooped on competent legal advice by someone outside the department. I have a very jaundiced view of legal departments, having worked within them. But not everyone’s crooked. If you have people you trust in the legal department, maybe there’s a way to broach the subject and get a feel for their receptiveness?
I tweeted a link to this blog post, a screen shot of your comment, plus some health concerns connected to medical transition and a graph illustrating the astonishing rise in kids identifying as trans to PIAA, a medical liability insurance provider, and they blocked me. It seems insurance companies, or at least this one, are either in the dark or in denial. You might want to proceed with caution if you need your job.
This is a brilliant plan. Nicely composed letter. I’ve thought for a few years, Why are they not worried about getting sued? Also those charts the end, horrifying. 😳
Also, I didn’t know there were even that many articles papers, like the journal of adolescent medicine ones, quite sanely questioning this stuff. I find that reassuring. 🤞🏼
PADad2018–thank you for this well-researched post with extensive with citations, graphs, articles.
Awesome letter! I will use the template of your letter to send to my daughter’s clinic. Actually, I would be happy to send this letter to many clinics. In our situation, our daughter was able to access testosterone with no trouble–with one or two visits to the student health center on her college campus.
We wrote letters, we visited the college, we basically got banned from this college. I even communicated with the college president. We were ignored. She was over 18. Oh, and this bizarrely gets lumped under Title IX protections. Students have enormous privacy rights, just as they have privacy for the medical insurance covered by the parent’s plan. It is a good idea to see what you plan covers vs, the college health plan. Many students with get a staff position and their medical benefits will increase.
These clinics do need to be put on notice. If it is in a college, the colleges fear smears on their reputations. I think the manufacturers of testosterone given to young women should also expect lawsuits.
Thank you for your activism. Your letter should be widely shared by as many families as possible.
Best to you with your daughter.
Missingdaughter, bless you for running the gauntlet of that university on behalf of your daughter. The college may hide behind “privacy,” but they can’t control what happens between you and your daughter. Hopefully some day she’ll see who’s really got her interests at heart, and if she needs to take on that clinic and that university you’ll have proof that they acted with full knowledge.
I completely agree with you about the colleges and the manufacturers. Having worked in the legal malpractice industry, I saw the internal memoranda that would come to light in lawsuits. There would be internal studies showing that this or that treatment would cause X amount of liability, and there would be an accounting study showing that it would earn Y amount of money, and if Y was greater than X, there would be a third memo saying “it’s a go.” Very damning. I have no doubt that such is going on in the trans industry as we speak, and that some day it will all come to light. The sooner the better.
I hope and pray that things will turn around for your daughter.
It’s the same thing with our 19-year-old daughter. I too communicated with the college president and the director of the health center — to no avail, as they simply stated that the college is a “safe space for LGBT students”. Our daughter has been receiving testosterone injections there for two months. I also called my health insurance (which is covering this!) I will follow up with this letter template to both.
I don’t understand why the New York Times and the Washington Post isn’t covering this. Never mind, I know…and it’s so depressing. Thanks to 4thWave for continually serving as a light in this darkness.
Thank you for this model letter which I will be sending to both the Gender clinics (one private, one NHS) in the UK that have been involved in the disastrous four year attempt to treat my son’s mental illness by means of hormones. After four years even those friends and family members initially supportive of trans activism have seen the way these interventions have destroyed a vulnerable, depressed, autistic young person. We WILL hold these clinics to account. We will save future young people.
Thanks for the replies and comments. Please take action. This becomes more powerful the more people that get on board. Yes, I agree that insurers should also be made aware. This is a significant risk to them too. If one of the big ones raises their rates or drops one of these clinics, it could be the first of many. It is a highly risky activity these clinics are engaging in. Even the use of testosterone for this purpose is not FDA approved. They are already out on a legal ledge.
Thanks for the immense hard work and clarity you have bought to this. Great to see a dad step up as well.
Thank you PADad. I visited the gender clinic that I think my daughter is going to and asked the receptionist for the informed consent form that the clinic uses with their patients. She told me that she was not able to hand that out to me and when I asked her why she said each doctor has their own informed consent form (meaning the side effects of the treatment are different according to the doctor?????) and that I would have to make an appointment to talk to the doctor individually. I asked her to write that on a paper with the clinic’s letter head and she did.
After that experience, I’ve been trying to get my courage to make an appointment with a doctor there. Now that you have written this letter, I will send everyone in that clinic this letter, registered mail and then make an appointment to discuss this. Actually, I will make the appointment first, then send the letter.
Thank you for giving me more steam to push ahead! I will also send this letter to other clinics in the region.
Let us know what happens!
That is awesome. What a great idea. Please make a URL if you can and find a way to post a link to it–whether here or on Gender Critical Resources or one of the open forums like the Gender Critical for Parents group on FB, whatever you feel comfortable with. Because these consent forms are very helpful to people doing research!
Would be good to do a similar campaign targeting malpractice insurers and their boards.
I completely agree. I’d be happy to compose a suitable letter for that purpose.
And once that malpractice company letter is composed, might it be a good idea to attach it to the original letter – or at least, a “cc” to them at the end of the original letter – to let them recipients of the original letter know that malpractice companies are being alerted….?
This link lists the 10 leading medical professional liability insurance companies in North America in 2016.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/796680/leading-medical-professional-liability-insurers-usa-by-market-share/
Many, many thanks for posting this. My daughter desisted from feeling she was trans a few months back and I have been trying to figure out how I can help others who are still caught up in this. I have amended your letter to fit our circumstances and sent it to the Tavistock childrens gender service where my daughter was a patient for over a year. Whilst I have no real complaint about their management I do feel they could have been more proactive in getting to the root of her unhappiness. Our local CMHT have been brilliant in this regard. The childrens gender service refers young people on to adult services at age 17 where so called treatments can be given after minimal assessment and thus I feel they are well placed to change this if they are minded to do so.
Please can everyone on here follow this mans example and lets make sure ours is a voice that can no longer be ignored for our childrens sake.
All the best PADad2018 to you and your daughter
I’m not registered at mumsnet, but would it be helpful for someone to post this info there?
Thank you PADad for writing this! I too, have a college age daughter who was sucked into this while away from home for the first time. I have written similar letters to several top people at the university including the president. I have also composed a letter to the clinic where she has found herself and to our insurance company. I have received nothing in reply short of one response from the dean of students office informing me that children sometimes do not have the same moral compass as their parents. I was enraged!
I believe that one tool that would be incredibly valuable for people moving forward is the ability to connect with other families that have children at the same clinics. There will be power in this as we make plans in the future and situate ourselves with the ability to file suits. Is there any chance to somehow use your link to the gender clinics to allow this possibility? This would not be my thing but perhaps the people at 4thwavenow could consider this option and then we could opt to connect or not?
