Celeb trans kids: Will the Gender Fairy bring dreams—or genital surgery nightmares?

Fourth in our series featuring Dr. Curtis Crane, phalloplasty surgeon. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.

4thWaveNow contributor Worriedmom has practiced civil litigation for many years in federal and state courts.


by Worriedmom

These days, the world (or at least the media) certainly does not seem in short supply of telegenic, winsome, and appealing “transgender children.” One recent example is Jacob LeMay, pictured here, who as a nine-year old prompted Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to commit to seeking Jacob’s input and guidance on her choice for Secretary of Education.

This wasn’t Jacob’s first time in the spotlight, either. As a transgender five-year-old, Jacob’s story was featured on NBC Nightly News and the Today Show. Because at the age of four, sensitive to what they interpreted as gender distress on his part, Jacob’s parents offered “a number of choices,” one of which was whether to start life anew as a boy.

Jacob’s parents have been generous with their transgender parenting expertise, sharing insights with Harvard’s Graduate School of EducationGood Morning America, New Hampshire Public Radio, “Here and Now” on Boston’s WBUR, and MSNBC, among others. Jacob’s mother, Mimi, has already written her memoir chronicling the family’s journey.

Some might find the idea of a memoir just a bit premature given that Jacob’s transgender journey is, at this point, only five years in duration, but honestly, you’d have to be a real meanie to object. Jacob is an undeniably cute kid, the entire family is good-looking, relatable, and well-educated, and they certainly seem to care a great deal about Jacob, as well as Jacob’s future well-being.

And while one might envision a series of memoirs, detailing Jacob’s life of fulfillment, it’s also entirely possible that this will be the first and only installment.

Even in the few short years since the “transgender child” became the media’s go-to story, several stars have skyrocketed to prominence, only to disappear. Remember Coy Mathis’ brave fight to use the little girls’ room at age six? No word on Coy’s doings since Coy was featured in a 2016 documentary film, “Growing Up Coy.” Similarly, Willa Naylor, the transgender eight year old and author whose sympathetic story motivated the entire country of Malta to change its laws, has been radio silent since 2016.

Lila Perry, the Missouri high school student whose quest to use the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms triggered a student walk-out, similarly has not been heard from since 2015.  Where do they all go?

It may be that Jacob’s transgender story will, at some point, go dark. We may never know whether Jacob, who like the others has been frequently lauded as “brave” and “inspirational,” will have the happy ending that early childhood transition, we are told, is guaranteed to produce.

Stories are important, but unfinished stories can be deceptive. Before we can confidently predict that Jacob, and peers will live “happily ever after,” we should take a look at another story.

This story received no media attention. There are no soft-focus interviews, picture books, or product tie-ins.

This is the story of M.

The only reason we know about M’s story at all is because M was one of at least nine former patients of Dr. Curtis Crane, late of San Francisco and currently of Austin, Texas, who filed medical malpractice or other personal injury cases against Dr. Crane. M’s case (CGC-17-560690) was, like the others, filed in the civil division of the San Francisco Superior Court under the pseudonym “John Doe.” (Note: Although M was repeatedly “doxxed” in the court records by the attorneys on all sides, we retain his privacy here, as we have no interest in shaming or causing further sadness to M [we use M’s preferred pronouns for the same reason].)

The court file reveals M’s journey to manhood, which, in his own words, entailed “many surgeries.” M’s transition journey is detailed below and all of the information is taken directly from the court file:

  • According to his attestation, M’s efforts to become a man began in late 2003 with a “social transition.” According to medical records, M was born in 1977, which made him 26 years old at the commencement of the transformation process.
  • In 2004, about six months after his social transition, M began treatment with male hormones.
  • In 2005, M received a bilateral mastectomy.
  • In 2006 M received a total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (which meant that M’s uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and ovaries were all surgically removed).
  • In 2009, M received a metoidioplasty, an operation that uses tissue from the clitoris, which has typically been enlarged from testosterone use, to form a “neo-penis.” This operation was performed by the famous Dr. Miroslav Djordjević of Serbia, which was in the process of becoming an international hub of transgender surgery.

Alas, M’s gender journey was far from over.

  • In 2011, M underwent his first phalloplasty or surgical construction of a penis, with Dr. Toby Meltzer. This operation was not planned to, and did not, include construction of a functioning urethra. (We note that Dr. Meltzer has also been widely panned by at least some of his SRS patients.) The tissue to form the neophallus in the 2011 surgery was apparently taken from M’s back, and left behind a “dog ear.” During the 2011 surgery with Dr. Meltzer, M also received a vaginectomy (surgical removal of the vagina) and a scrotoplasty (construction of an artificial scrotum).

After all of this, M continued to suffer from gender dysphoria. In 2014, M came under the care of Dr. Curtis Crane. The surgical consent form indicates that M was to receive:

The plan for this surgery was to remove the “old” phallus from 2011, and to re-construct a new one, this time with tissue from M’s left forearm (M underwent electrolysis and laser hair removal on the forearm area for six months prior to the surgery to prepare the skin for transplant). The new penis would have a functioning urethra. The lawsuit against Dr. Crane arose because, while M alleged that he repeatedly told Dr. Crane and his staff that he did not need a vaginectomy and a scrotoplasty, those having already been performed by Dr. Meltzer in 2011, M stated that Dr. Crane over-rode his instructions and both cut into the area where M’s vagina had previously been, and damaged and dis-placed M’s scrotum (as discussed more fully below).

The legal papers contain another interesting and tantalizing suggestion that is never developed in the record. Specifically, M alleges that when M complained to Dr. Crane that vaginectomy and scrotoplasty were listed on M’s informed consent document, when those operations were not supposed to be performed, Dr. Crane reassured M that they were listed on the document either as a typo or for billing purposes [emphasis added]. A curious fact, if true.

According to court records, M’s lawsuit against Dr. Crane was dismissed on March 15, 2019. As is customary, there is no indication whether Dr. Crane, or his insurer, paid any damages to M.

Following the 2015 phalloplasty and other procedures with Dr. Crane, incredibly, M required at least three additional surgeries. In April 2016, M underwent a “phallus shortening” procedure, which involved “telescoping entire phallus into suprapubic area.” In November 2017 M went to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and received a urethroplasty in a two-stage procedure, to close the neourethra which was placed by Dr. Crane. Then, in March 2018, Dr. Garcia and another surgeon again performed surgery on M, this time to “re-place” the existing penis (which was also displaced), and to re-orient M’s scrotum. In his lawsuit against Dr. Crane, M alleged that during the 2015 surgery, Dr. Crane had “displaced” his scrotum by three centimeters, leaving it immediately adjacent to his anus. Moreover, M claimed, Dr. Crane had moved M’s testicles from their customary “side by side” position and re-placed them one in front of the other.

In March 2019 (following the three post-Crane surgeries), M stated that he still had an abscess in his pelvis where his vagina had been. Moreover,

At this point, words cannot really begin to describe M’s ordeal.

M was forced to take off work from September 2015 through February 2016 (5 months), then returned to work in March of 2016, but had to stop working again in November 2017. It’s unknown whether he ever returned to full-time work (in a court filing dated March 2019, M stated that he had been out of work for “the majority” of the past three years). The filing also stated that, because of the surgeries he had undergone, M had to assume a new job for which he was paid 50% less, and was then living “paycheck to paycheck.”

M alleged that his out of pocket expenses for the September 2015 surgery with Dr. Crane were approximately $6,500, while his out of pocket expenses for the November 2017 surgery with Dr. Garcia were approximately $4,000, and he expected to spend about $4,000 more for the “last” surgery in the spring of 2018.

M’s out of pocket expenses pale in comparison to the price tag for the surgery performed by Dr. Crane, however, which was approved by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care in the amount of $126,508.  Given that fact, the total financial cost of M’s gender journey is no doubt somewhere north of a million; the personal cost is, of course, incalculable. And yet M’s gender dysphoria endures.

So returning to the celebrity trans kids at the beginning of this article: What do you suppose young Jacob, and Jacob’s transgender peers, are hearing about their likely futures? Do you think that, being young children after all, they expect that one day the Gender Fairy will pay a visit? Or do they believe that, as Diane Ehrensaft claims, “God got it wrong,” and someday they will return to the womb and re-emerge as their correct gender? After all, nobody is better at magical thinking than young children, and raising a girl as a boy, or vice-versa, is implicitly, if not explicitly, affirming the child in the belief that one day her wish will come true.

M’s phalloplasty story isn’t suitable bed-time fare, at least not for Jacob. But for Jacob’s parents, and their many peers, perhaps it should be. After all, the Gender Fairy could someday deliver a real-life nightmare.

Former phalloplasty patient of Dr. Curtis Crane speaks out

In response to our most recent article about Dr. Curtis Crane, we have been contacted by one of Crane’s former patients, who asked us to share this video.

Be aware that the video contains graphic images and video footage pertaining to the phalloplasty surgery and complications experienced by this person.

We thank this former patient for reaching out to us, and for having the courage to speak out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6eOrNjaN5I&feature=youtu.be

Catching up with renowned phalloplasty surgeon, Dr. Curtis Crane

by Worriedmom

Third in a series. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

4thWaveNow contributor Worriedmom has practiced civil litigation for many years in federal and state courts.


Since our last coverage of medical malpractice litigation against renowned phalloplasty surgeon Curtis Crane, M.D., we’ve received frequent inquiries about the current status of the lawsuits and his practice. Research has revealed some interesting facts and circumstances about Dr. Crane.

