Queue for brain

Like so many of these kids, our son is fixated on medical transition. He knows he is welcome to dress and present however he wants. But he still looks, dresses, and acts like a “typical” teenage boy because first he wants to transform physically. You’d think a therapist or a gender clinic would be able to assess if this is the right or wrong thing for him. But I’ve listened to enough parental accounts and interviewed enough detransitioners, doctors and therapists to now know that this is not true.

Therapists are not free to explore teens’ transgender self-diagnoses for fear of losing their licenses. They, like gender clinics, operate under the American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy that any kid who says they are trans is affirmed.

As Portland, Ore., pediatrician Julia Mason says in the film I made, Affirmation Generation, “Every kid I was sending to the gender clinic was being transitioned.” Without comprehensive assessments, while other mental illnesses are ignored, these kids are put on lifelong invasive, experimental and costly medicine. Thus, as journalist Helen Joyce, author of TRANS: When Ideology Meets Reality, says, this means they are “getting very poor treatment.”

Earlier this month, gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed, a queer woman married to a transgender man, went public with her experience as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

“By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm.’ Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care,” she said.

As psychologist Stella O’Malley says in my film, “If it was a solution, if it worked, I’d be very open to it. But I’ve met too many detransitioners who said ‘I was constantly fighting against nature. It’s like putting diesel in the [gas] tank.’”

These kids are risking sterility, sexual dysfunction, a range of complex medical issues from stroke to cancer, and increased mental instability for a treatment that has not been proven to work. Most frightfully, studies have shown that transition does not reduce the risk of suicide in this vulnerable population.

Several European countries such as Sweden, Finland, the U.K. and France, have come to learn the hard way that the benefits of medical transition have not been proven to outweigh the risks. In some cases, they believe the harm outweighs the benefit. Those countries, leaders in protecting the rights of transgender people, are closing clinics, reversing course.

That is where the course correction must come from: Progressives willing to ask hard questions and speak hard truths. As journalist Lisa Selin Davis says in the film, “It’s up to us on the left to walk this back. I want liberals to make room for gender diversity without telling kids they need to leave their sex category.”

And that is why I made this film. Even if my community disapproves. Even if I have to use a pseudonym to protect my son. I made this film because too many parents believe what I used to believe: That kids’ trans identities should not be questioned, and that medical transition is the only path. The truth is so much more complicated than that.

Being liberally minded means keeping an open mind. Give me and the 12 experts, six detransitioners and more than 40 articles and scientific studies cited in the film a chance to present the evidence."

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2023/02/18/i-made-a-film-about-transgender-kids-that-doesnt-align-with-my-politics/

The Dallas Morning News

Filmmaker: I believed in gender affirming care. Then I saw what happened to my son

Editor’s Note: At the columnist’s request, The Dallas Morning News is using a pseudonym for the writer of this essay to protect the identity and safety of...

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