There have been many opinion and personal story blogs and articles about ‘transgender kids’ published over the last year in particular. On this page is a collection of articles from professionals and news reports which contain comments from professionals.
Medicine Must Do Better on Gender
Margaret McCartney, the British Medical Journal, March 2018
“Frequently, media narratives describing parents’ realisation that their child may be transgender occurs when the preschool child is interested in doing or wearing things outside society’s expectations. Yet playing with dolls and liking dresses doesn’t make children female, just as playing with trucks and liking mud doesn’t make them male.”
Most children and teens with gender dysphoria also have multiple other psychological issues
Alex Fradera, The British Psychological Society Research Digest, January 2018
“The possibility that disclosure of gender dysphoria may in some cases be driven by earlier psychological vulnerabilities and social problems seems likely to be greater than zero. This is a controversial idea among many online trans activists, but actually it isn’t among health practitioners, even those who espouse the gender affirmation philosophy, who recognise that some young gender identity referrals may be transiently mixed-up individuals.”
Misunderstanding a New Form of Gender Dysphoria
Lisa Marchiano, Quillette, October 2017
“Although not much is known at this time about ROGD, it appears likely that it may be a kind of social contagion in which young people – often teen girls – come to believe that they are transgender. Preliminary research indicates that young people who identify as trans “out of the blue” may have been influenced by social media sites that valorize being trans. In addition, researchers have observed a pattern of clusters of friends coming out together.”
Outbreak: On Transgender Teens and Psychic Epidemics
Lisa Marchiano, Psychological Perspectives, October 2017
“Currently, we don’t have a good understanding of what causes someone to experience gender dysphoria, although it is likely that the etiology of dysphoria will prove to have complex biological, social, and psychological influences. Although scientists acknowledge how little we understand this condition, the mainstream media and the medical and psychiatric establishment have seized upon an easily digestible narrative that is based in the ideology of innate gender identity.”
Put Children’s Safety First, Not Ideology
Katherine Kersten, Twin Cities, July 2017
“In fact, there is very little medical research on the long-term effects of hormone use in the context of gender transition. The effects on children’s brain development, for example, are unknown. Fenway Health, an LGBT medical facility in Boston, warns that “the long term effects” of testosterone use by females and estrogen use by males have “not been scientifically studied and are impossible to predict.””
Growing Pains
Hruz, Meyer, McHugh, The New Atlantis June 2017
“In light of the growing prominence of gender identity issues in our society, and the appeal that puberty suppression may have for parents raising children who identify as the opposite sex, it is worth examining in detail what puberty suppression is, how it works, and whether it is as safe and prudent as its advocates maintain. As we shall see, the evidence for the safety and efficacy of puberty suppression is thin, based more on the subjective judgments of clinicians than on rigorous empirical evidence. It is, in this sense, still experimental — yet it is an experiment being conducted in an uncontrolled and unsystematic manner.”
Transgender Teens: Sometimes Caution is the Right Approach
Lisa Marchiano, Psyched, 2017
“The puberty blockers and hormones that are currently being used to treat gender dysphoria are being used off-label and there is some evidence that we may not understand the long-term effects of these medications. In addition, there is a body of writing and vlogging online by detransitioners – those who pursued transition but then later came to re-identify with their birth sex.”
Gender Dysphoria and Surgical Abuse
John Whitehall, Quadrant Online, December 2016
“The Western medical profession boasts that it rests on “evidence-based medicine” but the tiny fraction involved with “affirmation” of gender identity in confused children is proceeding without supportive evidence for claims of high incidence, the need and safety of medical and surgical intervention, the avoidance of self-harm, and for the concept that the process will produce a happier human being in a happier society. Faith is needed for affirmation.”
Prominent Psychiatrist: Transgender is ‘Emotional Unhappiness … Purely Psychological’
CNS News, 2016
“Dr. Berger told the committee, “From a scientific perspective, let me clarify what ‘transgendered’ actually means. I am speaking now about the scientific perspective – and not any political lobbying position that may be proposed by any group, medical or non-medical.
“‘Transgendered’ are people who claim that they really are or wish to be people of the sex opposite to which they were born, or to which their chromosomal configuration attests,” he stated. “Sometimes, some of these people have claimed that they are ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ or alternatively ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body.’”
“Scientifically, there is no such thing,” he said.”
John Hopkins Psychiatrist: ‘Transgendered Men Don’t Become Women’
Michael W Chapman, CNS News May 2016
“The idea that one’s sexuality is a feeling and not a biological fact “is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges””
Why Transgender Kids Should Wait to Transition
Debra W Soh, neuroscientist, Pacific Standard 2015
“For a young child whose gender dysphoria would have desisted without intervention, these procedures amount to a needlessly challenging process to undergo—and that’s without considering the implications of choosing to transition back. Even a social transition back to one’s original gender role can be an emotionally difficult experience for children.”
Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme
by Paul McHugh, former Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital 2015
“The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change.”
The Absurdity Of Transgenderism: A Stern But Necessary Critique
Carlos D Flores, Public Discourse, February 2015
“We should make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, not obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.”
When Transgender Kids Transition Medical Risks Are Both Known and Unknown
Frontline, 2015
“While transgender adults have taken hormones sometimes for years, the generation growing up now is among the first to start taking hormones so young. Since most people who start hormones take them for life, doctors say there also isn’t enough research into the long-term impact of taking estrogen or testosterone for what could end up being 50 to 70 years.”
“There are so many unanswered questions around the long-term consequences, and whether your health risk profile really becomes that of a male or female,” Garofalo says. “If we start testosterone today, will you have the cardiac risk profile of a male or female as you grow older? Will you develop breast cancer because we’re administering estrogen?
“I think those are the unanswered questions that really trouble me, and can only be answered with long-term follow-up studies.”
“This is Who He Is, I Have to Respect That”
Guardian report, Sept 2015
Dr Polly Carmichael, the consultant clinical psychologist who leads the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service says:
“When the idea of the blocker being available to younger people was being pushed forward, I think that inevitably – understandably – there were quite simplistic arguments that if you have the blocker then all the problems disappear. In our experience, all the problems do not go away.”
“The blocker is said to be completely reversible, which is disingenuous because nothing’s completely reversible. It might be that the introduction of natal hormones [those you are born with] at puberty has an impact on the trajectory of gender dysphoria.”
Pink Boys: What’s the Best Way to Raise Children Who Might Have Gender Identity Issues?
Alice Dreger Ph.D, Pacific Standard 2013
“But the truth is […] that a lot of “gender nonconforming” kids don’t have a simple story of being “trapped in the wrong body.” They are expressing more subtle, more complex, and more varied messages of self. What they need isn’t therapy; what they need is to know that it’s OK to be gender non-conforming. It’s perfectly OK be a male who has feminine-typical interests, behaviors, and desires, or a female who has masculine-typical interests, behaviors, and desires.”
Read the full article here.
No-one Knows the Potential Side-Effects of this Experiment on Young People
Dale O’Leary, Mercatornet, February 2009
“This debate ignores a more basic fact: In reality it is impossible for a person to change their sex. Our sex – male or female is written on every cell of our body. George Burou, a surgeon who performed over 700 SRS operations, admitted: “I don’t change men into women. I transform male genitals into genitals that have a female aspect. All the rest is in the patient’s mind.””
Sex Changes Are Not Effective Say Researchers
David Batty, The Guardian, July 2004
“There is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve the lives of transsexuals, with many people remaining severely distressed and even suicidal after the operation, according to a medical review”