First, as of this writing, there no longer appear to be any open civil cases against Dr. Crane in the state of California. All eight of the malpractice cases that had previously been pending in the San Francisco Superior Court have now been “dismissed with prejudice” (read on to understand the meaning of “with prejudice” in the settlement context, since this doesn’t mean what some folks may assume it does).

Specifically:

Doe v. Crane, CGC-16-550630 was dismissed April 5, 2017.

Carter v. Crane, CGC-16-554254 was dismissed December 10, 2018.

Raynor v. Crane, CGC-17-556713 was dismissed November 8, 2018.

Carson v. Crane, CGC-17-556743 was dismissed October 10, 2018.

Doe v. Crane, CGC-17-557327 was dismissed November 8, 2018.

Davis v. Crane, CGC-17-557363 was dismissed December 10, 2018.

Shepherd v. Crane, CGC-17-559294, dismissed October 3, 2018.

Doe v. Crane, CGC-17-560690 was dismissed March 15, 2019.[1]

A ninth malpractice case, Hansen v. Crane (CGC-18-571442), brought in November of last year, was also dismissed on January 14, 2019. As with the other actions listed above, this lawsuit also alleged malpractice in connection with genital surgery:

Interestingly, the plaintiff in that case alleged that at the time he consulted Dr. Crane, Dr. Crane told him that “none of his patients had ever had a serious complication from phalloplasty, that it was a safe procedure, and that only 5% of his patients have needed surgical repairs.”

As of the writing of this article, however, all of the malpractice litigation filed against Dr. Crane in San Francisco has now been dismissed. What does this mean? It’s impossible to know.

What we do know is that none of these dismissals appear to have been the result of a jury or other type of fact-finding proceeding that evaluated Dr. Crane’s conduct and made any findings about negligence or malpractice. In other words, it does not appear that an independent arbiter has reviewed the facts of these cases and ruled on whether the care provided either complied, or did not comply, with established “standards of care.” This is not surprising, since over 90% of all medical malpractice cases never go to trial.

One might reasonably conclude, then, that all of these actions have been settled out of court. For what amount of damages? We can’t know. It could be zero, it could be $10 million. The amount paid in settlement of such a claim is confidential virtually 100% of the time. The medical liability insurance carrier is, in most cases these days, the party that decides whether or not to settle a case, and this is a “business decision” on the carrier’s part.

From interrogatory answers filed in the Raynor case, cited above, we do know something about Dr. Crane’s professional liability and medical malpractice coverage in 2016, the date the malpractice alleged in that case was claimed to have occurred (see Motion for Relief from Waiver of Discovery Objections dated April 16, 2018, Declaration of Corban J. Porter and Exhibit D thereto):

Private settlement agreements also typically include “NDA” (or non-disclosure agreement) provisions, in which the parties agree to keep all terms of the settlement confidential, and further agree to the payment of damages in the event of a breach. These NDA provisions have, of course, come under public scrutiny as part of the “MeToo” movement and the Stormy Daniels affairs. Some commentators argue that keeping medical malpractice settlement amounts confidential hurts the public:

Secret nondisclosure agreements also affect patient safety by allowing bad doctors and other dangerous medical providers to continue to harm patients because their incompetency is hidden from their present and future patients and employers.

Finally, these litigations were also dismissed “with prejudice,” which means that the plaintiff cannot bring another lawsuit based on the same facts. This makes sense, because otherwise no defendant would ever pay money in settlement of a litigation if he or she knew that the plaintiff could simply re-file the same lawsuit another day.  So, it’s important to understand: When dismissal “with prejudice” is entered as part of a settlement, it does not indicate that anyone has ruled on the merits of the case.

That’s it for our legal update, but for those of us who are interested in Dr. Crane and his business model, there have been some additional developments.

Most important, it appears that Dr. Crane may no longer be performing surgery in the state of California (although his medical license is still current in that state). His prior practice, Brownstein & Crane Surgical Services, seems to be out of business. Any internet searches for brownsteincrane.com result in a re-direct to “Crane Center for Transgender Surgery,” a practice operating in California and Texas.

In and of itself, this is not surprising. According to the Crane Center’s Facebook page, Dr. Brownstein retired in 2013, after having performed “thousands of FTM chest surgeries” and passing this extensive knowledge along to Dr. Crane.

What is notable is that, as of the time of our earlier article in 2018, Brownstein-Crane was a thriving California transgender medical practice. According to the Wayback Machine, which is the only source for information on the practice, back in March of 2018, Brownstein-Crane, in addition to Dr. Crane, employed:

  • Thomas Satterwhite, M.D. (plastic surgeon);
  • Heidi Wittenberg, M.D. (OB/GYN, surgeon);
  • Michael Safir, M.D. (uro-genital reconstructive surgeon);
  • Ashley DeLeon, M.D. (uro-genital surgeon);
  • Charles Lee, M.D. (micro-surgeon);
  • David Chang, M.D. (surgeon);
  • Gabriel Kind, M.D. (plastic surgeon); and
  • Michael Parrett, M.D. (plastic surgeon).

A photograph that appeared on Brownstein-Crane’s now-defunct website.

Of all those doctors, today only Drs. DeLeon and Safir remain affiliated with Dr. Crane. Dr. Crane now appears to practice in Austin, Texas, and has been joined there by Dr. Richard Santucci (together with Dr. DeLeon); Dr. Safir holds down the fort in San Francisco and has been joined by Dr. Angela Rodriguez. Dr. Crane’s website indicates that information about the Crane Center’s doctors is “coming soon.”

It’s not clear when Dr. Santucci joined Dr. Crane’s practice, but he does not appear to have been part of the earlier Brownstein-Crane incarnation:

Source.

Not to worry, though: Dr. Safir remains busy in San Francisco.

 Source.

The Crane Center has wasted no time in accessing potential new patients, sending attractive representatives to attend such conferences as Gender Odyssey in San Diego and the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference, and sponsoring art festivals and pride events.

For an added bonus, prospective patients may even be able to receive a free initial surgery consultation, right there at the conference!

What is the story behind Dr. Crane’s relocation to Texas?

It’s impossible to know. Perhaps some of his current or former patients will enlighten us.


[1] Interestingly, on March 7, 2019, Crane’s defense counsel in this case was ordered to pay a $1,800 sanction for “misuse of the discovery process.”

Update: Top San Francisco phalloplasty surgeon now with 8 malpractice suits

by Worriedmom

Second in a series. Part 1 is here. Part 3 is here.

4thWaveNow contributor Worriedmom has practiced civil litigation for many years in federal and state courts.


San Francisco phalloplasty surgeon, Curtis Crane, M.D., continues his odyssey through the San Francisco court system. Since our initial post about Dr. Crane and his legal troubles, one of the lawsuits that was then pending against him has apparently been settled, and two more have been filed. This brings to a total of eight the number of times that Dr. Crane has now been sued for medical malpractice in San Francisco Superior Court.

This post updates the reader on the various lawsuits now pending against Dr. Crane, and also documents the peculiar silence with which these allegations have been greeted in the transgender community. It is indeed strange that, for all their fears about violence and mistreatment, transgender activists do not appear concerned in the slightest about a member of the medical profession who is alleged to have botched multiple surgeries, behaved insensitively (some would say cruelly), and caused medical havoc for many. (Of course, the allegations contained in the complaints detailed herein, until either admitted, or tested and proven in a court of law, remain just that – allegations).

In fairness to Dr. Crane, let’s start with some general observations about medical malpractice. Although it’s difficult to find comprehensive statistics, a recent (2017) survey conducted by Medscape found that 55% of all practicing U.S. physicians have been sued at least once. According to the survey, surgeons, such as Dr. Crane, are particularly likely to be sued (85% of them have faced a malpractice suit at some point in their careers). However, a large-scale study using data from the National Practitioner Data Bank also found that a tiny fraction of doctors (1%) accounts for almost one-third (32%) of paid medical claims.

Claim-proneness results from a number of factors, including type of specialty, age and sex; however:

“Compared to physicians with only one previous claim, a physician who has had three previous claims is three times as likely to have another one,” said lead author David Studdert, a professor of medicine and law at Stanford. “A physician who has had four is four times more likely and so on.”

Dr. Crane thus appears to be among the fraction of physicians who are extremely frequent targets for medical malpractice lawsuits.

Before getting into the details, we wondered whether perhaps lawsuits are a common occurrence in practice areas such as this one that involve relatively experimental or new procedures, and a patient base that might tend to have unreasonably high expectations. But a San Francisco Superior Court record search for Doctors Thomas Satterwhite, Michael Safir, Richard Santucci, Ashley DeLeon, and Charles Lee, all surgical partners in Dr. Crane’s practice, does not reveal any pending medical malpractice lawsuits for any of these doctors. Curious indeed.

As is common to all United States courts, records of lawsuits and the underlying documents can be found by going to the court website for the appropriate jurisdiction, in this case the San Francisco Superior Court. It is helpful to have the case number (also called an “index” or “docket” number), although a search can also be performed using the person’s name, so those are provided below.

A review of the lawsuits pending against Dr. Crane reveals the following detail:

Lewis Raynor and Haven Herrin v. Crane, CGC-17-556713. The plaintiff in this case alleges negligence in connection with Dr. Crane’s implantation of an inflated pump device in a second-stage phalloplasty, and the subsequent infection and loss of 40% of the plaintiff’s penis. Trial is set for December 17, 2018.

Crane Part 2 Raynor

Doe v. Crane, CGC-17-557327. The plaintiff alleges negligence in connection with three “transformative urological surgical procedures,” including a “procedure similar to a metoidioplasty,” replacement of testicular implants, and the placement of a new 3-piece inflatable implant. A metoidioplasty is a surgical procedure that uses clitoral tissue that has been enlarged through testosterone use to form a “neophallus.” Trial is set for February 19, 2019.