Most of us on 4thwavenow with children suddenly insisting they are trans are fully aware of the common websites our kids frequent (deviantart, tumblr, reddit). If you have not made your own account and looked at the content, I would encourage all to do this if you can stomach it. Type in ‘ftm,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘testosterone, or ‘top surgery.’ Warning : it can be graphic. I believe the clinics and insurance companies need to be led to these sites to truly see what is happening. The social contagion aspect cannot be denied. In an article titled “Mass Sociogenic Illness” in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Erica Weir states “the confluence of 8 symptoms or conditions typically indicates mass sociogenic illness and permits a presumptive diagnosis while investigations are underway. These include symptoms with no plausible organic basis; symptoms that are transient and benign; symptoms with rapid onset and recovery; occurrence in a segregated group; the presence of extraordinary anxiety; symptoms that are spread via sight, sound or oral communication; a spread that moves down the age scale, beginning with older or higher-status people; and a preponderance of female participants.The link can be found here:
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/172/1/36.
Hormone use has received much negative publicity of late with thousands of lawsuits coming forth due to the side effects of testosterone use in men. There will be plenty of lawyers well-versed in this litigation when the time comes. The website drugwatch.com has a list of these lawsuits.
Gender dysphoria is listed in the dsm-5 as a pyschological disorder and while many of these young people are most likely misdiagnosed altogether, they are led down the road of nothing but the harshest of treatments with hormones and surgery. Health insurance companies would be wise to pay heed as not only are there thousands of potential lawsuits, these young people will have a lifetime of medical needs.
Good ideas, beyondmad. I do think all of those sites our teens were immersed in should be required viewing for the providers and insurers.
Perhaps you can start a thread on the Gender Critical Support site that helps families connect over a shared experience at a particular clinic? PM people?
As another parent in a similar situation, I applaud your actions. We all need to take action. I would like to give you another suggestion for taking action, however. I am a insurance lobbyist in New York. I can tell you in my state there are laws that often dictate what health insurers must cover. We are a very liberal state and the transgender lobby has a firm hold here. Recently our Medicaid rules were amended so that those on Medicaid can get their gender reassignment surgeries, as well as their hormone replacement therapies, covered. The rule was amended even more recently to make sure that children on Medicaid were able to have the same thing covered as adults. We also have an anti-conversation therapy law that prohibits insurance companies from paying for conversion therapy, which as you may know, has been expanded by the transgender lobby to include not jus sexual orientation, but also gender identity. So health insurers must pay for gender dysphoria treatment here in New York, but they can’t pay for any therapy that tries to get the child to change their mind that they might not actually be transgender.
I can tell you that health insurers do not want to pay for any type of coverage that’s expensive or that they feel is not necessary. If they are paying for hormones or surgeries, it’s not because they want to, but because of some mandate by the state.
To some extent our mental health professionals are likewise hamstrung by the anti-conversion therapy law.
Our schools have been instructed by the State Education Department that they must take certain actions to protect transgender students, including using preferred pronouns, not telling the parents, etc.
My point is that many of the actions being taken (not all) are a result of the transgender lobby getting laws passed that require some of these practices that are harming our children. In additional to writing to the clinics and insurers, I would include a letter to your state legislators and state departments of health and/ insurance. They are only hearing from the trans activists on these issues.
Concerned mom, I thought most of these laws were on the federal level. How much do they vary from state to state? I do know about the anti-conversion therapy laws that have been passed in many states and will affect parents getting thoughtful counseling for their children.
Most are state laws and vary from state to state.
And they need to be made aware that since most kids would desist if left alone, that it is the *transing* itself that is conversion therapy – gay to straight in “new” body…
I’ve been active on this site for several years. I have a daughter who turns 18 in few weeks and I’m frightened out my mind for her, even though I feel she isn’t considering trans treatments at this time.
I LOVE this letter and idea and practice of getting the word to everyone who will read it. I have two major concerns with the letter. Please know I am not being critical out of disrespect or anything negative. My wish is to see this awesome letter refined ever so slightly to protect the senders of the letter, match our group’s collective goals and address the proper recipients of the letter.
1) I’m located in the Southern states in the US. If someone spats on the ground near another person, it can be considered a threat. Threats, perceived or real, can present a Pandora’s Box of legal troubles. My feeling is that a tiny bit of diction could be “threatening” – my word. To call someone out in public and put their professional reputation on the line is likely to be considered a threat by the recipients of the letter. Surely, I am on-board with raising their awareness about what the so-called medical professionals are doing and how it is adversely impacting our kids. I think we need to be mindful of how calling persons out could almost definitely be considered a threat. How can the verbiage be stated to define our concerns but without being perceived as a threat?? Would it be helpful to have someone who is familiar with legalities construct such a letter or at minimum, re-write this portion of the letter?
2) I read the entire preface, the letter, supporting documentation and the comments to date. There are several things to consider here. Psychologists, LCSWs, Nurses (who are not NPs) do not prescribe medications, at least not in the United States – I have no knowledge of other countries. Psychologists, LCSWs, Nurses (who are not NPs) along with pediatricians and other MDs, ODs, PAs or NPs are on the front lines when it comes to referring our children to gender therapists, gender clinics and Endocrinologists and surgeons, who do prescribe medications and may perform surgeries. To my knowledge, our kids cannot obtain cross-sex hormones from general practitioners. (If this incorrect, I would welcome new knowledge.) If we are targetting medical professionals such as Psychologists, LCSWs, Nurses (who are not NPs), are we not barking up the wrong tree? Those people cannot prescribe ANY medications or perform any surgical procedures – as defined in the letter.
If I was a psychologist and I received a letter containing the phrase or a similar phrase: “… and making selection criteria considerably more stringent before prescribing “puberty blockers,” HRT and surgeries”, I would NOT take that letter seriously. It would have little to NO impact on me because I cannot prescribe puberty blockers, HRT or perform surgeries. Same for LCSWs & nurses (not NPs) practicing psychotherapy.
Without question, Psychologists, LCSWs and mental health Nurses (who are not NPs) ARE definitely contributing to the problem in the forms of affirmation and associated dangers of affirmation and with-holding treatments for underlying conditions. And of course, they need to be made aware of their SPECIFIC harmful actions.
My point is, KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. This letter is for those who CAN prescribe medications and who CAN perform surgery. The recipients of this letter should be NPs, PAs, MDs and ODs as those are the only practitioners in the United States who are able to prescribe puberty blockers and HRT. MDs & ODs are the only practitioners licensed to perform surgical procedures.
It would absolutely be helpful to address the harm they are inflicting. Could it better serve our purpose and strengthen our stand, subsequently strengthening our group effort, to address their SPECIFIC detrimental actions as opposed to grouping them together with surgeons and docs prescribing medication??
I’m definitely not a writer or a legal counselor so I cannot advise as to which words to select. I realize the preface indicates we may change this letter to suit our needs. I think we need to apply some critical thinking to the potential legalities or at least investigate the possibilities.
All my Best.
Just to note, general practitioners and NPs absolutely can prescribe hormones in the US. Psychologists and LCSWs write letters to justify prescriptions for cross-sex hormones regularly. (Some MDs require and even rely on such letters).
