I’ll admit Lisa, I was pretty irked that this will be seen as some new revelation by the NYT and the article’s author/s. I so wish you were getting the recognition you deserve, publicly and monetarily.
I feel the same. It's as if the NYT writers "discovered" that PB's could be harming kids. Who knew?? Uhhhh.....so many people who have been saying this for years and trying to get them to publish it. I am really glad that NYT put that piece out - grateful even. But my undying gratitude and appreciation goes to Lisa and the many that I do count as heroes who have been voicing their concerns, and incurring harm for it, for years.
I too am heartened by the fact that the NYT published this article. And while the lack of acknowledgment of previous mis-reporting (or non-reporting) is frustrating, it’s hardly surprising.
My bigger concern, though, is that many readers may come away with the idea that the biggest issue with puberty blockers is physiological side effects (e.g., on bone density) and so it’s just a question of trade-offs and/or mitigation (calcium supplements!). There’s only passing mention of the idea that puberty blockers end up being a “gateway drug” to cross-sex hormones, and that being allowed to go through natural puberty would likely cause the resolution of gender dysphoria in the vast majority of these kids. But I guess that’s still a bridge too far for the NYT. Baby steps...
Thank you for this, Lisa, and especially for the very important point regarding the use of "transgender kids". I agree with you 100 percent and I've said it to anyone who would listen: trans is what you do, not who you are. There are many ways to deal with gender dysphoria and medical transition is one of them, perhaps the most radical and one that should arguably be the last resort. I do hope that Corinna is right about medicalization being only for adults in the future, I really do think that's the only right way.
In my parental forum for parents of trans-identifying kids someone asked how we think this craze is going to end. I think we can see the end now, and it'll be not with a bang but with a whimper.
I think this is an extremely important point that doesn’t get enough coverage. Generally speaking, it seems to have escaped the average person that what we mean when we say “trans” is not a stable or well defined thing anymore.
I wholeheartedly agree with Corinna's assertion that "there will be no heroes in this movement." As an outspoken trans man, on this very topic, I have faced the backlash. I will not be silenced.
"The most vocal 'trans activists' grossly misrepresent the majority of the trans community"
I would like to discover that your claim is true:
that the greater trans demographics holds views - about the 'gender affirmation' model, about the massive spike in teenage girls presenting as trans, and about the risks and unknowns of medicalization - that are at odds with "'trans activists.'"
Can you support your claim? Are there polls, or evaluations of attitudes, perhaps based on medical/psychological services self-reported information, or discussions of attitudes discoverable on trans internet sites?
laugh - ayup - it's just that kinda anecdotalism writ large i'm hoping to get beyond - on the second of the two Hill Rising pieces I cited earlier, the trans advocate was at pains to point out her positions were based mainly on her own experience - prob' is that, at the same time it limits her authority, the 'authority of experience' is its own kind of claim to authority - 'every person i've ever talked to, and i've talked to a lot' kind of thing.
I think we are going to have to be prepared for the possibility that even though there may be a sizable shift in how gender dysphoria is treated in children, the idea of gender dysphoria and transitioning as a go-to explanation and treatment for people with a wide variety of vague or ambiguous mental health issues is here to stay and we will still be dealing with numbers of people transitioning and regretting that will be fewer than now but still greater than before the 2010s explosion of these numbers. Precedent can be seen in the often cited satanic panic daycare scandal and the coinciding repressed memory scandals. Despite the fact that these scandals are long past the time when they captured their peak number of people, research shows that 60-89% of mental health therapists still believe in the wrong idea at the core of those scandals - that traumatic memories can be “repressed” completely and suddenly “recovered” under the right conditions. People everywhere are still hearing this idea from their therapists and reading about it in the wildly popular (and therapist recommended) book The Body Keeps the Score and using third incorrect concept as a way to understand their distress. I think we need to be prepared for “gender dysphoria” and “born in the wrong body” to stay in the public mind and the words of therapists in the same way. We  are going to have to hope that doctors and institutions will at least become more conservative and cautious in allowing people to medicalize based on these beliefs in the future, and any chances of that happening will be the result of lawsuits causing doctors and insurance companies to be less likely to provide or pay for medicalization. 