Carter v. Crane, CGC-16-554254. This case involves the truly unfortunate case of Cayden Carter, a young trans man who has endured over 20 surgeries in a thus far fruitless quest to obtain, and then ameliorate the effects of, a male-appearing genital structure. Carter maintains a Tumblr blog and has written extensively about the many surgeries and lasting problems resulting from the original phalloplasty, including an ileostomy and the continued need for a colostomy bag.

Crane Part 2 Carter

According to Carter’s complaint, the first surgery performed by Dr. Crane resulted in a perforated colon, which Dr. Crane first ignored and then failed to repair. There is no trial date set for this matter.

Taylor Carson v. Crane, CGC-17-556743. This case involves a plaintiff who was operated on twice by Dr. Crane, first to create a penis (which became infected) and second to attempt to repair holes in the urethra in the new penis (which failed). The entire penis was later removed, and the plaintiff was informed by another doctor that he never should have been considered for this surgery. The case has been set down for trial on March 4, 2019.

Crane Part 2 Carson

Doe v. Crane, CGC-17-560690. This case involves a plaintiff who had already undergone several transgender surgeries who wished to replace an earlier phalloplasty with a new graft that would also include lengthened urethra. The plaintiff had already undergone a “vaginectomy” (surgery to remove all or part of the vagina) and a “scrotoplasty” (a plastic surgery designed to transform part of the female genital area into a scrotum). According to the plaintiff, he specifically advised Dr. Crane’s practice in advance of surgery that he did not require a vaginectomy or a scrotoplasty; however, during the phalloplasty both of these surgeries were indeed performed. Interestingly, possibly due to potential statute of limitations restrictions, the plaintiff brought his complaint seeking damages for “medical battery” and “promissory fraud,” rather than medical malpractice. On January 4, 2018, the court denied Dr. Crane’s motion to dismiss the complaint. Trial is set for June 24, 2019.

Oliver Davis v. Crane, CGC-17-557363. This case involves Dr. Crane’s performance of a stage 1 phalloplasty that subsequently acquired a large blood clot, which the plaintiff claims that Dr. Crane ignored.

Crane Part 2 Davis

Most recently, Dr. Crane moved to have the complaint dismissed on various grounds and on February 14 of this year he lost that motion. The case does not appear to be set for trial.

Andrew Shepherd v. Crane, CGC-17-559294. In this case, the plaintiff sought to have a phalloplasty and the construction of a “large, realistic-looking scrotum.” However, the scrotum that the plaintiff was allegedly given by Dr. Crane was too small to contain even the smallest testicular implants. Since this surgery, the plaintiff has had two more surgeries, with other doctors, to obtain a larger scrotum, but they have both been unsuccessful. The case is set for trial on April 15, 2019.

In addition to the above seven cases, an eighth case, Doe v. Crane, CGC-16-550630, has now been settled (as of June 2017). This case also involved urology/surgical services provided as part of a female-to-male transition. According to the plaintiff,

Crane Part 2 Doe

The court documents do not disclose what, if anything, the plaintiff received in settlement of the case.

One allegation common to virtually all of the above cases is that Dr. Crane “over-promised” and “under-delivered” in terms of the likely success, appearance, and functionality of the constructed genitals. Moreover, several of the plaintiffs also allege that Dr. Crane’s response, when confronted with complications or distressing symptoms following surgery, was inadequate, unconcerned, and even unfeeling.

As a final note, other than coverage by 4thWaveNow, there appears to be nothing on the internet about Dr. Curtis Crane that is not completely laudatory and admiring of his surgical skills and acumen. YouTube videos sing his praises (see “Dr. Crane is AHmazing” and “Do I Regret Lower Surgery?” for two recent examples) . The Brownstein-Crane Facebook page contains 22 5-star reviews and only 2 negative reviews (neither of which mention the eight malpractice lawsuits). Susan’s Place, a major resource page for transgender people to connect and share resources, has a thread on Dr. Crane which contains only praise and, again, no mention of the extensive legal history cited above. Transgender Pulse, another major transgender resource and support forum, also has none of the above information about Dr. Crane. TSSurgery.com, a site providing information for transgender people about surgeons and others, that also contains reviews, has a large section on Dr. Crane, but again, no mention of his legal troubles.

Poignantly if not somewhat hypocritically, the “ftm” (female to male) Reddit references our earlier post about Dr. Crane as the source for information about his practice, and goes on to allege that his practice has been dropped from the Kaiser Permanente California health plan due to “the amount of lawsuits” against him:

Crane Part 2 ftm reddit

We were not able to confirm whether Dr. Crane is still a listed physician with Kaiser Permanente from that insurer’s site, but at least one additional source seems to confirm that he is not. (The insurance section of Dr. Crane’s practice’s website also does not indicate that it is “in-network” with Kaiser Permanente.)

The types of injuries detailed above are truly sad. One can only imagine what life will be like for these patients in the years ahead, as they try to cope with malformed, misshapen, and certainly non-functional genitals. Moreover, many of these plaintiffs will have difficulty in maintaining proper excretory function, a complication that can have serious ramifications for health. The embarrassment, pain, expense, and disappointment must be profound. We ask, why are these actual injuries, suffered by actual transgender people, so much less important to the transgender community than such nebulous insults as “mis-gendering,” the inability to access a desired dressing room, or hurtful Tweets? The fact that Dr. Crane has been sued for medical malpractice in connection with transgender surgery no fewer than eight times in the last two years is a highly pertinent and relevant thing for transgender people to know. Why doesn’t the community want people to know it?

Renowned San Francisco phalloplasty surgeon hit with multiple lawsuits

Note: The administrators and contributors at 4thWaveNow do not take a position on the veracity of the allegations set forth in these lawsuits. We are reporting on public documents available on the Internet about these legal actions. Commenters’ opinions are their own.


In a previous 4thWaveNow post, we documented the proliferation of gender surgeons who perform mastectomies and “bottom surgeries.” Some of them, including San Francisco surgeon Curtis Crane,  have publicly indicated their willingness to operate on patients under the age of 18.

One of Crane’s former patients, a detransitioned woman who underwent a double mastectomy at age 17, wrote a guest post for 4thWaveNow.

It has come to our attention that Dr. Crane has been the defendant in no less than six lawsuits during the last year. The suits variously allege medical malpractice, medical negligence, and/or failure to obtain informed consent.

Some of the lawsuits are still active, and all court documents are available via a public search on the San Francisco County Superior Court website.

Obviously, the exact details of the lawsuits vary, but all are centered around serious complications from phalloplasty and other “bottom surgery” procedures.

The six cases are as follows. To see the Register of Action (list of documents with dates) for each case, and all associated documents, simply enter the case number in the search box at the above link. When clicking on a document, be sure your browser allows pop-up windows.

  • 554254
  • 550630
  • 556743
  • 556713
  • 557327
  • 557363

Screen captures are taken from the complaint documents in the referenced cases.

 

The adolescent trans trend: 10 influences

The below post is written by Overwhelmed,  4thWaveNow contributor and the mother of a teen daughter who insisted she was transgender, but who subsequently changed her mind. Other parents in the same situation have shared their experiences on 4thWaveNow, and a new research study (currently recruiting) is the first to systematically examine the phenomenon of “trans trending” amongst tweens and teens.

Trans activists and gender specialists constantly assure us that puberty blockers are harmless and “fully reversible.” They claim these drugs “buy time” for a young person to decide if they really are trans. But given that social transition + puberty blockers are followed in 100% of reported cases by cross-sex hormones (see here and here),  the “buying time” assertion deserves a lot more scrutiny. If there weren’t other forces at work (like social contagion and the conditioning effect of being validated in the idea that you are “really” the opposite sex if you prefer the appearance and lifestyle of that sex), a 100% persistence rate in trans-identification simply wouldn’t be happening.

And when it comes to teens who experience onset of gender dysphoria in adolescence, parents like Overwhelmed, Penny White, and the founder of this website–who have personally observed their teens voluntarily desisting from a trans identity–are the ones who have actually bought time for their kids: precious time to realize that becoming a lifelong patient haunting the offices of endocrinologists and plastic surgeons is not the only way to live a gender-defiant life.


by Overwhelmed

Earlier this year, a Nature article reported on the May 2016 launch of a study aimed at documenting the psychological and medical impacts of delaying the puberty of trans youth:

 Funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US $5.7-million project will be not only the largest-ever study of transgender youth, but also only the second to track the psychological effects of delaying puberty — and the first to track its medical impacts. It comes as the NIH and others have begun to spend heavily on research related to the health of transgender people, says Robert Garofalo, a paediatrician at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Illinois, and a leader of the study. “We seem to really be at a tipping point,” he adds.

Garofalo and his colleagues aim to recruit 280 adolescents who identify as transgender, and to follow them for at least five years. One group will receive puberty blockers at the beginning of adolescence, and another, older group will receive cross-sex hormones. Their findings could help clinicians to judge how best to help adolescents who are seeking a transition.

Despite the fact that puberty blockers–followed in nearly every case by cross-sex hormones–have been prescribed for many years for “trans kids,” this study will be the FIRST in the United States to track the impacts of medical transition on this population. It has become increasingly popular for gender doctors to start trans-identified children on puberty blockers. The rationale is to avoid the potential psychological distress and the physical development of secondary sex characteristics associated with the “wrong puberty.” Based on the constant onslaught of celebratory articles about “trans kids” in the media, the public is likely unaware that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are not approved by the FDA for this purpose. These drugs are being used off-label and the science isn’t settled by any means. Even the gender doctors confess there is no medical consensus.