The situation is the same in the UK. Usually it is the GP who prescribes on the advice of gender specialists who are usually non prescribers
I understand where you are coming from and agree with many of your thoughts. Just to clarify a few things: 1. Hormones are not a controlled substance, requiring any additional licensure. Any physician, PA, or NP who is licensed to practice can prescribe hormones or GnRH analogues, (“puberty blockers”). 2. Physicans are MDs and DOs (not ODs) in the US. 3. Threat and public censure are somewhat different matters legally. Websites like Healthgrades, Yelp, or other physician rating services are frequently used to leave defamatory and sometimes untrue comments about physicians, with very few repercussions to date. Numerous physicians have attempted through legal channels to seek penalties for both individuals who leave such comments, as well as through the websites that host them, and have been largely unsuccessful. As such, I don’t know that I’d be too concerned that publicly discussing practice of these clinicians would result in legal action, especially if all is founded and true and based on the actions of the practitioner. Certainly, threats about destroying one’s career or clinic should be avoided. I do agree with legal counsel is always advised if there is a question. 4. Psychologists, though unable to provide, are important allies in this and I would include them. Many provide letters of reference that prescribing physicians use as a basis for treatment.
I second what George says. There is a difference between a threat and a legal notice. For myself, as a non-lawyer, but based on my work in the legal industry and having prepared many such letters before, I will word my own letter to this effect: “this letter is to inform you that I do not consent to [describe school curriculum or medical treatment here] for the following reasons [describe lack of reproducible, falsifiable scientific theory, patient’s previous history not being taken into account, etc.]; you are hereby notified that [descriptions of known adverse outcomes]; and if any harm comes to my child as a result of your treatment I will hold you liable to the full extent of any and all applicable laws.”
Psychologists in some states (after taking extra classes) have prescription privileges.
I get your point that writing to the non-prescribers won’t be hitting the target in the bulls-eye – but I think there is also an important reason to write to the non-prescribers. They work with the prescribers and can, if they come to understand, work to change attitudes by bringing up the “other side of the coin”…. it depends on the setting, but they make referrals to the prescribers, in some facilities they have weekly multidisciplinary meetings with each other, etc…
Plus, psychiatrists are MDs – they think about drugs and surgery. On the other hand, psychologists, social workers, RNs – they’re more likely to look at the whole of a person and are used to working with people apart from drugs and surgery. I think, if they are brave, they can be great allies…
Absolutely, lorac. And most importantly, doctors and surgeons are basing their interventions on the therapists’ recommendations.
This is unprecedented.
I’ve asked medical and psychiatric PhDs this question, and none of them can cite a precedent in medical or psychiatric history where organ-removing surgery and off-label fertility-ending drugs were used just because a therapist said so.
There is no test for the “condition” they’re doing these interventions on.
There is no scientific definition of the “condition” they’re doing these interventions for.
Despite 100 years of experimentation on humans, medical science still cannot provide a reproducible, falsifiable definition of or test for “gender dysphoria” or whatever name-du-jour it gets called.
And yet, if a mall therapist says so, surgeons will cut out children’s healthy organs and doctors will prescribe dangerous off-label drugs that in most cases will lead to sterility.
There is no precedent for such action.
And there is no way to prove that such drastic “treatment” cures the “condition,” not least because there’s no definition of nor test for the condition; indeed, its proponents insist it isn’t an illness.
I have a difficult time seeing this as anything but malpractice and fraud.
My thoughts and deepest sympathies are with your family as you navigate these treacherous waters. I also feel this letter was quite well penned, and your supporting articles are comprehensive, quality, and insightful. I agree with sending these, with the hope that if even just one clinician’s mindset is changed or just one patient has a different course, it’s worth it.
That said, I am not overly optimistic that there is much basis for individual malpractice at this time, (class action lawsuits may be a separate matter), and here’s why:
To establish a claim of malpractice, one must demonstrate that not only was harm caused by the physician, but that negligence occurred. Negligence is often related to deviations from the standard of care; in other words, in the hands of a skilled or competent physician, would these outcomes still have occurred? Given that the standard of care, as recommended by the advising professional societies is now gender affirmative therapy, to include the use of GnRH agonists (puberty blockers), cross-sex hormones, and surgery, I am doubtful that negligence can be established. All complicit physicians can simply cite the current practice guidelines as the basis for their decisions, and truthfully, they are not wrong to do so in their defense. The glaring problem is the guidelines.
https://www.endocrine.org/news-room/current-press-releases/experts-issue-recommendations-for-gender-affirmation-treatment-for-transgender-individuals
https://www.endocrine.org/guidelines-and-clinical-practice/clinical-practice-guidelines/gender-dysphoria-gender-incongruence
(Look at summary of recommendations on the second link.)
Further, many physicians will now be able to use state laws against conversion therapy as a means of defense should litigation ever occur. In the state in which I practice, the law now demands that I can only provide gender affirmative care. Deviation from this could result in steep legal penalties, including loss of licensure and ability to practice.
Sadly, I believe that the ship quietly sailed several years ago and the course we are now on will be one of catastrophic consequence to many young people. It is truly heartbreaking.
This is a very sorry state of affairs indeed. Addressing pre-existing mental health issues is nothing like conversion therapy and banning therapists from treating patients for these first is nothing short of dictatorship. As a clinician working in mental health (not gender services) I could not contemplate giving my patients treatments I knew to be harmful. I would hope that if sufficient therapists stood up against this that things could change. Perhaps I am deluded. I am extremely glad I live and work in the UK and not in your state
The medico-psychiatric professions have endorsed treatments in the past which are now considered barbaric or at best unwise. For example, in the US as recently as the 20th century, clitoridectomy was sometimes used to “treat” sexual issues. Many of us know the history of lobotomy, which was considered a miracle cure. Chemically induced seizures, massive use of electroshock, and drugs like thalidomide were touted as safe and effective. Intersex surgeries on babies and young children were once considered best practice for children with ambiguous genitalia. Today’s panacea could be tomorrow’s discredited quack remedy.
Just yesterday, the New York Times published an article stating that commonly used antidepressants (SSRIs) are far more addictive than previously thought, adding to the growing list of problems with drugs that were once called THE answer for depression.
So while the medical establishment may be all-in with pediatric transition treatments today, that may not be the case later. PADad’s letter talks as much about the future as it does about the present. All of that said, anyone who chooses to use the letter should think carefully about who to send it to and tailor it accordingly.
Also, as PADad’s linked research shows, the medical treatment of dysphoric youth is hardly uncontroversial, even today. Esteemed researchers (including those who first used puberty blockers on prepubescent dysphoric youth), with decades of experience tell us there is “no consensus” on these experimental interventions. Trans activists would like everyone to think that these treatments are settled science, but they are not. They are experimental. Even the practitioners themselves admit it, and pointing out the experimental nature of medical transition of minors and young adults is reasonable and warranted.
//4thwavenow.com/2015/07/03/kingpins-of-pediatric-transition-confess-we-have-no-idea-what-were-doingunf/
Totally agree and well said! Just because a practice is based on the “professional consensus” does not make it right or ethically valid, and ultimately, physicians are sworn to do no harm. My point is really that many gender specialists can hide behind these guidelines (however flawed they might be) as the standard of care , and down the road, use them to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for their practices.
Interestingly, if you look at the AAP link I posted, there is very little mention of any valid evidence against affirmative treatment. These are the types of guideline summaries that are often distributed to medical students and residents, who are at very vulnerable places in their education and training. (I would consider leaving the AAP if my hospital privileges didn’t require membership…)
Yes, in the US, the “affirmative” MDs and psychs conveniently pretend there is no countervailing opinion or evidence. Take a look at this study. From the abstract:
“As long as debate remains on these seven themes and only limited long-term data are available, there will be no consensus on treatment.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26119518
We discussed this study in detail in this post:
//4thwavenow.com/2015/11/04/skeptical-gender-therapist-a-medical-doctor-is-not-a-candy-seller/
Thoughts and sympathies are not helpful. The ship may have “sailed quietly” but the parents will not go away, nor will we be shut up. Some of us will be harbormasters guiding the ship back to port, while others will fire a torpedo at the ship.