I agree with most of what you wrote but I 1000% support all laws which protect women and girls sports. As a former female athlete and a second wave feminist these were hard fought rights that we should not deny to our daughters and granddaughters. Every two or three days I hear the latest story of a boy knocking a girl off the podium or the team and taking their awards, recognition and scholarships. That's a hard no for me.
One of the first things I thought about the NYT article (I’m too jaded and angry for any sense of relief from an article that posed a little to much of the “both sides” softening and was years overdue) was how infuriating it must feel to have worked so hard to get this message out only to get rejected. You say it’s not important but it absolutely is.
I want to add to what Corinna said: we can’t underestimate the importance of the courageous detransitioners who are telling their stories. I believe they are largely responsible for whatever shifts we are seeing. I hate that we need them to bare their souls when they’re dealing with such trauma, but we do for the harm to end.
Lisa, thank you. You have put the current situation in a perfect little nutshell. On a personal level, things like the NYT article give me hope for my kid, but also exhaust me. I've gotten my hopes up so many times, only for our situation to backslide. And I live in a very liberal city that will probably fight this tooth and nail. Our new mayor issued a declaration against "conversion therapy," that I doubt very much is even happening in our community, and I have no doubt talk therapy/exploration for gender dysphoric kids will be called conversion therapy by many of my fellow parents. I truly hope the tide is turning. My kid turns 18 in a little over a year.
It's hard because if you have a teen who is struggling with ADHD, anxiety, depression and gender dysphoria you really can't trust a therapist not to affirm the dysphoria. With that you are left concluding that the mental healthcare industry is stacked against helping your teen since they won't question whether the co-morbid conditions might have caused the teen to conclude they are the opposite sex. My family has decided that no therapy is the answer for us.
Yes, yes, we feel trapped and have given up on therapy for now. We found a non-affirming, very kind, good therapist, but kid claimed they could tell the therapist "Knew nothing about trans people" because he was asking them questions about their identity instead of confirming they are a girl and need hormones. Our kid has Tourette's Syndrome and I suspect is on the spectrum, but no one wants to look at how those issues impact his thinking.
Oh my god, I have the same dreams. I had one where my son was swimming with his shirt off, like he did before all this happened. He was so energetic and comfortable in his body before all this: cartwheels on the beach, wrestling with me and his dad, jumping on the trampoline with friends, etc, etc. It all stopped. We have kept family photos up, and they have not complained, but maybe that will be the next gut-punch.
I was very, very glad to see that NY Times article, but am equally as glad that you have written this and also that you have made it shareable. A lot of really good people, like you and others here whose stories I have come to know, thanks to your chat area, have suffered terribly and needlessly. Even as we can be grateful that, perhaps, the fever is beginning to break, we must never forget all the damage that has been done to so many. So, thank you, Lisa, once again.
I also think we need to create a better operational definition of what it means when it is said there are at least some people who truly seem to benefit from transition that includes the realities of medical and even just social transition. These are people who are able to transition and due to psychology, personality type, and temperamental factors have a high tolerance for the side effects and required ongoing maintenance of transition-related medicine as well as the ability to own, tolerate, and accept all the psychological demands required to live in a way that will not 100% match the physical realities of their body and will require accepting they don’t have control over the perceptions or thoughts of others - and also accept that this inner acceptance and tolerance may change or fatigue over time. Corinna Cohn does such a good job talking about those inner experiences over her 30 years living as a medicalize trans woman.
"I oppose bans because a) I don’t want the government making those decisions and b) I think they get in the way of desperately needed reform."
Who else but the government is going to protect the public from baseless medical charlatanism? Should we abolish drug screening by the FDA because it restricts patient choice? No, of course not.
And what reform do you envision if not the banning of pseudoscientific medical procedures that do immense harm?
another excellent piece. I too share some shred of hope. Yes, the left needs to take responsibility for their extremity. The media points out when the right lurches, but never the other way and I'm a lefty! Like McMartin, no one will print "we got it wrong". Did the op eds that supported the Iraq invasion recant? No, it was Bush's fault, not them for going along with it. But, find we don't need "i told you so." Just protect kids please. Also great point about the word trans. I feel the conflation of trans right and stopping medicalization is problamatic for those of us wanting kids to be safe. All people should be treated with respect and disfiguring distressed youths must end. Both can be true.