I appreciate that the Nature piece is not just another one-sided article touting pro-transition dogma. Although the journalist failed to mention that children who pause their natal puberty, and then directly proceed to cross-sex hormones, have the not-so-insignificant consequence of permanent sterility, she did include viewpoints not often seen in the mainstream media:

 “But some scientists worry that putting off puberty in older children may disrupt bone and brain development, reducing bone density and leading to cognitive problems.”


 “Because most children who question their gender do not do so past adolescence, many psychologists discourage “socially transitioning” until the teenage years.”


The debate is so heated — and evidence so sparse — that the authors of the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) were unable to reach a consensus. “People are making declarations of knowledge that are their belief systems, that aren’t also backed up by empirical research,” says Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City.”

 But there is one assertion in the article–touted as settled science—that raises a huge red flag:

 “But those who identify as transgender in adolescence almost always do so permanently.”

Many parents who read 4thWaveNow are VERY familiar with this assumption. When their child, out of the blue, with no prior history of gender dysphoria, claims to be transgender, most parents resort to internet searches to become more knowledgeable. They read articles like this one by Irwin Krieger, LCSW, which tells parents it’s pretty much inevitable their teen or young adult child will remain transgender:

 …I do acknowledge that most teens who have come out to parents and others as transsexual are truly transsexual so as not to give them any false sense of the likelihood of their child having a change of heart.

Parents are encouraged to just start “supporting” their child by using the correct pronouns, buying new clothes and aiding their child with social (and possibly medical) transition.

Historically (prior to the year 2000), the research data did show that many kids who consistently believed they were the opposite sex during and after puberty held onto this belief into adulthood. But in the last few years, something new has emerged: a wave of post-pubertal, self-diagnosed trans teens.  These youth may not fit the historical profile due to relatively recent influences like:

  1. The social contagion phenomenon. Many confused teens and young adults (and increasingly, tweens) seek out answers from strangers online. They say they don’t “fit in,” that they prefer clothing and activities usually associated with the opposite sex. They ask, “Does this mean I’m transgender?” The answers they receive frequently affirm they are and urge them to “Transition NOW!” Places like Tumblr, Reddit, and YouTube (MTF and FTM transition videos) are full of this “wisdom.” The blog Transgender Reality documents some of these conversations.

Sometimes it isn’t an online influence that sparks a newly realized transgender status. There are more students socially and medically transitioning in high schools and universities. On some campuses there are entire friend groups claiming to be transgender, and an impressionable child who is befriended by this group may suddenly decide he/she is trans as well.

  1. The ability to achieve an instant “special” status. There is an appeal for some to identify as transgender in order to receive extra attention or boost their social standing.

If a student announces to school administration that they’re transgender, it’s becoming taboo to question them. More schools are enacting guidelines (like this one co-authored by the National Education Association) that enable children to be treated as the opposite sex, regardless of maturity level or mental health status. And parents don’t need to be in agreement, or even informed, about these accommodations.

Additionally, some children and/or their parents may be enticed by the potential to become celebrities. After all, Jazz Jennings and Caitlyn Jenner have their own TV shows strictly based on their transgender identities.

  1. The reduction in gatekeeping. The current train of thought among gender doctors and therapists is that gender identity is innate, unchangeable, and is often realized at a very young age. If you follow this line of thinking (and assume that no one could possibly be confused or misled into believing they are transgender), then you likely feel it is unjust, and even harmful, to make a child jump through gatekeeping hoops before medical treatment.

As an example of this logic, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, was recently quoted in this article about Sam who was given puberty blockers, then began testosterone injections and had a double mastectomy all by the age of 14:

 “It is pretty well proven that people know their gender by the age of 5,” said the Center for Transyouth Health and Development’s Olson. “If we accept and believe that people know their gender by the age of 5, why not accept that trans kids know their authentic gender?”

Treating young people with gender dysphoria is critical, Olson said, as puberty increases the chances they will harm themselves.

“One of the things that puts trans kids at higher risk is this period of time when they are going through puberty,” she said. “Their body is becoming the adult or permanent version of this body they are not comfortable with.”

  1. The push for transgender identities to be seen as a normal variation of human existence (like homosexuality). It has become more common for doctors and therapists to avoid labeling people who think they are the opposite sex as having a mental disorder. An example from Jack Drescher is in this article about the World Health Organization classification system:

When ICD-11 is published, being transgender will be listed in a different part of the document, potentially under conditions related to sexual health, said Drescher, who is a New York psychiatrist and a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College. “So they’ll be diagnoses, but they won’t be mental disorder diagnoses.”

The medical community’s process of de-stigmatizing being transgender was also reflected in the last round of updates to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2013.  The DSM, which is used by clinicians, replaced the diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria.” The diagnostic class was also separated from sexual dysfunctions.

Identifying as transgender shares some similarities with anorexia nervosa  and body dysmorphic disorder for which treatment consists primarily of therapy and possibly medication. But the regimen for gender dysphoric patients often includes medical interventions to physically alter their bodies to better align with their feelings, making this condition treated like no other mind/body disconnect.

  1. The popularity of early social transition. It’s becoming increasingly common to socially transition prepubescent children, to encourage them to live as the gender with which they identify. In the Nature article cited above, psychologist Diane Ehrensaft (a proponent of the gender affirmative model) and transgender rights attorney Asaf Orr comment on this approach:

But encouraging children to live as the gender they identify with is an increasingly popular choice. “There’s been a real sea change,” says Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist at UCSF. She reports seeing more prepubescent patients recently who have already transitioned socially.

Many transgender-rights activists support this model, and liken any other approach to gay-conversion therapy. “You’re telling a kid, ‘I don’t believe you’,” says Asaf Orr, staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco. The best strategy, he says, is “to affirm a child’s gender exploration, regardless of what the end result is going to be”.

The gender affirmative model encourages children to “explore” their gender identity through social transition. It is often stated that it’s harmless to do so since no hormones or surgeries are involved. But this doesn’t take into account that children who are treated as the opposite sex are being conditioned to continue in their belief, potentially leading to future medical interventions. Even the Dutch researchers who pioneered the use of puberty blockers to treat transgender youth, do not recommend social transitioning in prepubescent children due to the “high rate of remission.”

dutch anti social transition

6. Transactivism. There is a burgeoning group of people who are out to educate the world about the importance of accepting transgenderism. Their pleas are often presented as anti-bullying or anti-discrimination campaigns. They tend to cite high suicide rates and imply that misgendering someone or questioning their gender identity may contribute to these statistics. Many of these activists are transgender themselves and feel they are the most knowledgeable about their condition. They pass themselves off as experts. Many conduct training sessions in schools, police departments, hospitals, etc. They write books, media articles, blog posts. Host conferences. Just one activist can have considerable influence. And there are so many voices shouting this philosophy that it drowns out opposing viewpoints.

7. Framing transgender acceptance as the new civil rights movement. Personally, I was elated when the US Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal. But, after that triumph, organizations like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) seem to be focusing more intensely on the transgender rights movement.

It is admirable to oppose discrimination against transgender people in employment, housing and appropriate health care. And I very much condemn violence against them. But there needs to be a balance. It should be acknowledged that some impressionable children, teens and young adults are confused and erroneously self-diagnose as transgender. This vulnerable population needs protection from unnecessary medical interventions. But since these organizations promote the “born this way” dogma, anyone who doesn’t blindly accept and support them as the opposite sex, is called misinformed or even abusive and bigoted.

In a short period of time, the transgender rights movement has made substantial gains. There have been laws passed in the United States and Canada that could be interpreted to mean any therapy that doesn’t affirm a youth’s gender identity is illegal. US schools are being pressured to allow transgender-identifying students into opposite sex bathrooms, locker rooms, and even bedroom assignments on overnight field trips. Overall, there has been a tendency in recent guidelines, legislation and court cases to prioritize gender identity over sex.

  1. The significant growth of the gender industry. There has been a rise in demand for gender clinics, doctors, therapists, endocrinologists, surgeons (and even “packers”—penile prostheses) due to the rapid increase in gender dysphoric children.

Back in January 2016, this pro-transition Cosmopolitan article stated that the first US transgender youth clinic opened in Boston in 2007. And since then 40 more have begun catering—exclusively to children—in the United States.

Surgeons are finding their services are increasingly sought after as well. Dr. Curtis Crane (who performs mastectomies on minors) has commented on how he cannot keep up with the demand for phalloplasties, even though he keeps training more surgeons in the technique:

 Crane says he’s one of only a few surgeons in the U.S. performing a high volume of phalloplasties — a booming surgical niche fueled by an increasing number of transgender men seeking to complete their anatomical transition. Even after hiring and training two colleagues to perform the eight-hour surgery, Crane’s patients must wait a year to have it done.

I frequently come across statements from doctors and therapists saying their transgender-based business is flourishing, often with a significant backlog. Due to their expertise, these are the professionals that I wish would speak out about potential over-diagnosis and over-treatment of trans-claiming youth. You have to wonder if they truly see the massive increase in patients as a positive (“more people are finally being treated because they are better informed and there is less stigma”). Or do they see trouble on the horizon (“I’m pretending everything is peachy, but I’m really concerned this may be a disastrous medical trend”)?

  1. Selective media coverage. Many media outlets portray positive “trans kids” stories, but choose to omit information not favorable to the transgender rights movement. Usually there is no discussion of the high desistence rates, or of the significant risks associated with medical treatments. And when facts like these are not included, the public is misinformed.