I certainly didn’t intend to come across demeaning or in any way minimizing the power of these parental efforts, and I’m so sorry if that is the take away from my post. Indeed, I feel it is essential for parents and families to speak up.
George, you raise valid concerns about the standard of care argument, but the legal industry does have ways around bogus standards of care. Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, but did work on the staff of a medical malpractice and products liability firm.
Regarding standard of care, I believe fraud may be an exception. An industry probably is not allowed to willfully base its standards of care upon information that it knows to be fraudulent. I saw this used successfully to get judgments against breast implant surgeons, though I can’t speak with any specificity on what the legal standards are.
Another strategy to defeat this defense is called joinder. When filing a medical malpractice and products liability suit, the summons and complaint will include (i.e., join) anyone who might have had liability. That means at the very least the therapists, the prescribing doctors, the surgeons, the clinics, the drug and device manufacturers, and possibly others. That way, if for example doctors want to say it’s the fault of their institution’s policies, or bad safety information they received from the manufacturers, then they have to give evidence against the hospital board or the manufacturers in order to prove they should be dropped from the suit. That’s where some of the most damning evidence comes from.
Now, when it comes to unsound legislation, that’s tricker as a court matter, because courts generally afford elected bodies broad discretion on the grounds of separation of power. We’re supposed to seek our remedies against bad legislation in the ballot box. However, that being said, public agencies aren’t allowed to infringe upon people’s civil rights. An illegal law is…still illegal. I suspect that when the full truth comes out about how these laws and regulations infringe upon First Amendment rights (in terms of school curriculum pushing a blatantly political agenda), and disproportionately deprive gays and people with disabilities of their fertility and sexual fulfillment, we will see some civil rights cases being brought against public bodies.
But this is so sad that they can put their experience and knowledge in a drawer and ignore the need to rule out other reasons for why a kid wants to transition, and instead just go whole-hog affirmation only. Letting a kid’s opinion (emotion) take precedence over years of training and the knowledge that kids are – well, kids. Perhaps the law as it is now does protect them, but wow it shouldn’t, when the “standard of care” is devoid of a thorough psychiatric and psychosocial assessment. (I have no legal training but) it seems like they should be able to be sued on the basis that even if the law didn’t require it, their training and knowledge should have told them that the kid needed a thorough evaluation, NOT affirmation only….
We’ve all heard that saying, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well, it’s like these MDs have a whole toolbox of hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, ratchets, etc, but rather than take the time to see if the problem is a screw or a nail or a cotter pin, they just start hammering…
They know better and in the perfect world, they should be accountable, laws be d*mned…
“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
–Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail
The question is, can health practitioners be legally compelled to perform malpractice and commit fraud? My gut says no, but it would be lovely to have a malpractice lawyer at our disposal for this discussion.
This is mostly in response to mvrobin above. The problem as I see it is gender ideology has crept into every crevice of American life (and other countries but I am American) and although maybe people see it, most do not really know where it is coming from or the true devastation it is bringing to the citizens of our country. It is not a civil rights movement as it is being politically positioned. It is a human rights violation. There are so many factions that need to be enlightened on this topic and yes, speaking directly to that audience might get this out but it is an enormous task and many of us here are in the process of either losing a child over this or drastically trying to stay afloat and keep that child on a steady course in life. Here are some quick thoughts on the various audiences:
1. MDs and surgeons,
2. other medical practitioners and therapists (non-prescribing)
3. insurance companies
4. drug companies, their suppliers, pharmacies, the FDA, PhRMA
5. political parties and affiliates
6. universities (clinics, presidents and boards, deans of students, liberal arts curriculums that influence these practices)
7. high schools and middle schools (principals and counselors)
Sadly, I am sure there are more.
Beyondmad, I have to admit, I don’t know if you were supplementing my reply or disagreeing with me.
I completely agree with you. Having dealt with the trans ideology and cult behaviors with my almost 18-year-old for approximately 4 years, I’ve had to interact with all of the persons you mentioned above, except surgeons. Most pharmacists, medical practitioners who have not been brainwashed and non-liberal schools & universities of which I am familiar have not bought the BS. I’m sorry for being political as I’ve been making a valiant attempt to reduce my political footprint.
There are many people who need real education – and a significant amount education, at that. I was simply addressing the points of the letter which I feel need improvement. We need to be cautious about the potential legalities as well as the addressing proper concerns with the appropriate people. We wouldn’t send a letter about our car’s mechanical problems to our plumber. Why would we send a letter about cross-sex hormones to someone who cannot prescribe cross-sex hormones? They don’t care. It only adds “fluff” which negates our credibility and detracts from collective goals. We need to address medications with persons who have the abilities to write prescriptions.
If I missed something you wanted to address, please do reply again.
All my Best!
Perhaps also those practioners’ licensing bodies…. AMA, APA (psychiatric and psychological), Nursing, Board of Behavioral Sciences.. (in America)
Also, this is the AAP position/resource document on the subject:
https://assets2.hrc.org/files/documents/SupportingCaringforTransChildren.pdf
This is wonderful, and I appreciate the additional comments about how to refine and strategize about this letter campaign.
I’d also like to see us take a proactive stance, writing to or calling our families’ care teams and politely demanding to know where they stand on this. It’ll be tricky, because one wants to keep in mind that a lot of people are actually on our side and afraid to say so. So the letter or phone script will need to be worded in a way that makes it clear what we’re looking for, without risking exposing our children’s particular history to a hostile source–in particular one doesn’t want a letter saying “I’m afraid my child is particularly vulnerable” or “my child has been diagnosed but I don’t support it,” or whatever your case may be, going into one’s child’s medical record, for example.
I’m in the process of doing this for my child’s GP. I’ve put off health care because I need to know where this doc stands before I leave my kid alone in a room. And I’m 90% sure the doc is on our side and quite possibly not even aware that caution has been thrown to the wind–if the reactions of my own doctor and OB/GYN and therapists are any indication. So I don’t want to be strident or accusatory. And I really didn’t want it to be printed at all; ideally I wanted it to be a script to leave on a voice mail with a request to keep it off the record.
Any thoughts? Anyone tried this yet?
My immediate thought is that it will be office staff that receive the voice mail…. and will they transcribe it for the practitioner or sort of blow it off… memo: “you got a message from a parent concerned about trans kids” (no further detail put in memo)
Aha–thanks for articulating that concern. As a health records person I have some ideas, at least as far as the US goes–I assume other countries have similar systems.
Be sure to address letters to the specific officer in charge of handling ethics complaints, and to copy the state board or state insurance commissioner.
