60 Minutes Discusses Transgender Medical Issues

I applaud 60 Minutes for broadcasting this balanced report on trangender medical issues.

[Added May 24, 2021]

The ACLU’s famously pro-censorship attorney, Chase Strangio probably liked the first half of 60 Minutes’ recent discussion on transgender health care, the part discussing the fact that many states, including Arkansas, are attempting to restrict surgery and hormone injections for minors who claim to be transgender. I agree that this legislation should be critically examined and should not interfere with legitimate well-researched healthcare. Lesley Stahl indicated that “the vast majority” of people who have transitioned are satisfied. But Strangio’s Tweet-rant claims that it is “dangerous” and “unaccountable” that 60 Minutes considered concerns with transgender health care.

Strangio

As part of this topic, Stahl interviewed thirty teenagers and young adults who detransitioned, all of them having regrets, many of them after surgery and hormones. These young adults regretted that they got caught up in the excitement, many of them frustrated that their counselors “blindly affirmed” the transgender diagnosis and did not push back or dig deeper into what was really going on in their lives. I assume that Strangio was also outraged that 60 Minutes dared to mention the existence of a growing sub-Reddit Detrans group with more than 19,000 members.

The show also featured nationally recognized psychologist (and transgender woman) Erica Anderson, in accordance with the positions taken by many major medical organizations, criticized the new wave of state laws, characterizing them as “ominous.” Anderson admitted, however, that there are no existing accreditation standards for work in this field of transgender health care. Anderson expressed concern that many health professionals in this field are not well-trained and she called treatment offered by many healthcare professionals “deplorable.”

Another expert, Laura Edwards-Leeper, a psychologist at one of the first transgender clinics (in Boston), stated that she is concerned about rampant unethical behavior by many practitioners. She noted that many therapists in the field share her concerns, but are “scared to speak up” for fear of pushback from the trans community.

For Strangio of the ACLU, however, this well-balanced investigative piece is not good enough. It contains too much information. Ira Glasser and John Stuart Mill are both spinning in their graves.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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    Erich Vieth October 20, 2021 Reply

    Lisa Littman has completed a new study regarding detransitioners. Colin Wright gives a long detailed overview of where we seem to be on this issue. He then addresses Littman’s new study:

    This week, the peer-reviewed Archives of Sexual Behavior published a new article by Littman, titled “Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners.” As in 2018, Littman is exploring an area that is scandalously under-researched. (The 2015 US Transgender Survey, on which many prominent trans advocates have relied for their published research, was formulated in a way that generally excluded detransitioners, as it restricted participation to those individuals “currently residing in a US state of territory” who “identif[y] as transgender, trans, genderqueer, non-binary, and other identities on the transgender identity spectrum.”)

    In Littman’s study, participants were asked why they’d originally set about the process of transition. More than 70 percent of (natal) female respondents selected both “I thought transitioning was my only option to feel better” and “it made me uncomfortable to be perceived romantically/sexually as a [female].” Interestingly, only 13 percent of natal females—but fully 39 percent of natal males—agreed with the statement “I had erotic reasons for wanting to transition.” It has long been a tenet of gender orthodoxy that gender identity and sexual orientation are to be regarded as completely separate characteristics. The fact that some biologically male trans women are autogynephiles (individuals who become sexually aroused at the thought of themselves as a woman) is seen as particularly radioactive—even though the phenomenon has been studied for decades, and some trans individuals discuss their own autogynophilia candidly. And so it will be interesting to see whether Littman’s critics attack her with particular ferocity on this point.

    In describing survey results published by German researcher Elie Vandenbussche in April, Littman noted that respondents’ expressed reasons for detransition included:

    realizing that their gender dysphoria was related to other issues (70%); health concerns (62%); observing that transition did not help their dysphoria (50%); and that they found alternatives to deal with their dysphoria (45%) … External factors such as lack of support, financial concerns, and discrimination were less common (13%, 12%, and 10%, respectively). Many in the sample described that when they detransitioned they lost support or were ostracized from lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities.

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