US media is chock-full of pro-pediatric-transition stories, many of which have been discussed on this site. You can also click on the Transgender Trend blog links below for examples and excellent analysis of biased programming from the UK’s BBC:

  1. The silencing of skeptics. Unfortunately, it is taboo to voice concerns that children, teens and young adults may be at risk of unnecessary medical transitions. This blog is one of the ONLY places online that parents and their allies can speak out, although most choose to do so anonymously to maintain their privacy.

Unfortunately, there are some trans activists, deeply offended by anyone contradicting the transgender narrative, who work to discredit anyone who dares to express opposing viewpoints. To these activists, it is fair game to try to get someone fired from their job or to post pictures of their children with sexually explicit captions (see the Michael Bailey link). Alice Dreger, Michael Bailey and Kenneth Zucker have been recipients of this treatment.

On a positive note, I’ve heard there are a growing number of professionals—doctors, nurses, teachers, journalists—whispering their concerns to each other. But due to the current environment, they’re afraid to speak publicly. Afraid they’ll be called bigots. Afraid they’ll lose their jobs.

We are living in a time when the number of gender dysphoric children is rising exponentially with no sign of a leveling off.

Guardian increase in peds transition graph

Kids are being medically transitioned regardless of the fact that there’s no medical consensus of what the best treatment options are. No one knows the long term consequences of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries in this population. This may very well be a disastrous fad similar to the false memory and ritual abuse scares of the ‘80s and ‘90s. And to top it all off, there’s significant pressure not to publicly express skepticism.

Mainstream media involvement would be welcome, along with brave professionals speaking up about their concerns. It is essential that the public be informed not only of the pros, but also the cons, of transitioning children.

Instead of focusing solely on treating the burgeoning number of gender dysphoric children, professionals ought to investigate the reasons for the radical shift in this population. Why are so many presenting to gender clinics? Why are there currently so many females vs. males seeking treatment (historically it was the opposite)? Why do so many have co-morbid mental health issues—autism spectrum disorders, OCD, ADHD/ADD, depression, etc.? These are important questions in need of answers. Especially because of the often irreversible nature of medical interventions, and that the patients are children with the rest of their lives ahead of them.

Today’s children are exposed to all kinds of influences that weren’t present until relatively recently. It would make sense to now reject the statement “those who identify as transgender in adolescence almost always do so permanently.” And to re-evaluate treatment protocols so that children, teens and young adults receive the thorough mental health care they need, and avoid any unnecessary medical interventions.

Shrinking to survive: A former trans man reports on life inside queer youth culture

Max Robinson is a 20-year-old lesbian who recently detransitioned after 4 years of hormone replacement therapy. She underwent a double mastectomy at age 17, performed by plastic surgeon Curtis Crane in San Francisco. Max reports that her gender therapist wrote letters verifying the immediate medical necessity of these treatments.

Max currently works to provide direct support to developmentally disabled adults living in group homes; she detransitioned on the job in December 2015. Her novel Laika, which tells the story of the little stray dog who was sent outside Earth’s atmosphere in a Soviet satellite, is available digitally or in print here. In addition, Max and her partner collaborate on many graphic art and creative writing projects.

 Max, like many young lesbians of her generation, was led down the path to FTM “transition” as a teen, effectively short circuiting her chance to fully integrate her orientation as a same-sex attracted female.  As detailed in her account, the difficulties many young trans men face in queer communities are not widely known; and the less-than- rosy experiences of FTM teens are certainly not discussed in the many mainstream media stories which unquestioningly celebrate testosterone and surgery as welcome treatments for dysphoric girls—many of whom are same-sex attracted.

Max’s story will also appear in an upcoming anthology to be published within the year.

In the meantime, Max is available to respond to your questions and discussion in the comments section below this post.

All of us at 4thWaveNow are very grateful to Max for her courage in writing this post.


by Max Robinson

When I was 5, I led a girl rebellion. We put on capes and chased some boys in capes around. Whatever they said we couldn’t do, we did. It was mostly push-ups or holding bugs. I could hold any bug. My dad still has a picture in his office of me at a science fair, hands full of hissing cockroaches.

I hated to be told there was something I couldn’t do. In first grade, I’d go home from school all in a huff because the girls’ bathroom pass had pictures of bows on it, while the boys’ had soccer balls. My teacher wouldn’t let me choose which pass I wanted. I played soccer!

When I was in third grade, I drafted letters to the author of a children’s book series. I was bothered by the constant underlying sexism in her books about a family rescuing animals. The mom and the daughter were always secondary, sweeping or cooking in the background, while the father and son saw all the action. What troubled me most of all was that these books were written by a woman. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t create a single interesting female character.

Around the same time, my mom finally let me buy a pair of boys’ shoes. They were red and black, and I didn’t have to tie them. I wore them all the time, so often that the plastic frame of them tore through the fabric. It cut into my feet, but I didn’t tell my parents. I thought I wouldn’t get another pair. They didn’t find out until they saw the back of my ankles, torn and bleeding. When I told them why I hadn’t said anything, they got me another pair. This is my first memory of hurting myself on purpose so that I would feel better about my appearance. Later, there was tweezing, high heels, waxing, shaving, running, and trying to starve myself. In all of those, at one time or another, I was encouraged, but they really weren’t for me. I wanted to choose to hurt myself in my own way.

When I was 16, I talked my older sister into ordering me a binder, and I wore it as often I could. It hurt like hell. I insisted it didn’t. The pain made it easier to think less, which was nice, especially at school. Class was boring and I couldn’t focus, so I would always spend the whole day winding myself up with some thought obsession or another to keep busy. I would ask the teacher for bathroom breaks, and then used them to cut myself, just because I was under-stimulated and unhappy.

After school, I read Autostraddle articles and dozens of pages into the archive of FTM blogs. I was glad to see some women who looked kind of like me, saying that they had futures now. I wanted what they had, and I hated what I had. I think I was 15 or just barely 16 when I started checking this stuff out.

The longer I thought about it, the more sure I was that it was true. At first, I thought I might be genderqueer. Then, I wanted to go on testosterone for a while, but keep my breasts. Next I was sure that I wanted them gone. I would confess these changing thoughts anxiously to other trans-identifying friends online. They would reassure me that this happened to a lot of people, and that the dominant transgender narrative was oppressive.  Then I began reassuring others of this, too. We all agreed that being trans was very special and difficult.  Before, I had never felt special or that my pain mattered.

Some part of me knew I was talking myself into it. I ignored that part.

For the first time, I had a community that paid attention to me, at least online. We talked about our feelings and we listened to each other. This was my first real experience with Internet culture. I loved having friends. It wasn’t like school, where I was irritable and weird, floating between tables at lunch. People actually liked me on Tumblr. Almost all my friends were female and trans-identifying.

max jpg

I didn’t know anything. It was just so comforting to think that I was born wrong. If my body was the problem, it could be solved. Transition had clearly defined steps. Everybody chose from a set list, and when it was over, they were properly assembled.

When I renounced my connection to womanhood and what I shared with my sisters, I sealed away important parts of myself. I thought I was turning away from the hurt that came from being seen as a woman by men, but it was too late for that. That hurt has been inside my bones for years. After transition, I kept quieter than ever before. Always afraid, always afraid. Brought back into line.

Transition was supposed to fix things. That’s what I believed and that’s what doctors told my parents. I was 16 when I started hormone blockers, then testosterone. I was 17 when I had a double mastectomy.

If I didn’t look like a dyke and act like a crazy teenage girl, there would have been nothing to fix.

To fund my surgery, I started a blog where I posted print-to-order clothing and gifts, pandering to the interests of the people I saw on there. It worked pretty well. I got a bunch of money, but not quite enough. My parents used some of theirs, and my grandma helped, too. After all, this was a medically validated condition. I had been to appointments with professional after professional, all of whom agreed this was the way to go.

But it turned out to be cold comfort, removing hated body parts. Breasts marked me as a woman dressed funny. I wasn’t afraid to be anesthetized or cut open. The day of my surgery, after the doctor drew the lines of the incisions on my skin in Sharpie, I asked him where the tissue would go. He told me it would be incinerated as medical waste. I cackled. When they led me back to the operating room, I was confused. I thought there would be a silver table that I had to lie down on. I told my doctor this. He told me it wasn’t an autopsy, and laughed.

My first post-op memories don’t start until a day or two later. The pain wasn’t bad, and emptying my drains reminded me of using a menstrual cup, just with a lot more yellow stuff. It felt better than trying to live as a man with breasts. I couldn’t lift my arms to wash my own hair for a couple weeks, but seeing a flat chest was a breath of fresh air. It felt like it made sense after I had been watching my old face disappear, cheeks narrowing, beard coming in, because of testosterone. I didn’t want to be seen as a woman–as a lesbian–and I didn’t want to ask why.

Or maybe I just didn’t know who to ask. I did try. Before I started medical transition, I asked my gender therapist, a trans man, about internalized misogyny. The question was dismissed. I didn’t even really know what internalized misogyny was, but  I wanted to understand. Instead, I was assured that it probably wasn’t that. I got a letter for hormone replacement therapy, and later, for the top surgery. I was grateful.

It took years of testosterone for me to finally realize it was okay to live in my own body without it, that making this peace with myself was possible, and that I deserved that chance. I didn’t know it was okay to be a dysphoric lesbian, that I could survive this way. I was almost 20 when I stopped hormones. I had been 20 for a little while when I stopped understanding myself as a trans man.

Things changed. My mind changed.