To find out the appropriate people, you can call the clinic (anonymously) and ask them, then check it against state and federal online sources re medical ethics. For example, I pulled this up randomly for Minnesota by Googling “clinic officer in charge of handling ethics complaints.” But every US state has something like this, and I would imagine there’s something equivalent in other countries:
http://www.health.state.mn.us/clearinghouse/complaints.html
In the case of psychologists who operate as sole practitioners, they rarely have staff. A letter addressed “to the patient service representative of…” is likely to be opened by the practitioner themselves.
States vary as to whether they require malpractice insurance. I wonder if including a request for proof of malpractice insurance might get attention too?
For a few extra bucks, in the US at least, you can also send any correspondence certified and requiring a signed receipt from a designated recipient. Either the post office or the USPS website can walk you through the process.
I may post this at the bottom too, because a lot of people have these concerns.
Thanks to everyone for the replies and recommendations. I have a lot to say and I doubt that I will remember and hit it all at once but if I miss something I can come back later and get it.
1) I did have a lawyer review the letter and make some recommendations. I actually softened it a bit based on that recommendation! So this is the softer version. That advice was not a paid legal engagement where the lawyer’s letterhead will be used in these letters. I may get there eventually but for now, this letter is intended to be from the heart, not from the law office of…. That said, I feel comfortable that it will not meet the legal definition of a threat.
2) It does not take much for a rational-minded person to see that this has elements of a social contagion. We should not be delayed or dissuaded by the believe that we need to prove it is one. We just need to make them see our numbers and our resolve and point them to the volumes of research that are already being done on this tragedy. I suspect that clinicians with an agenda will not be deterred by that knowledge but some of the rest will. We don’t need to change all their hearts and minds. I hope it will be like birds on a wire – we don’t have to shoot them all (colloquially speaking of course) we just have to shoot one and the rest will fly away on their own.
3) The thought to similarly go after the professional (malpractice) insurance companies is exactly in alignment with the sentiment of the letter. Again, we don’t have to prove anything. We just have to make it look like it’s about to get expensive for them and the insurance companies will react. Will they drop these clinics – maybe not. But they may raise their rates, and that raises concerns. Suddenly it becomes real to them. Dominos start to fall.
4) I realize the law protects much of this activity now, to a degree. But we cannot sit back and do nothing while our children (my daughter) are mutilated. We cannot wait for the laws to change because the trans activists have a head start on us and we are playing catch up. We outnumber them and I think we need to act like it.
5) The letter is written intentionally to include the sentiment that this tragedy is being well-documented. I want these clinicians to know that final analysis will draw a clear line between those who started it, fostered it and profited from it — and those who spoke up and brought it to an end. They need to choose. It won’t be ambiguous which side they came down on. So above and beyond what the law can do to them, they have their own reputation and dignity to consider.
I gather from a couple of comments, that it is mostly moms on here or maybe it is uncommon that dads are doing something like this. I just want to say that I’m very lucky that my wife and I are aligned on this and we are both all-in. She is on this site too, as well as many others. She spends countless hours on the internet doing research and finding experts. Neither of us knows where this will take us but we share the common goal of saving our beautiful, wonderful daughter who has been stolen from us.
PADad, none of us is perfect, and none of us knows precisely what to do. This is such a cosmic sh*tsmack. All we can do is love our children and be truthful, because it’s what we know.
It’s like the famous story of the shiaolin nun, who teaches the little girl to exhaust her physically powerful kidnapper by using her small size and agility against his brute force; he can never land a punch and eventually falls down exhausted by his own effort. She refused to fight him on his terms, and sought different terms where she had the advantage. People who mutilate and poison children for financial and political gain have only the brute force of politics and professional malpractice in their corner. Such advantages are fleeting; but love and truth endure.
Outstanding post, and very interesting comments on different angles on how to proceed. I think the biggest take-away is that people are moving on to the next step (this website is a step as well!) of finding each other and working together. There are more of us than “them”, especially as more knowledge gets out to the non-affected person who isn’t aware.
I wonder if short, pointed letters-to-the-editor might help. Most (all?) newspapers will post it as “anonymous”, although you have to submit your name to *them* with your letter. One letter to the editor could bring up the social contagion (and the stats) from friend groups and certain websites. Another letter could point out the “affirmation only” approach and how other options aren’t explored. Another letter could talk about how most kids would desist if left alone, and that gender-non-conforming is not a reason to transition. Also a letter could address that “conversion therapy” is being said to be not letting a kid trans, when for most of them, transing is conversion therapy making future gays into “straights” with damaged bodies…
What strikes me about the current situation is that if the huge “no gatekeeping” movement had not occurred, and greatly influenced lawmaking, I think a lot of us would be less upset.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’d never think that transition is a great idea, esp not for minors. I think the risks of doing irreversible harm, physical/psychological, are significant. But when the TAs accuse us of hating trans people, of saying they “don’t exist,” of wanting no one to be able to transition — to me, that’s a lot of strawman bullshit, you know?
The OLD WPATH guidelines were there for a reason. They appropriately reflected (IMO) the gravity of the decision to transition. The requirements for a real-life experience of some length, and for counseling, that stuff was sensible in light of the high risks of the proposition, physical/psychological, and in light of the irreversible nature of the treatment.
The current swing to zero gatekeeping for people of all ages is, to me, absolute insanity. And if that makes me a controlling abusive closed-minded parent, then I guess that is what I am going to have to be. I think it’s insanity to tell a three year old kid, hey, pick your gender and we’ll fix you so you conform, yeah? I think it’s insanity to encourage a 15 year old girl with autism, OCD, ADD, social anxiety, and/or a Cluster B personality disorder to transition without dealing with the pre-existing mental health issues.
Whatever we do by way of outreach, IMO, will go farther if it can emphasize some degree of nuance. (Not something the opposing side is very good with, alas.)
Puzzled – for the most part I agree with you. I’m not familiar with the old WPATH standards but can certainly look at what is going on today and agree that a lot of my outrage is over the ease of (in fact encouragement of) transitioning as a youth with no attempt to get at any underlying causes or to treat dysphoria with less destructive means. I’ve spent countless hours scouring Facebook and other social media to see what is in the heads of these youths and I can assure you the most dominant recurring theme is multiple issues going on all at once. Many of them talk about their many psychological issues quite openly (bipolar, self-harm, depression are very common). And although I agree that my letter is not particularly nuanced, I don’t necessarily agree that it will be less effective as a result. I think a certain level of outrage on our parts is appropriate at this time. We can always step back from the edge and bring in nuance later. All that said, I respect your position and see where you are coming from.
PS: Some thoughts about how to reach particular recipients, based on concerns expressed above that letters might end up ignored by staff, or thrown away:
In the US, practitioners, clinics and regulatory bodies have designated people who are in charge of handling ethics complaints. I imagine other countries do too?
The US Postal Service has a way that, for a few extra bucks, you can send correspondence certified and requiring a signed receipt from a designated recipient. The local post office or main USPS website can walk you through this process.
Whatever jurisdiction you’re concerned about–state, federal, medical or psychiatric licensing board, or insurance commission–each body should have an online resource directing people to the officers designated to handle ethics complaints within that body.
For example, I just randomly pulled this up for the State of Minnesota. I googled “clinic officer in charge of handling ethics complaints Minnesota”:
http://www.health.state.mn.us/clearinghouse/complaints.html
States vary as to whether they require malpractice insurance. One might want to inquire of one’s provider whether they’re covered and see what that inquiry gets?
