Not all Transgender “Affirmative Care” Have a Happy Ending

Excerpt from new article by Suzy Weiss (writing at Common Sense, the Substack of her sister, Bari Weiss). The article is titled “The Testosterone Hangover: The Biden administration says transgender kids are entitled to ‘gender-affirming’ medical care. These girls disagree. ‘I have this intense rage in me over the harm that was done to me.’

Gender-affirming care, the president’s spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, explained at a recent press conference, was “best practice and potentially lifesaving.” The point was: If trans kids weren’t able to transition, not just socially, but medically with cross sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries, they might well kill themselves.

The Biden policy was presented as commonsensical, but it is out of step with many progressive countries and some leading experts. Countries that have gone down the “gender affirming” road—like Norway, Sweden, France—are now reversing course in the absence of evidence that such care actually improves mental health outcomes for dysphoric children. Pioneering doctors, like Erica Anderson of the University of California San Francisco’s Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic—herself a transwoman who has helped hundreds of teens through their transitions—are warning of the dangers of this policy. Critics say that even the phrase “gender-affirming” is misleading—a euphemism for something closer to medical malpractice. When else do we trust children to self-diagnose and make lifelong medical decisions?

And then there is the growing chorus of young people, including Chloe, who had come to regret—deeply—the decisions they had made and the gender-affirming care they had received.

In the middle of this story are teenagers who are largely going unheard by a government and a medical establishment that’s plowing ahead. “I don’t think gender affirming care helps kids like me,” says Chloe. “There should be more regard to alternatives in treating dysphoria, especially when it comes to kids.”

Share

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.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Avatar of Bill Heath
    Bill Heath

    It’s malpractice at its worst. A school nurse cannot give a child an aspirin without parental consent, but advising and scheduling surgery is acceptable.

  2. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    Yes, Kids Are Getting Gender Surgeries: Marketing the “miracle cure” of double mastectomy to kids on TikTok:

    If I’d been duped into believing, and reporting, that the science of gender-affirming care was settled, Grace had been duped into partaking of that care, and one thing she felt so foolish about was believing that a double mastectomy would alleviate her suffering. Instead, it increased it, and began her course-correction to detransition.

    But why wouldn’t we believe it? After all, the AMA, the AAP and loads of other medical and psychological associations—not to mention the President—have endorsed these medical interventions for young people with gender dysphoria, despite the fact that multiple other countries have abandoned or pulled back on them in the past two years. . . .

    And today, Suzi Weiss published a piece in Common Sense with the stories of several girls who’d had mastectomies as teens and came to regret them. If that doesn’t sway you, try perusing the more than 42,000 GoFundMe campaigns to raise money for top surgery.

Leave a Reply