There’s a species of rotifer (microscopic zooplankton) called Bdelloidea. A male bdelloid has never been observed. They’re all female, reproducing exclusively through parthenogenesis for millions of years. How did they survive quickly evolving parasites and rapidly changing environments without the adaptability afforded by sexual reproduction? Bdelloids shrivel up under stress. In anhydrobiosis, they’re easily carried away by the wind. For up to nine years, they’ll stay alive like this–barely living, but alive. Shrinking yourself to survive is a legitimate strategy, and sometimes it works.

After I detransitioned, I started a new job where I was known as a butch lesbian. At first, people treated me worse than when I was “passing” as male. Nobody trained me. They tried not to look at me at all. They didn’t relax until I started talking, talking like I had in high school. I made jokes and people laughed. I told them about my childhood when they told me about theirs. I did more than listen, finally. People actually liked me here, the same people who looked at me funny when I first started the job.

It had been so long since I had said anything outside my home without worrying about whether I “sounded male.” I hadn’t realized how much I had been holding back since I decided to transition. I hadn’t made new friends, except online, in years. In a couple weeks at this job, I got rides home and wedding invitations. I thought I was incapable of connecting to anyone in person, but I was just incapable of connecting to anyone as a man — because I’m not a man. I can’t pretend to be one without hiding an essential part of my nature.

I thought “woman” was wrong for me, because of how I dressed, how I related to my body, how I resented the expectations society had for me as a woman. I didn’t realize that my horror at my body could be caused by the horror of living in a world that wants to control all women.

If “being a woman” really was nothing but an identity, if I had been raised in a world where it really did just mean calling myself a woman, I never would have transitioned.  I would never have attempted to surgically and hormonally erase my femaleness. My drive to be anything but a woman was rooted in the material reality of being a woman, a material reality that cannot be identified out of. Trying to live in a fantasy where everything women have suffered for being female is null and void, even as misogyny continues to shape our lives, was valuable only in that I finally learned how incredibly valuable it was to name myself as a woman.

There is power in naming. It’s how we find each other, how we connect to our histories, how we connect to our futures. Driving us apart from each other is the easiest way to keep us from learning to recognize attempts to redefine our realities.

I didn’t know this then. I subscribed to an incredibly misogynistic set of beliefs for years. “DFAB privilege” was a common phrase in our community – “designated female at birth privilege.” It was accepted fact that being born female gave you a lifelong advantage over a male who transitioned. This included men who used transition only to mean using different pronouns on Tumblr and having an anime girl as their avatar. We believed that, as “dfabs,” we needed to shut up about our petty problems. We could never have it as hard as any “dmab women or non-binary people.” Everyone in the trans community agreed that it was our responsibility to uplift “dmab voices.” None of this seemed outrageous or strange to me; it felt pretty intuitive. Growing up under male domination is a grooming process that leaves many girls and women extremely vulnerable to manipulation.

The first experience that did make me start to feel suspicious of male transition was when I was 18 and a genderqueer-identifying man who had never pursued any kind of transition raped my best friend, a woman unacquainted with insular trans community politics. I had indirectly introduced her to this guy via mutual friends. After the rape, she told me what he did; I had been in the next room the whole night, awake, talking to someone I didn’t even like. I had no idea it was happening. When she let our mutual friends know, we both assumed they would have her back; after all, they referred to their apartment as a safe space for rape survivors. But instead, her rapist changed his pronouns on Tumblr, claimed to have schizophrenia, and then said that he couldn’t possibly have raped her, because of the power dynamics between a “cis” woman and a transwoman. He moved back to LA a few months later, without ever taking any steps towards transition. When he got there, he told his old friends he wasn’t schizophrenic or trans anymore.

Years before that, two different transwomen I knew had pressured me into sending nude photos of my breasts to them. I messaged them first, as a 16 year old, after seeing them repeatedly posting about being horny and suicidal, and how only nudes would make them feel any better. They didn’t even know who I was. To one of them, I submitted the nudes anonymously. I didn’t want to talk, I just wanted him to feel better. I thought it was my responsibility. It might still be posted somewhere, I have no idea.  Both of the transwomen who sexted with me identified as lesbians at the time and knew I was a transman. They didn’t care, as long as we were talking one-on-one.

I didn’t fully see the value in differentiating male from female until a traumatized and disabled lesbian I knew well, K, finally admitted to me that her transwoman partner M was beating her regularly.

For three years, she lived with steadily escalating physical & sexual violence, the details of which were originally included in this article but have now been removed for privacy reasons. Suffice it to say – it was an intimate portrait of what radical feminists understand as male violence.

It’s been two years since she moved in with me, away from him, and she’s still recovering from what he did to her. She had two decades of trauma before that, but nothing ever broke her like this did. Calling that relationship “lesbianism” left her stranded from the framework she desperately needed in order to contextualize her experiences as a survivor of captivity. It destroyed her ability to call herself a lesbian or a woman for a long time: if lesbians like to sleep with transwomen and were repulsed by the supposed maleness of transmen, how could she be a lesbian herself? If women are what her ex-partner M was, then she, K, must be something else entirely. The language of transition lends itself readily to abusive gaslighting that disguises and distorts women’s ability to name what is happening. What was done to her was extreme cruelty of a distinctly male variety, cruelty she was especially vulnerable to because of her lifelong history of trauma at men’s hands.

The more I started to understand that M could not have been female, the more I understood why I was. One’s actual sex matters. Running from its significance prevents you from doing anything but continuing its cycles of destruction. As soon as a transwoman said, “No, I’M not a man,” we instantly lost our ability to protect ourselves from him. Women who never transitioned in these trans circles believed their “cis privilege” rendered them man-like in their power. For those of us females (mainly lesbians) who did seek transition, we were often told that, as transmen, we were exactly as bad as any other men.

Loading the language was an incredibly powerful tool. I was a lesbian trying to save my friend from domestic violence at the hands of a man she had partnered with out of intense desperation, facing immediate homelessness as a severely mentally ill woman with limited mobility. Understanding this could have connected us to our foremothers who struggled through similar battles to protect each other from abusive men. Instead, we felt completely adrift. Other women dealing with abuse perpetrated by transwomen have described a similar sense of being in entirely uncharted territory, terrified to speak first, unable to find anyone else sharing experiences; they’re all too scared of being labeled an untouchable “trans-misogynist.”

In the 21st century, intelligent and capable adult women are having to relearn what “man” means, with fear at their backs every step of the way. We were among them, exploring radical and lesbian feminist ideology online and marveling at how decades-old works precisely described circumstances we had thought of as occurring only recently. Janice Raymond’s discussion of transexually-constructed lesbian feminists in The Transsexual Empire was startlingly relevant. She saw this coming. As lesbians, we have a rich history of theory that had been completely denied to women who came of age when K and I did. All either of us knew about Janice Raymond, until last year, was that she was evil to the core; a horrible transphobe. We believed this because we didn’t know any better.

Deprogramming took almost a year. Both of us were terrified just to read dissenting opinions. K, me, and another lesbian exited from the radical queer scene began moderating an online support group for anyone dysphoric and born female, including many who still identified as trans. When that group started, I was still one of the transmen. All of us were so incredibly relieved not to be alone. We disagreed on a lot of stuff, but we were all tired of what we saw happening to females.

When our remaining friends from the transgender community found out that we considered transwomen capable of male violence, and that we were concerned about transition’s effect on young adults, almost all of them deserted us immediately. Female trans-identifying friends who knew K’s history of homelessness and our currently rocky financial situation started talking publicly to each other about how we literally deserved to starve to death.

Losing these friends hurt enough on its own. Being cut off from them just when we had begun to see the severity of the situation within these groups was so much worse. I have a list of 20 intercommunity predators, mainly transwomen who prey on females — women or transmen. Eleven of them are one or two degrees of separation from us. So many women in our community had themselves been pressured to share nude photos, coerced into unwanted sex, or outright violently assaulted by males describing themselves as transwomen, but they still didn’t feel able to challenge the narrative they were being fed. These women, our friends, had been there with us. They saw transwoman predator after transwoman predator being named by their terrified female victims. The “call-outs” (a word used for anything from hurting someone’s feelings slightly to brutal rape) usually only happened once several victims of the same predator found each other and made sure they had friends on their side. When victims couldn’t be sure they would be supported, they didn’t come forward. The political climate made it doubly difficult to “call out” a transwoman. We were constantly being reminded that transwomen are harmed by the horrible stereotype that they’re all rapists or perverts, and we were taught that we needed to be constantly policing ourselves to avoid perpetuating this idea.

The silent victims of transwomen had good reason to keep quiet. We all saw transwomen using the language of “cissexism” and “transmisogyny” against anyone who named their behavior as harmful. Even transwomen dating other transwomen experienced abuse at their hands. In the resulting fallout, it was never clear who the true aggressor was; both of them would immediately begin using identity politics and “privilege dynamics” (i.e., someone poor can never hurt someone rich, under any circumstances, etc.) in a way that was very effective at obfuscating the truth. Our friends had been right beside us for all of this, and they still damned us for beginning to name what had enabled this wide-scale intercommunity violence.

Young lesbians in the “queer community” are known by many names: if you want to avoid scrutiny for not hooking up with transwomen, you’ve got to get creative. Some of us call ourselves queer, bisexual, or pansexual, because there’s no word for only being attracted to females, and you can’t be a lesbian if you date transmen or avoid dating transwomen. A lot of us, having been told that we can opt out of womanhood by choice, decided that we never want to be called “she” again. Young women who cling to the word “lesbian” find themselves increasingly pressured to sleep with transwomen, because—according to trans dogma–they are supposedly more vulnerable and oppressed than any “cis” lesbian.