In the case of boutique counselors, many are sole proprietorships without staff, so in that case it’ll be the practitioner themselves who opens mail.
DISCLAIMER: I’m not a lawyer, just a health records person who had to go through some HIPAA training. Of course, everyone must make their own decisions about what to do, but I’m simply trying to let people know that there are resources out there to help you determine whom you want to aim your correspondence toward.
I think it would be a good idea to also send letters to the regulatory bodies that are formulating the current “standard of care” guidelines for transgender patients. Individual psychologists, doctors, social workers, etc who are doubting the transgender narrative have very few options to speak out. It might be worthwhile to target the professional organizations that have power to change this “standard of care”.
There are so many players involved in this trend. Who can actually make a difference? probably the youth themselves who face real physical damage from the effects of potent drugs. But they would have to admit regret, and it would have to be a big enough name to make the whole thing suddenly look as serious as it really is. Transitioning is serious stuff. Some day trans will no longer be a cool identity for rebellious high school kids.
But does anyone behind the curtain at YouTube, Reddit, and Tumblr care about the contagion being spread on their sites? No harm sending a letter to those CEOs with links to some of the most outrageous posts with adult trans blatantly vacuuming up teens. Free binder anyone?
And how are these cross-sex hormones so easy to get? The FDA and the DEA don’t care….they leave it to the psych industry to decide who needs these medications. But do they even know about self-id / affirmative-care / informed consent, and that many youth left alone would grow up to be LGB and not permanent medical patients? and that the psych industry was told that any therapy is conversion therapy… hence no therapy at all to ward against later regret. Heck, no diagnostics at all. Medical treatment with no diagnostics.
Exactly, the social media companies are under scrutiny for data mining & sharing private info, for intentionally manipulating human behavior, political outcomes… Yes, they should be included in the correspondence. They do share responsibility.
Money, money, money.
Just seen a Louis Theroux documentary about prescribed opiod addiction and the devastating impact that has had on some parts of the US. All caused by insured licensed medical practitioners.
Shame on you all.
Theroux has also made a documentary about transgender children which is interesting and well worth seeing. (On the off chance that there’s anyone reading here who hasn’t already seen it. 🙂
If you have a link to that video, Leisha, would you post it, please?
Thank you. 🙂
mvrobin: I couldn’t find a way to post a reply to your comment, I hope you will see this. I saw the documentary when it was broadcast on TV here, but now I found it on dailymotion: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x69kbj7
I hope it’s watchable from where you are. It is called “Transgender Kids”. It’s quite nuanced and Theroux tries to focus on the kids and what is in their best interests.
Thank you Leisha! I can access the video.
Btw, to Reply to a post, either click the small button at the very bottom of each post (it says Reply with a down arrow) or click the reply button in your email, if you’ve subscribed to the posts or thread.
Ugh…did you all happen to see this? “New” research from Cornell.
https://thinkprogress.org/what-we-know-transgender-surgery-72ae4737545a/
Interestingly, they deliberately excluded all studies involving children for this review. However, I GUARANTEE supporters will be using the data from this to justify transitioning children.
Not a single one of those studies even touches on the phenomenon of daughters (like PADad’s) who adopted a trans ID suddenly, after no gender dysphoria in childhood. And yes–studies involving adults do not justify transitioning kids, particularly given the decades of data indicating most children resolve dysphoria and desist from identifying as the opposite sex.
Once again – reality is pushed aside and liberal politics will hide under the umbrella of higher education to push their agenda. I hate seeing articles like this because in my own situation with my daughter it really does not apply at all. For others to misconstrue that it even relates to what is going on is so far fetched. No children were included here and the aspect of social contagion is missing. My own daughter like PADads was always gender conforming, and never had gender dysphoria in the 18 years she lived at home. Something took over in college. This article does not speak to the misdiagnosis that is sweeping across high school and college campuses. Some day the truth will prevail and there will be many complicit in the destruction of our young women. I also find it interesting that the search methodology did not mention natal sex or physical outcomes. That seems terribly limiting in light of the fact we know cross sex hormones in natal females have not been extensively researched and are not FDA approved. It also is terribly limiting when we know testosterone is the subject of countless lawsuits as it relates to men’s health. Is not transitioning all about the physical aspect? Also : missing.
This was a meta-study, which is the bane of all scientific research in my opinion. A lot of bad studies are done to justify a biased preconception, and then when better studies are done they are lumped with the old bad ones to reinforce the earlier position. Give me one good study over any meta.
I know! A wise attending I once had loved to say that “turd sandwiches are even worse as leftovers.” Large reviews or meta-analyses based on crappy or biased data in the first place only cause even more trouble when regurgitated the second time around.
Here’s what I fear: as usual, the take home message of this that is going make the rounds clinically is all rainbows and unicorns. Unless someone really cares and digs deeper, the flaws will be glossed over and the affirmative narrative reinforced.
Actions like these are very important, and I applaud the sender. I am a woman recovering from transgender ideology, I had testosterone “therapy” as a minor, and a double mastectomy at 18. The rejection of transgenderism for me was relatively recent, I never felt comfortable as a girl, I started to consider transgenderism at 14, have “identified” as a male from the age of 15, and started medical transition at 17. I continue to identify myself as a male today (I am 19 now) because I don’t know how to go back and have been left with a masculinized appearance (much of which is still workable, I think, so I haven’t given up hope) The medical industry RUSHED ME THROUGH THIS with RECKLESS ABANDON. I had a history of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and conversion disorder (along with many traits of asperger’s, but I’m not sure if the diagnosis quite fits as I have grown out of the majority of the symptoms) and the medical industry thought it was alright to do this to me. I realize the doctors that treated me did this out of compassion and concern, but it was not ethical. I was not required to get counseling before being given hormones (I did get counceling anyways, and of coarse the counselor gave me the okay given the pervasiveness of this ideology) and though my parents did intend to consent to this treatment, NO ONE signed a consent form. I have the unsigned form in my possession, they didn’t consider signed consent necessary. I wish my parents had more support by people who disagreed with this ideology, they were always uncomfortable with it but surrounded by these ideas and had to deal with my severe emotional distress. I don’t want to blame them, I don’t want to blame any individuals involved, I blame this whole transgender culture and I try to own some of the blame myself as I should have known better, but I can’t help but feel I was coerced by an environment that encouraged this of me.
I am escaping from this. If your children or loved ones are dealing with this, there is HOPE. There were many things that brought me to this conclusion. I never fully felt comfortable with the transgender community after I experienced some of them first hand. At first, I justified this by thinking that I was a “real” transgender person because my desire was to conform to be a “normal” man, while the others that disturbed me wanted to be some sort of made up gender hybrid. I also have more traditional values than the average transgender person so some of the things that many transgender people (and extreme social liberals) believed in bothered me. I don’t believe that things like prostitution and having orgies are healthy and right. With some, that makes me intolerant. I began to not feel comfortable discussing the reality of being transgender, and began a phase of denial where I would “forget” that I was transgender and believe I was a normal male.
I got more turned off by the vast instances of mental illness in the transgender community. I desired to separate myself further, believing I no longer had the problems I used to. I was very, very happy when I started to pass as male. Today, many people that I interact with on a day to day basis have no idea about my real identity. With this, I could separate myself from being seen as transgender.