Can it be that the social environment children live in -- their peers and parents of peers -- are driving them to experience the depression and anxiety we see? Is it possible that the sensitive boys the tomboy girls are reacting to a hostile world? These are children after all.
"When the Satanic Panic turned out to be a mass hysteria, there were no media mea culpas then, either."
Yup. Many 'gender affirming' advocates have unscrupulously smeared folks worried about the dangers of medicalization as 'anti-trans' and 'transphobic' to in order to win by shutting up First Amendment public speech - discussion and argument that might challenge these views.
This is part of a longstanding pattern that includes not only the American Salem witch hysteria of the 1600s, but later, overtly political hysterias and attacks on free speech - the post-WWI Red Scare and the 1950s McCarthy Period 'witch trials' that took its name from the 1600s hysteria.
When the McCarthy Period anti-communist witch hunts were finally politically resisted - by a rising generation of anti-southern-segregation and anti-Vietnam War youth - there were few media mea culpas for the personal and political damage either - not for Americans who lost their jobs, not for weakened labor unions, not for weakened New Deal legislation, not for stifled freedom of speech.
And it continues. In the early aughts, those resisting war criminal President Bush's non-fact-based Iraq invasion were smeared as Sadaam lovers; and now calls for US negotiation efforts - versus a purely military response to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine - are smeared as 'Putin loving' to shut up free speech about US foreign policy, even as majorities of Americans poll as favoring increased US negotiation.
It's disappointing to hear you contribute to the gaslighting and maligning of those seeking to safeguard kids from a predatory medical industry. Governments regulate all sorts of things. One could just as well say that your writing on this issue helps "solidify fear and hatred of kids who identify as trans".
I completely agree. Medically worthless mutilation and sterilization of children is a crime against humanity, full stop. OF COURSE the government should stop it!
I’ll admit Lisa, I was pretty irked that this will be seen as some new revelation by the NYT and the article’s author/s. I so wish you were getting the recognition you deserve, publicly and monetarily.
I feel the same. It's as if the NYT writers "discovered" that PB's could be harming kids. Who knew?? Uhhhh.....so many people who have been saying this for years and trying to get them to publish it. I am really glad that NYT put that piece out - grateful even. But my undying gratitude and appreciation goes to Lisa and the many that I do count as heroes who have been voicing their concerns, and incurring harm for it, for years.
I too am heartened by the fact that the NYT published this article. And while the lack of acknowledgment of previous mis-reporting (or non-reporting) is frustrating, it’s hardly surprising.
My bigger concern, though, is that many readers may come away with the idea that the biggest issue with puberty blockers is physiological side effects (e.g., on bone density) and so it’s just a question of trade-offs and/or mitigation (calcium supplements!). There’s only passing mention of the idea that puberty blockers end up being a “gateway drug” to cross-sex hormones, and that being allowed to go through natural puberty would likely cause the resolution of gender dysphoria in the vast majority of these kids. But I guess that’s still a bridge too far for the NYT. Baby steps...
Thank you for this, Lisa, and especially for the very important point regarding the use of "transgender kids". I agree with you 100 percent and I've said it to anyone who would listen: trans is what you do, not who you are. There are many ways to deal with gender dysphoria and medical transition is one of them, perhaps the most radical and one that should arguably be the last resort. I do hope that Corinna is right about medicalization being only for adults in the future, I really do think that's the only right way.
In my parental forum for parents of trans-identifying kids someone asked how we think this craze is going to end. I think we can see the end now, and it'll be not with a bang but with a whimper.
I think this is an extremely important point that doesn’t get enough coverage. Generally speaking, it seems to have escaped the average person that what we mean when we say “trans” is not a stable or well defined thing anymore.
I wholeheartedly agree with Corinna's assertion that "there will be no heroes in this movement." As an outspoken trans man, on this very topic, I have faced the backlash. I will not be silenced.
"The most vocal 'trans activists' grossly misrepresent the majority of the trans community"
I would like to discover that your claim is true:
that the greater trans demographics holds views - about the 'gender affirmation' model, about the massive spike in teenage girls presenting as trans, and about the risks and unknowns of medicalization - that are at odds with "'trans activists.'"