Many transwomen seem to view dating a “cisbian” as a uniquely valuable source of gender validation. After all, lesbians only date women. There is no acknowledgement that, under some circumstances, some lesbians can be coerced into relationships that they are incapable of experiencing as anything except traumatic. I have never seen a transwoman from these circles ever express the possibility that this might be true. By all appearances, they have never considered it. Running from unpleasant truths is something that a lot of folks who transition (me included) tend to get very good at.

The insistence that lesbianism is not a strictly female experience runs so deep that transwomen, even those who only date other transwomen, often refer to themselves as “transdykes.” This includes those who are not transitioning–men who can literally only be differentiated from any other man when you ask his preferred pronouns. Many women believe that these “transdykes,” even those who have never been identifiable as anything but straight men to the outside world in any way, are more oppressed than any “cis” woman, specifically on the axis of gender. The level of gaslighting taking place here is difficult to overstate.

From the outside, now, I can finally see how ridiculous it is. Realizing this took months and months. It took us a year of exploring the feminist theory that had been forbidden to us before me or K could even call any transwoman a man without having a panic attack.

At first, when I started learning more about opposing viewpoints, I identified as a “gender-critical transman.” I knew that the transgender cause had been used in a lot of disgusting ways, but I still believed transition was the only way I could survive, and I was trying to reconcile seeing myself as transgender with believing that the vast majority of trans activism was harmful to women. During this time, I really looked up to gender-critical transwomen–transitioning males who were usually at least marginally more sympathetic and thoughtful than most men. I tried to reconcile our respective identities and our needs, as we understood them, with the needs of women as a class.

I failed. At the end of the day, I just don’t want anyone male in the bathroom with me. I don’t want them on a women’s volleyball team. I don’t want them at Curves. I don’t want them in a lesbian book club. The experience of being male is fundamentally different from the experience of being female — even if a man passes, even if a man has surgery to more closely resemble his idea of a woman. I don’t say this out of a hatred for transwomen. I say this out of love and respect for women. What we are cannot be conceived nor replicated in a man’s imagination, and it absolutely cannot be formed out of male tissue on an operating table.

The sympathy I feel for men harmed by gender, to the extent that it means I encourage male-to-female transsexualism, is in direct competition with the sympathy I feel for women harmed by gender. Everyone is entitled to make their own choices about their bodies. Everyone is also entitled to have opinions about the choices that others make about their bodies. I feel that transition is a treatment with far-reaching harmful side effects — not only for the individual receiving treatment, but for those around them.

Lesbians who see their sisters disappearing are more likely to try to erase themselves. Lesbians who are forced to welcome men into their spaces will never be able to see or understand the value of female-only space, having never actually experienced it. Transition does not cure the irreconcilability of our selves with our environments. Gendered identity crises are very real to the individuals experiencing them, myself included, but this energetic drive towards change is not best spent reforming ourselves into someone who can assimilate into the world men have built. We need to use this energy to work towards restoring balance to a sick world.

Many young lesbians (and some older lesbians caught up in a youth-oriented trans/queer culture) hold political views diametrically opposed to our collective interests. We genuinely believe some off-the-wall garbage, like that it’s wrong and evil not to be attracted to penises because of “internalized cissexism.” We have been successfully brainwashed to serve males at the expense of our own health and sanity.

I have so much empathy for other women who believed transition was their best choice. I lived that. The fact is, loving a woman does not automatically mean agreeing with her. I believe that all of us deserve better. We deserve to experience autonomous female space. We deserve the opportunity to experience our bodies as a part of nature worthy of celebration, not objects to be “reconstructed.” The energy we spend trying to run from our own bodies is better spent working to support each other.

Those of us who make it out of communities like the ones I was in often only manage to do so because of strong female (in my experience, lesbian) support networks that help us relearn how to think for ourselves without getting angry when we make mistakes in the process. I hear political opponents of the transgender movement calling it extremely cult-like and in the same breath damning the women, usually lesbians, who fall into the trap. This reinforces the learned hatred of anyone who disagrees without creating any opportunity for victims of this ideology to ask questions and explore viewpoints that—while the victims have not yet extricated themselves–genuinely feel like some kind of blasphemy to them. The pace of progress needs to be determined by the individual. Frustration with the behavior of young people in the transgender community is very understandable, but even the most righteous anger is unlikely to change minds when it’s directed at someone who has been manipulated into believing that dissenting women are literally equivalent to murderers.

The beliefs they have internalized are harmful to all women. No one is obligated to subject herself to being triggered or re-traumatized by the virulent misogyny that trans activists tend to espouse, even in the name of reaching out to a sister in crisis. Taking care of yourself has to come first. I try to stay available for conversations with questioning trans-identifying females, but I can’t always be there. I need rest, too.

As I move away from viewing myself and my body as an object to improve, I’m realizing more and more how much of my energy has been devoted to appeasing men in some way. By and large, that was a waste of time. I’m working on using my emotional energy for the benefit of myself first, and then for the benefit of other women.

While I was transitioning, I was terrified of eventually regretting it. I sure as hell didn’t let on much about my doubts, for fear of losing access to medical treatment, but I was consumed all the time with obsessive thoughts about it. I didn’t understand how I could go on living as a woman with no breasts. What man would want to fuck me? Never mind that I didn’t want to be fucked by any man; that didn’t feel like a good enough answer.

I am so incredibly grateful that I learned that there was more to being a woman. Transition was absolutely not the easiest way to learn this, but it was how I learned it. It was how I learned that I could survive without men viewing me as a piece of meat. I never shaved my legs or armpits again. I stopped tittering at their stupid jokes. I dress practically. I’m grateful that I learned it was okay to exist as I am.

For me, transition was a processing of distancing my true self from my body and my environment. Detransition has been the opposite: learning to participate earnestly in the world again. For me, this isn’t about undoing my transition. I’m not seeking any further changes like electrolysis or breast reconstruction. I am a woman, even if my body is recognizable as the body of a woman who once thought transition was the best choice available to me. My body has known tragedies, but my body is not a tragedy. When I catch myself slipping into deeply misogynistic internal tirades about the aspects of my appearance that changed during transition, I practice thought replacement. I am not a waste of a woman.

I’m so grateful for all of the incredible women I’ve connected with who are on the other side of transgender identities now. Some of them are women I met years ago, when both of us were still pursuing transition. Transition doesn’t have to be forever. If transition makes you sick inside, you don’t have to live and die with that sickness. There is community. There is processing. There is genuine healing. More and more of us are waking up, each with her own story. We question and disagree, with our enemies and with each other. We learn. Together, we are moving forward.

The infallibility of the oppressed: Story of one influential trans activist

by Overwhelmed

I recently came across this well-written article from a former social justice activist. It reveals how people with good intentions try to change the world for the better, but can end up doing just the opposite. Here are some quotes from the essay that I thought were particularly relevant:

 “I need to tell people what was wrong with the activism I was engaged in, and why I bailed out.

This particular brand of politics begins with good intentions and noble causes, but metastasizes into a nightmare. In general, the activists involved are the nicest, most conscientious people you could hope to know.”

“There is something dark and vaguely cultish about this particular brand of politics. I’ve thought a lot about what exactly that is. I’ve pinned down four core features that make it so disturbing: dogmatism, groupthink, a crusader mentality, and anti-intellectualism.”

“Perhaps the most deeply held tenet of a certain version of anti-oppressive politics – which is by no means the only version – is that members of an oppressed group are infallible in what they say about the oppression faced by that group. This tenet stems from the wise rule of thumb that marginalized groups must be allowed to speak for themselves. But it takes that rule of thumb to an unwieldy extreme.”

“Consider otherkin, people who believe they are literally animals or magical creatures and who use the concepts and language of anti-oppressive politics to talk about themselves. I have no problem drawing my own conclusions about the lived experience of otherkin. Nobody is literally a honeybee or a dragon. We have to assess claims about oppression based on more than just what people say about themselves. If I took the idea of the infallibility of the oppressed seriously, I would have to trust that dragons exist. That is why it’s such an unreliable guide. (I half-expect the response, ‘Check your human privilege!’)”

I believe that many trans activists have good intentions when it comes to gender-defying kids. I think they feel noble, that they are rescuing children from inevitable doom. Since these crusaders are transgender themselves, they label themselves experts and, along with their social justice allies, conclude they know best. When someone questions their cause, they easily discount any concerns as “transphobic.” They are so focused on doing good, they are blind to the negative consequences of their campaign.

One of these likely well-intentioned activists is Aidan Key, who appears to believe that the lives of transgender children are at stake if not affirmed as the opposite sex. Key seems particularly driven to educate the public, believing that stamping out ignorance will remove the reluctance of people to accommodate these kids.

aidan-4

Aidan Key

(Before I continue, I want you to be aware that I believe no one can actually change sex, just their outward appearance. But for this post I will be referring to Aidan Key using preferred pronouns as a courtesy. I am not out to brazenly offend anyone and would actually welcome constructive dialogue on this subject.)

Who is Aidan Key? He was born female (and originally named Bonnie) but started transitioning to male in his thirties. A self-proclaimed Gender Specialist, Key has a BA in Communication, Program Development, but he counts psychotherapy and mental health counseling among his skills.

Key CV

Key has worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the public that transgender children are a normal variation. He states that these kids don’t need to change their gender expressions or identities. Instead it is society that needs to change by accepting and affirming them as their authentic selves.

 The truth of the matter is that having a transgender child is an inconvenience to society because, instead of asking the child to change, we are asking society to change. This is a tall order.