Another thing that began to bother me is coming to terms with the reality that my life style choice limited me. I could not be fully accepted in most circles that followed traditional beliefs. I began to question if it was ethical for me to marry a heterosexual woman if she held traditional beliefs. I also began to look at transgender surgery in a more realistic way, realizing the horrific nature of surgeries that would “reassign”, or rather permanently disfigure my genitals. I had completely separated sex from reproduction in my mind because of the pain from believing I could never reproduce, which perverted my ideas about sex. I do have issues with my ideas about sex that I was not confronting, I have a fear of it that likely stems from abuse in my childhood, and I think this is one of the things that influenced my transgender feelings.
Moving away from home really caused much of my recovery. I got feelings of confidence, I felt less vulnerable, and a lot of my transgenderism stemmed from subconsciously associating womanhood with vulnerability. Moving out of my high school environment which preached a very exclusive version of progressive politics also affected me. I got to see that traditional beliefs and ways of life were not evil. Then I began to think, what if I were born 200 years ago? Would I never find happiness because I could never transition to become a man? I thought that was a load of crap. Thus, I realized that I may have not NEEDED to be transgender. This is when I really started thinking about this ideology. I realized that it was NOT science, it was IDEOLOGY. And it is not a harmless ideology. My body has been permanently altered. Fortunately I had this realization before destroying my reproductive organs, but I am left with no breasts and a clearly masculine voice.
I had all of the “signs” of being transgender. I had severe “gender dysphoria”, hated my female anatomy and desired male anatomy. I did not want an in-between option, and wanted to live in a traditional male role. I realized that I would never become fully male. I realized that this decision would affect my health in the long term. I realized that the surgeries I wanted to pursue were dangerous and would disfigure me. I realized that the current approach to transgenderism has no real scientific basis. I realized I could never fully reconcile transgenderism with my faith. I realized that gender is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT, not your personality. I don’t have to conform to traditional female roles to be a woman. I am no less of a woman for being masculine. I am not weak for being a woman. I will not escape being a victim by trying to escape womanhood. There are a lot of beautiful things about being a woman that I am trying to embrace.
The bottom line as I see it, is believing oneself to be transgender often stems from sexual abuse, social isolation, disassociation, and feelings of inferiority. It is an escape mechanism. Because of my vulnerable psychological and spiritual state as a teenager, coupled with my tendencies towards masculinity, the transgender ideology appealed to me. I am trying to heal now, and it is hard, especially as a young person in an arts field, as I am surrounded by the kind of people who encouraged this lifestyle. I am afraid of what would happen in my life if I “came out” as a real woman. Fortunately I have my parents to help me, they never made me feel stupid for making the wrong choice. I also am seeking guidance at church, and want to start volunteer work to stop my life from revolving around myself. Perhaps other young people who believe they are transgender might benefit from getting involved with diverse groups of people and seeing that there is a wide world beyond those who they associate with. I don’t know how to bring people out of this thing, but I made it. I hope the medical industry and progressive politics see the light about the dangers of this stuff, and we can move forward in the right direction. If you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this comment and ask. I could also use some guidance, as I am very alone in this.
Thank you so much for telling your story. It sounds like what you needed most was time to mature and gain experience. The doctors denied you that by moving so fast with someone so young. With your intelligence and strength, I’m pretty certain you will be able to make a successful life for yourself.
Oh, sweet girl…I’m so very, very sorry you’ve had to experience this. I wish I could give you a great big hug!
Please, please don’t be so hard on yourself. With the red flags in your history, you should have had extensive counseling and therapy before anything else was even discussed, much less provided. You are still so young; your brain is still developing. You were let down by the professionals you turned to for help. It’s simply not right.
You can be a POWERFUL voice in this when and if you feel ready to share your story, especially with other young women in similar circumstances. It may very well be individuals like you who can bring an end to this madness and save your generation from further harm. Godspeed!
Thank you so much for sharing your story with such honesty and insight. It sounds as though you are handling this difficult experience in the best and only way to do so — by making meaning of it. It is very generous of you to share your story here, as I am sure it gives parents here hope.
Ex Transgender – you have nothing to beat yourself up over. This is a disease of our society and it will be put to bed as a society. Thank you for telling your story. I’m very happy for you to have freed yourself from it. You give us parents hope. Please continue to speak up. We need the survivors to come forward. It lends credibility to our concerns and claims.
Hello. I never saw this blog before today, but followed a link and looked around… I said to a friend years ago that, just as there were thousands of drug casualties after the 1960s psychedelic revolution, there would be many many “gender casualties” of the 2010s gender revolution. But I never imagined the extent to which mainstream media would propagandize in favor of transgenderism, or how it would become normal to have men-in-women’s-clothes competing in women’s sports events (for example). And I especially didn’t imagine that sex changes, etc, would become such a money-maker for a section of the medical industry, and that they would be normalized as something that parents facilitate for their children, or universities for their students.
I have always found the current thinking about sex and gender confusing. Someone can be biologically male, or biologically female, and maybe a handful of people are intersex – OK. Isn’t that enough to describe reality? And if there are men and women who don’t resemble the majority of their sex in personality, appearance, or behavior – they are still men and women. But no, we have this strange inversion whereby whether you are a man or a woman is to be determined on the basis of anything but your body – though in order to become what you wish you were, there are people who will help remake your body… I have never heard it expressed as “your gender is your personality”, but that could certainly be the slogan.
I am a generation too old and on the wrong side of the world (Australia) to be your peer in this, but I will be thinking of you and wishing you success.
Ex Transgender. You are definitely not alone! There are several wonderful blogs from detransitioners that you could check out. Guideonraging stars and Third way Trans are both a good start. Also if sounds like you have loving parents. That is a wonderful blessing. It sounds as if you are definitely on the right path and you are very insightful. Try connecting with women and seeing how you are similar rather than different. Also be very observant of older people. I find that many older people blur the lines of gender. Many women look more masculine and older men get softer looking. How we look is such a small part of who we are in terms of the gifts we have to offer this world. It sounds like you have many gifts to offer. Focus on doing. You are young! I promise it does get easier to accept your bday with all its complexities and flaws and wonder. But you have to be proactive and force yourself to come to terms with yourself and your body. I have faith in you because it sounds like you already are half way there! Can I ask if there is anything I can do as a mother to help my 20 year old to slow down and work on getting to the root of their dysphoria? I don’t have much hope because she doesn’t want to talk about being on hormones at all. She won’t even let me discuss the possible health risks! She thinks I overly worry and only see the negatives about testosterone. Also I don’t have any hope as far as therapy because of past experience and because I think most therapists support this almost blindly. I’m sending you a lot of love and hope and I know you can come to love yourself with time and work and patience!
Dear 4thwavenow,
Would you consider posting a different letter regarding the increase in trans-identifying adolescents that can be used to mail to pediatricians, general practitioners, nurse practitioners, psychologists and basically anyone that will listen to reason (generally excluding gender clinics and TAs)? The letter would present an explanation for the trans trend for the recipient to consider and include scientific literature references and news references.
Yes indeed! We will contact you.