Can you support your claim? Are there polls, or evaluations of attitudes, perhaps based on medical/psychological services self-reported information, or discussions of attitudes discoverable on trans internet sites?
Please note that this is a good faith question.
laugh - ayup - it's just that kinda anecdotalism writ large i'm hoping to get beyond - on the second of the two Hill Rising pieces I cited earlier, the trans advocate was at pains to point out her positions were based mainly on her own experience - prob' is that, at the same time it limits her authority, the 'authority of experience' is its own kind of claim to authority - 'every person i've ever talked to, and i've talked to a lot' kind of thing.
Thank you!
I think we are going to have to be prepared for the possibility that even though there may be a sizable shift in how gender dysphoria is treated in children, the idea of gender dysphoria and transitioning as a go-to explanation and treatment for people with a wide variety of vague or ambiguous mental health issues is here to stay and we will still be dealing with numbers of people transitioning and regretting that will be fewer than now but still greater than before the 2010s explosion of these numbers. Precedent can be seen in the often cited satanic panic daycare scandal and the coinciding repressed memory scandals. Despite the fact that these scandals are long past the time when they captured their peak number of people, research shows that 60-89% of mental health therapists still believe in the wrong idea at the core of those scandals - that traumatic memories can be “repressed” completely and suddenly “recovered” under the right conditions. People everywhere are still hearing this idea from their therapists and reading about it in the wildly popular (and therapist recommended) book The Body Keeps the Score and using third incorrect concept as a way to understand their distress. I think we need to be prepared for “gender dysphoria” and “born in the wrong body” to stay in the public mind and the words of therapists in the same way. We  are going to have to hope that doctors and institutions will at least become more conservative and cautious in allowing people to medicalize based on these beliefs in the future, and any chances of that happening will be the result of lawsuits causing doctors and insurance companies to be less likely to provide or pay for medicalization. 
I agree with most of what you wrote but I 1000% support all laws which protect women and girls sports. As a former female athlete and a second wave feminist these were hard fought rights that we should not deny to our daughters and granddaughters. Every two or three days I hear the latest story of a boy knocking a girl off the podium or the team and taking their awards, recognition and scholarships. That's a hard no for me.
One of the first things I thought about the NYT article (I’m too jaded and angry for any sense of relief from an article that posed a little to much of the “both sides” softening and was years overdue) was how infuriating it must feel to have worked so hard to get this message out only to get rejected. You say it’s not important but it absolutely is.
I want to add to what Corinna said: we can’t underestimate the importance of the courageous detransitioners who are telling their stories. I believe they are largely responsible for whatever shifts we are seeing. I hate that we need them to bare their souls when they’re dealing with such trauma, but we do for the harm to end.
Lisa, thank you. You have put the current situation in a perfect little nutshell. On a personal level, things like the NYT article give me hope for my kid, but also exhaust me. I've gotten my hopes up so many times, only for our situation to backslide. And I live in a very liberal city that will probably fight this tooth and nail. Our new mayor issued a declaration against "conversion therapy," that I doubt very much is even happening in our community, and I have no doubt talk therapy/exploration for gender dysphoric kids will be called conversion therapy by many of my fellow parents. I truly hope the tide is turning. My kid turns 18 in a little over a year.
It's hard because if you have a teen who is struggling with ADHD, anxiety, depression and gender dysphoria you really can't trust a therapist not to affirm the dysphoria. With that you are left concluding that the mental healthcare industry is stacked against helping your teen since they won't question whether the co-morbid conditions might have caused the teen to conclude they are the opposite sex. My family has decided that no therapy is the answer for us.
Yes, yes, we feel trapped and have given up on therapy for now. We found a non-affirming, very kind, good therapist, but kid claimed they could tell the therapist "Knew nothing about trans people" because he was asking them questions about their identity instead of confirming they are a girl and need hormones. Our kid has Tourette's Syndrome and I suspect is on the spectrum, but no one wants to look at how those issues impact his thinking.
agree. I've dispatched two already and so far can't find one I trust
I whole heartedly agree 👍
Oh my god, I have the same dreams. I had one where my son was swimming with his shirt off, like he did before all this happened. He was so energetic and comfortable in his body before all this: cartwheels on the beach, wrestling with me and his dad, jumping on the trampoline with friends, etc, etc. It all stopped. We have kept family photos up, and they have not complained, but maybe that will be the next gut-punch.