Even though Key realizes that changing the world is a “tall order,” it hasn’t stopped him from trying. For over a decade, he has been involved in many different projects, attacking what he considers ignorance from all angles.

In 2005, Aidan and his identical twin sister Brenda were featured on an Oprah Winfrey Show titled “Transgendered Twins.”

 But early on, there was one major difference—Brenda was “the lady” and Bonnie was “the tomboy.” Bonnie hated wearing dresses. When playing house, she preferred to take the role of dad because she just didn’t feel like a girl. With puberty, the twins had trouble relating at all. “I got as boy crazy as I think you could get,” Brenda says. “I’d look at Bonnie and see her be so calm and levelheaded around these boys. [I’d think], ‘How does she do that?'”

During college Bonnie realized that she was a lesbian. Right away she came out to her twin sister. “She told me she had an encounter with a woman and kissed her,” Brenda says. “I got really upset about it because we’re twins. We’re supposed to be identical.”

For the next 15 years, Bonnie lived as a lesbian, married a woman and even adopted a daughter. But once again she began to feel that things were still not right. When she met two men who had transitioned from female to male, Bonnie felt a connection. She made the most difficult choice of her life—she decided to become a man.

(As has been talked about many times on 4thWaveNow, so many trans men formerly lived as  lesbians—but no one in the media ever really delves into why these women abandon their femaleness.)

Prior to this interview with Oprah, though, Key was already becoming well known in the transgender community of Seattle, Washington. In 1999, he founded the Gender Diversity Education and Support Services. And in 2001, he launched the first Gender Odyssey conference.

Gender Diversity,  a non-profit, has the goal of increasing awareness and understanding for gender diverse individuals of all ages. The organization facilitates many support groups for families with gender-variant children. And training sessions for workplaces, health providers and K-12 public and private schools are offered. The following is information about their school trainings.

Increased awareness and education regarding gender identity enables all children to achieve a more holistic and confident school experience. Our aim is to not only assist a school in the optimal inclusion of transgender students, but to highlight the ways that creating a more inclusive environment benefits all students.

Scheduling a training or consultation with Gender Diversity will help you…

  • Understand, adhere and fully implement a school’s anti-discrimination and inclusion policies
  • More fully incorporate the topic of gender within the school’s existing diversity programs and commitments
  • Support a transgender student through a gender transition
  • Increase the school community’s understanding of gender identity and expression as it relates to all students
  • Seek specific guidance relating to gender-segregated spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, sports and other team activities
  • Adequately and confidently answer questions from parents or other students
  • With one-on-one lesson planning or problem-solving with a teacher, staff or administrator
  • Develop age-appropriate classroom instruction on issues related to gender and gender diverse identities and expressions

An ideal educational package includes training for all school personnel, parent education and age-appropriate gender education for students.

Gender Odyssey  is an international conference geared towards transgender and gender non-conforming teens and adults. It includes “thought-provoking workshops, discussion groups, social events and entertainment.” Conference programming for 2016 has not yet been released, but the schedule for 2015 is still on their website. Last year’s keynote speakers were Kate Bornstein and Andrea Jenkins. Over the course of three days, there were numerous workshops with a wide range of topics including, but not limited to, the impact of trans identities on relationships, how to change identity documentation, increasing awareness of anti-discrimination legislation, hormones and surgeries.

Quite a few workshops focused on medical intervention. One workshop presenter was Dr. Tony Mangubat, who regular readers will remember from 4thWaveNow’s post on a 15 year old gender dysphoric girl who had her breasts surgically removed.

Mangubat workshop

Another surgery workshop is presented in part by Dr. Curtis Crane, a doctor with “penis-making skills that have won him a global following.” Crane’s burgeoning top surgery business was discussed in this 4thWaveNow post.Crane workshop

This show-and-tell workshop, with the euphemism “chest surgery” in its headline, makes me particularly sad.

chest surgery

The annual Gender Odyssey Family conference was started by Aidan Key in 2007. It is tailored for families with gender variant children and “provides real tools to support and encourage your child’s self-discovery in regard to their gender.” Below is a small selection of workshops from the 2015 lineup.

 Some presentations, like this one, concerned social complications that arise as a result of a transgender identity.

kid with crush
The next three workshops were presented all or in part by gender specialist Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the subject of a recent 4thWaveNow post highlighting Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s desire to lower the age for genital surgeries because trans kids are being left in “limbo” after being on puberty blockers–the theme of the third workshop below.

Olson non binary.pngolson puberty suppression

Olson limboThe Gender Odyssey Professional conference, the newest in the series of conferences, first launched in 2012. It is geared toward professionals, and participants can earn Continuing Education credits.

Leading experts will offer sessions discussing best practices for therapists, legal considerations related to transgender issues, current medical protocols, and educational considerations including model policies for gender variant students ages K-12. Continuing Education and Clock Hours available.

The 2016 conference includes this workshop by Asaf Orr, which sounds like it is designed for teachers and school officials. Orr was one of the lead authors of “Schools in Transition,” a set of transgender-inclusive guidelines for schools, which I wrote about here.Orr schools

And here’s a workshop that seems to focus on the inconvenience of pesky gatekeepers.

gatekeeping

Then there’s this talk by Mara Keisling, a trans woman and founding Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Because the trans rights movement needs even more momentum.

Keisling

School indoctrination is a big focus of trans activists, and the conference features another workshop geared toward elementary school teachers. Johanna Eager is part of the Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming Schools project.

welcoming schools

Aidan Key has accomplished a lot with these organizations, and his activism doesn’t even come close to stopping there. Besides juggling support groups, conducting trainings and putting on conferences, he has teamed up with Kristina Olson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Washington, on the TransYouth Project.  You may remember 4thWaveNow’s analysis of the first study generated by the TransYouth Project here.

The TransYouth Project aims to help sci­en­tists, edu­ca­tors, par­ents, and chil­dren bet­ter under­stand the vari­eties of human gen­der devel­op­ment. Based out of the Social Cognitive Development Lab at the University of Washington, we are cur­rently leading the first large-scale, national, lon­gi­tu­di­nal study of devel­op­ment  in gen­der non­con­form­ing, trans­gen­der, and gen­der vari­ant youth . In addition to our primary goal of supporting the first major study of transgender children in the U.S., we are also conducting research about the origins of anti-transgender bias, and have plans for outreach projects in collaboration with some of our partner organizations.

Another one of Key’s many talents is writing. He authored the transgender child chapter of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves and has written blog posts for the Huffington Post and Welcoming Schools.

In addition to the Oprah Winfrey Show, he has appeared on Larry King Live, National Public Radio, Inside Edition and Nightline.

And that’s not all. Due to his “expertise,” Key has designed and helped implement policies and procedures for the rights of transgender school children in grades K-12 with the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), the Washington Intercollegiate Activities Association, and Seattle Public Schools.

There is still more. He is also involved in film. In 2005, Key started the annual TransLations Film Festival, which shows movies featuring transgender personalities. And, more recently he has become the Primary Consultant for the upcoming documentary “Inside Out.”

Inside Out, a 90-minute documentary, takes us deep inside the world of transgender and gender non-conforming children. Ranging in age from pre-school through high school, these children feel they were born with bodies that do not match their innate gender identity. Each yearns to live an authentic life – and live Inside Out….

In a culture that is deeply invested in gender norms, the discovery that “boys will not always be boys” has frequently led to fearful responses and an attitude of intolerance. Indeed, many view transgender rights as the next civil rights front. The stakes are high: over 40% of transgender youth attempt suicide at least once before their 20th birthday. This forces many parents to ask themselves, “Would we rather have a live daughter or a dead son?”

You would think someone as steeped in transgender research and activism as Aidan Key would know that the 41% suicide attempt figure (repeated uncritically ad nauseum in the press) is based on a faulty interpretation of the survey by the Williams Institute. 40% of trans-identified people don’t actually “attempt suicide.” In fact, gender nonconforming people (not just those who ID as trans) have more suicidal thoughts and self-harming behavior over their lifetime, and it is not at all clear that “transition” is a solution for most. But scaring parents with the worst imaginable nightmare is standard practice for trans activists, and Key is obviously no exception in using this emotional blackmail technique to quash dissent.

Why did I just enumerate the prolific accomplishments of Aidan Key? Well, I intended to convey his great influence on countless numbers of children and adults, and point out that he is only one of many trans activists doing so. These people are the drivers of the international rise in transgender-identifying youth.

GIDS increase in trans kidsOf course many activists, like Aidan Key, think this increase in trans youth is a positive thing. Here is Key on a live chat at the Seattle Times:

Seattle times

I predict that unless something drastically changes, we will be seeing many more youth like ours caught up in this trend: Kids who have been educated that being transgender is a normal variation of the human condition; that it is possible to change sex; that society needs to accommodate them; and that transitioning will solve all of their problems. These messages are especially attractive to children who have difficulty navigating the turbulent adolescent years.

Initially, the goal of trans activists may have been to make it more acceptable for boys to wear dresses and play with dolls and girls to be on soccer teams and play with trucks (which I think is a noble aim), but the activism has gotten out of hand. Now there are many confused children that are convinced that altering their bodies is the only option for happiness. And it has literally become a nightmare for many families.

I wonder at what point, if any, trans activists and their allies will start to question their crusade. I hope for the sake of our children that more of them, like the social justice warrior quoted at the beginning of this piece, wake up to the harms that their campaign is causing.

And, I hope that more people will start challenging the premises of trans activism. We need more people to realize that members of an oppressed group are not infallible. Being transgender doesn’t mean they know best. They are human like everyone else and their views should be assessed as such–not as all-knowing experts.