I would love that too. We’ll be kicked out of our doc’s practice if we don’t schedule an appt soon, and this is what’s holding us up. Has anyone here had the experience of polling their doc about this? Any strategies that have worked?
This is exactly the kind of thing I do all the time. I recommend it. Contact me (contact@) if you want a list of hundreds of emails (publicly available) I have amassed.
Even the Mayo Clinic has joined in….their Transgender and Intersex Specialty Care Clinic opened in 2015, according to this article: http://www.postbulletin.com/news/local/specialty-transgender-clinic-takes-whole-patient-view/article_da091688-4409-11e8-ac46-23009c45adf7.html
https://www.mayoclinic.org/departments-centers/transgender-and-intersex-specialty-care-clinic/overview/ovc-20395546
Not sure who would be the best person to write to there…but it is housed within the Endocrinology department.
Shame my own mother couldn’t have seen this. She was sure I was mistaken in my recognition of my nature as transgender.
You people are so off base. Transgenderism is now, and has always been a component of human diversity.
12 years on hormones, 7 years out and happy, 3 years post-surgery, and have known since 1962 that I was different. Living a very productive life, no thanks to people like you.
Yes, and now your mother is gone. And here you still are, posting on message boards about how wrong she was. I guess you showed her.
I grieve every day for her loss. And that she died alone, after denying me her love and acceptence.
Almost all your language is straight out of the transgender ideology script. I would contest the oft repeated “Transgenderism is now, and has always been a component of human diversity” as I do not think the historical record supports it, certainly not in the way you mean it. The whole “she died alone” trope is also straight out the the transgender script and is used to manipulate and bully parents who do not bow down to transgender ideology. I have read this heartless meme a hundred times. It speaks way more to your rejection of her and her genuine feelings and genuine humanity and her love for you, which you chose to reject because she refused to parrot your script. You seem like a person who rejects real family and human relationships, which require compromise and can be messy, in favor of ideological correctness and membership in a group which is incapable of questioning their beliefs or actions. What exactly did you do to try and retain her love and acceptance? Did you assure her of your love for her every day? Did you ask her to please talk with you and listen to what she said and really acknowledge her feelings? Did you always remember her birthday and come visit with love and care in your heart for the wonderful woman who gave birth to you and raised you with such hope and love? I know I am judging, and perhaps misjudging, from the many many accounts of trans people and what they say about their parents as well as the many many accounts of parents who are brutalized, manipulated, lied to, and whose children refuse to even speak with them except through the conventional scripts that they have been given by others. I have also read accounts from other transsexuals, mostly from an earlier generation, that speak of their personal struggles with their identities, the difficult decisions that they made before medical transition, the everyday difficulties and compromises that a life living as a transsexual requires, and their long years of coming to terms with their choices and their situations. These seem like real life stories from people who have thought about their lives in an attempt to gain some real understanding and peace. These accounts certainly contrast with the account you give here where all is perfect and good.
I would like it if this could be a conversation where there is a chance to touch each others’ hearts. That desire is not backed up by my experience of talking to people online about my gender identity. However, I’ve read what you wrote without trying to be oppositional.
There is indeed a dearth of documentation about transgender people in the historic record. Of ‘highly civilized’ people anyway. More ‘primitive’ cultures have words to describe us and roles for us to occupy. Who writes the histories in Western culture though? Certainly not gender outlaws like us.
I do not reject family. I have many blood relatives who worked through my coming out with me and who still loved and accepted me. Mom wouldn’t. She told me that if there was any outward sign of transgender she wouldn’t be able to bear to see me. I tried many times to work with her, including sitting with her and her pastor to try to find common ground to retain our relationship. She couldn’t do it – she walked out of the meeting without hearing a word I said.
I couldn’t change her mind. It was her right to reject me but in my opinion it was wrong of her to do that. In the end, I dressed male at her funeral to honor her desires, but she did in fact write me out of her life, and I am very living a very good life, open and honest, and indeed transgender.
My name is Kathryn Mahan. You can find me on Facebook or a hundred other places. I invite you to see me, as I am, and consider that I may be living an acceptable life.
Thank you for being open here. Where family is concerned, it is always an affair of the heart and there is simply no other way to come to understand each other without talking as honestly as we can. I’m sorry that, even with effort, you and your Mom did not come to understand each other. I never meant that you could not be living an acceptable life; I just could not see much of anything until you wrote this reply.
You don’t really know the “people like us” you address. Nowhere in the letter I composed or in anything I have posted on this forum or others have I rejected the notion of transgenderism. I do not dispute in any way that transgenderism has always been a component of human diversity. It is certainly part of human diversity today. I have nothing against trans people and I am very much for their rights, their dignity and their access to health care being defended and protected. I have a great deal of empathy for the difficult lives they lead.
The point of the letter, which somehow you missed, is that what is affecting our daughters by the thousands (some natal males are also being affected) bears significant similarities to a social contagion. The empirical evidence is eye-popping and should cause any intellectually honest person, including clinicians and trans people themselves, to want to take a pause and understand it. The similarities between ROGD and social contagions that have come before are telling as well as frightening. It is a very reasonable concern that many of these young women are, in fact, caught up in a social contagion which is destroying their minds and bodies. But rather than study the situation and understand it, these clinics put our daughters on a conveyer belt to chemical and surgical transition. Any discussion of something else is met with threats using language of “conversion therapy.” They give the perception they are in a hurry to transition our children. You, yourself, attack us with your language, suggesting we are transphobic – another convenient passage from the trans ideology handbook. I am not transphobic. I am pro-science. If all the intellectually honest clinicians and trans people would look at the data and make an attempt to rule out social contagion, I would feel like they have my daughter’s best interest at heart. Currently, I do not feel that way. They are more than happy to ignore the evidence and in so doing sacrifice my daughter for their cause.
For many of us, we had no chance to see this coming or to get our heads around it. Our daughters displayed no signs of gender dysphoria as young children. For us, it was a complete ambush. We dropped off our daughter at college a bright, loving, ambitious, and gender-comfortable person. A year later she has immersed herself in the trans culture and cut us off because we will not accept her ideology 100%. She used to love floral patterns and female attire. She used to design her own dresses. Now she wants her breasts removed. It was sudden and drastic, different from historical patterns of transgenderism and very much the same as previous social contagions, most of which also affected young women.
The “people like us” are the heartbroken. We didn’t just wake up one day and decide to pick up a cause that (only superficially) appears to be anti-trans. If I saw you in person I’d give you a hug. I want you to have a happy and fulfilling life. The “people like us” believe our children are caught up in a craze. If true, then they are not transgender at all, and a completely different approach to helping and supporting them is appropriate – not surgical and chemical transitioning. If it is a social contagion, it will pass and what will be left of our children then? How many will have lifelong regret. And if it is a social contagion, it severely undermines what should be the goal of the trans activists by diluting the represented base with people who are not even transgender but are part of a legitimate mental health crisis.
Please can you give me the source for the Wellington Endocrine Clinic chart? I live in Wellington, NZ and would like to question my child’s endocrinologist about this, so it would be useful to know the source and background first, as I haven’t been able to locate elsewhere. Thanks!
Sorry for the delay in responding. Here it is:
https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/read-the-journal/all-issues/2010-2019/2018/vol-131-no-1468-19-january-2018/7463
Thanks!