What The NY Times Leaves Out About Detransition
Kind of...
Yesterday, The New York Times ran an op-ed about detransition, which admits that some people regret and were harmed…but insists that nothing about that experience supports banning gender-affirming care—the approach that led to the harm. (More from me on the story at Unherd.)
By way of full disclosure, over the past five years I’ve pitched somewhere around ten pieces that touch on detransition to the Opinion section of the paper of record, as well as about the shoddy science behind gender-affirming care. While editors turned those pieces down, they published one comparing regret over permanent bodily changes in the name of gender identity to quitting the swim team. Once Pamela Paul wrote a compassionate and well-reported piece about detransitioners, the rejection I most often received for pieces critical of or concerned about the gender-affirmation industry was: “Pamela Paul has already covered this.” (No matter that she’s no longer at the paper—for reasons none of us know, but suspect has something to do with her coverage of such topics.)
Each op-ed I pitched urged liberals and Democrats to take seriously the issue of detransitioners, and of those harmed by gender medicine, whether they’d detransitioned or not, and of the shoddy science behind gender medicine. I urged medical associations and the media to stop framing the issue as Left versus Right, because it obscured the reality of the science and the harm. If we didn’t take care of it ourselves, I cautioned, the Right would do it for us.
Yet the Times allowed a critique of gender medicine science only under the guise of critiquing Trump, and allowed the admission of regret and harm under the guise of critiquing Trump, too. We—liberals, Democrats—still claim victimhood beneath this mantle, and don’t get closer to understanding how we brought this on ourselves, with our own reckless abandon of boundaries, our unwillingness to budge or reform.
I support critiques of Trump, don’t get me wrong. His erosion of boundaries, of checks and balances, is terrifying. But the story of youth gender medicine is not one of evil Republicans and blameless Democrat victims. It’s the story of blindly affirming Democrats handing the issue to Republicans on a silver platter, and them taking it up both because of the political advantage and because of being genuinely concerned about and moved by detransitioners’ stories.
The New York Times should let a detransitioner who was harmed by the gender-affirmation industry tell his or her own story, and give its readers the same chance to be concerned and moved.
I just sent the Times this letter to the editor:
As a centrist, Biden/Harris-voting gay Democrat, I was dismayed by your recent op-ed on detransition. While it noted that some people regret gender transition and are harmed by it, the piece treated those accounts mainly as talking points used by Trump and his allies—conflating pushback against Trump with pushback against gender-critical activism. This framing misleads readers by erasing the existence of a centrist, gender-critical movement—one with no ties to and no sympathy for Trump—that has long raised concerns about poorly evidenced medical interventions lacking adequate safeguards.
By avoiding a frank examination of the science and lived experiences of detransitioners, the Times preserves a Left-versus-Right narrative that obscures the truth. Let a detransitioner harmed by “gender-affirming” medicine tell their own story, without political framing.
Oh my gosh that op-ed.
I wonder how many of those "nearly 1,000 people" stayed with the study from start to finish, and fully cooperated. Loss-to-follow-up is real, and it can affect results. However, for the sake of argument, let's accept McKinnon's work as reliable. The assertion he makes is:
"33 percent of participants, said they detransitioned because of an identity change, mental health-related factors and dissatisfaction with treatment. They were much more likely to express strong regret with the decision to transition. Some felt that they had not been adequately informed about the risks of medical treatments."
McKinnon further asserts:
"Nothing in my team’s research, or any other studies on detransition, should lead to the conclusion that policymakers ought to issue blanket bans on gender-affirming care..."
A few paragraphs later, he points out:
"Many young people experience gender flexibly, thinking about it in new ways that are often surprising to researchers, including me. Gender-questioning and less rigid expectations surrounding transition may also mean that some people feel more able to change course once they’ve started down one path."
So, my reading of McKinnon's own work is that he thinks that one-third of those who receive treatments will regret having done so for reasons unrelated to prejudice or whatever. Outside of that group there are people who may regret the experience simply because they no longer adhere to the same gender notion that brought them to treatment in the first place. He doesn't specify just how many those might be, but we can safely assume it would push the number of regretters above one-third. And yet McKinnon thinks none of this justifies "blanket bans." One has to wonder...what would?