I was very, very glad to see that NY Times article, but am equally as glad that you have written this and also that you have made it shareable. A lot of really good people, like you and others here whose stories I have come to know, thanks to your chat area, have suffered terribly and needlessly. Even as we can be grateful that, perhaps, the fever is beginning to break, we must never forget all the damage that has been done to so many. So, thank you, Lisa, once again.
I also think we need to create a better operational definition of what it means when it is said there are at least some people who truly seem to benefit from transition that includes the realities of medical and even just social transition. These are people who are able to transition and due to psychology, personality type, and temperamental factors have a high tolerance for the side effects and required ongoing maintenance of transition-related medicine as well as the ability to own, tolerate, and accept all the psychological demands required to live in a way that will not 100% match the physical realities of their body and will require accepting they don’t have control over the perceptions or thoughts of others - and also accept that this inner acceptance and tolerance may change or fatigue over time. Corinna Cohn does such a good job talking about those inner experiences over her 30 years living as a medicalize trans woman.
"I oppose bans because a) I don’t want the government making those decisions and b) I think they get in the way of desperately needed reform."
Who else but the government is going to protect the public from baseless medical charlatanism? Should we abolish drug screening by the FDA because it restricts patient choice? No, of course not.
And what reform do you envision if not the banning of pseudoscientific medical procedures that do immense harm?
another excellent piece. I too share some shred of hope. Yes, the left needs to take responsibility for their extremity. The media points out when the right lurches, but never the other way and I'm a lefty! Like McMartin, no one will print "we got it wrong". Did the op eds that supported the Iraq invasion recant? No, it was Bush's fault, not them for going along with it. But, find we don't need "i told you so." Just protect kids please. Also great point about the word trans. I feel the conflation of trans right and stopping medicalization is problamatic for those of us wanting kids to be safe. All people should be treated with respect and disfiguring distressed youths must end. Both can be true.
Wait a minute. The Iraq debacle *was* Bush's fault!
Are you suggesting that we hold those who accept a lie more responsible for the lie than the liar who told it?
Strange inversion of justice, that.
Can it be that the social environment children live in -- their peers and parents of peers -- are driving them to experience the depression and anxiety we see? Is it possible that the sensitive boys the tomboy girls are reacting to a hostile world? These are children after all.
Worth considering: Dr. Gabor Maté on “The Myth of Normal,” Healing in a Toxic Culture & How Capitalism Fuels Addiction interview on Democracy Now
"When the Satanic Panic turned out to be a mass hysteria, there were no media mea culpas then, either."
Yup. Many 'gender affirming' advocates have unscrupulously smeared folks worried about the dangers of medicalization as 'anti-trans' and 'transphobic' to in order to win by shutting up First Amendment public speech - discussion and argument that might challenge these views.
This is part of a longstanding pattern that includes not only the American Salem witch hysteria of the 1600s, but later, overtly political hysterias and attacks on free speech - the post-WWI Red Scare and the 1950s McCarthy Period 'witch trials' that took its name from the 1600s hysteria.
When the McCarthy Period anti-communist witch hunts were finally politically resisted - by a rising generation of anti-southern-segregation and anti-Vietnam War youth - there were few media mea culpas for the personal and political damage either - not for Americans who lost their jobs, not for weakened labor unions, not for weakened New Deal legislation, not for stifled freedom of speech.
And it continues. In the early aughts, those resisting war criminal President Bush's non-fact-based Iraq invasion were smeared as Sadaam lovers; and now calls for US negotiation efforts - versus a purely military response to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine - are smeared as 'Putin loving' to shut up free speech about US foreign policy, even as majorities of Americans poll as favoring increased US negotiation.
It's disappointing to hear you contribute to the gaslighting and maligning of those seeking to safeguard kids from a predatory medical industry. Governments regulate all sorts of things. One could just as well say that your writing on this issue helps "solidify fear and hatred of kids who identify as trans".
I completely agree. Medically worthless mutilation and sterilization of children is a crime against humanity, full stop. OF COURSE the government should stop it!
There are heroes and you are one of them!
Thank you!