Why I'm Resigning my Membership to WNYC

A letter to my local NPR station

Photo by Fringer Cat on Unsplash

Dear WNYC Membership office—especially Brian Lehrer and Brooke Gladstone:

When I moved to New York in 1993, WNYC was my constant companion. I listened to what was then On the Line with Brian Lehrer every morning as I waded through Help Wanted ads and printed listings of production companies to fax my resume to, trying to break into the film industry. Each day, without leaving my brother’s East Village tenement, where I slept on the couch, that show, and the station itself, exposed to me to more culture, bold ideas, and New York City insider info than I’d had in my lifetime until then.

I have been a faithful listener ever since, and a member even during my most impecunious times. Your hosts became an intimate part of my life. I felt bruised all over when Richard Hake died early in the pandemic, realizing only then what an integral part of my weekday mornings he had become. I pledged because I felt I was investing in the very best of journalism.

Those days are over. I can no longer in good faith support your station, or NPR.

Over and over again, I have heard you present the issue of gender dysphoric children, and the medical interventions designed to treat them, in ways that do a grave disservice to your listeners and to the families affected by this issue. I have heard you pass opinions off as fact, repeat unscientific claims, dismiss questioning as bigotry, and frame an issue that is about healthcare as being Left versus Right, as shorthand for good versus evil.

I have been a full-time freelance journalist and author for 20 years. Ten years ago, I began to write about gender issues on behalf of my child, a girl who had performed the stereotypically male gender role since about age three. Then, six years ago, I wrote for The New York Times about the insistence from adults in her life that she must be a trans boy, as if they had all forgotten the project of the 1970s—to widen gender norms—and the common trope of the tomboy then. I understood very little about the issue of trans kids, but after the article caused a Twitter storm, I found myself enmeshed in a culture war that I hadn’t known existed, publicly shamed and threatened on social media.

I did what I always do: I wrote my way through it, in the form of a book called TOMBOY, about the science, psychology and history of gender nonconforming girls, published in 2020. I met with many prominent trans activists for the book, and did not critique medicating trans kids—sometimes at the activists’ urging. I wanted to protect marginalized people, as I’d been told by those activists was one of my jobs as a journalist (but of course, that’s not the case). And I was also afraid to incite another round of online fury and threats.

At the same time, I’d also met with people who told me that many of the kids seeking these medical interventions—puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries—were gay, and that this drug protocol was the same one given to treat or punish homosexuality, and still used to chemically castrate sex offenders. I put that away for a long time, dismissing it as probably partly true but still sounding like conspiracy theory.

Then, about two-and-a-half years ago, I had a conversation with a pioneer in the field. He showed me the “desistance literature:” eleven studies that suggest that, if not socially transitioned, the vast majority, though not all, of young children with gender dysphoria will grow out of it; the bulk of them, though not all, will end up being gay. I had been writing about gender issues for CNN, sometimes NYT and the Washington Post, and I began to worry that I had spread misinformation.

Indeed, I had. I have since discovered that most of what we in the Left and mainstream media have been reporting ranges from misinformation to disinformation, from poorly explained to flat-out mistruth. The oft-quoted suicide stats, and notions that blockers and hormones improve mental health, are from self-reported samples, marked as very low quality in systematic evidence reviews in other countries—that means the actual outcome could be the opposite of what’s posited in the study.

Ask yourselves: Why would the American Academy of Pediatrics refuse to do a systematic evidence review? Is it because when Finland, Sweden and England did them, they drastically revamped the guidelines to abandon the affirmative model and opt for extreme caution?

Those countries saw what we see here:

1. Low-quality evidence, leading to the conviction that the risks of these medical interventions currently outweigh the benefits;

2. A rise in teen girls with no history of gender issues, who have many other mental health issues, seeking medical interventions—a cohort unstudied and not covered in that low-quality evidence we have;

3. An increase in detransitioners, who underwent medical transition and deeply regret it.

And yet, the media has worked hard to promote the idea that the “science is settled;” that rapid-onset gender dysphoria is not a phenomenon worth cataloguing; and that detransition is rare and not worth reporting on.

We do not know the rate of detransition. We do not have many long-term studies on how kids are doing, and those we have are riddled with problems. The media works to discredit whistleblowers rather than listen to them, to paint questioning as bigotry, to paint debate as dangerous. You’ve participated in that.

Ask yourselves: What self-respecting journalist would accept “no debate” or the concept of “bothsidesism” as a reason to look away from what’s happening? Any journalist should see people waving signs that say, “Don’t look closely at this,” and grab the biggest magnifying glass they can find.

Late last year, the tide slowly began turning in The New York Times. Several reporters wrote about the lack of consensus over how to treat gender dysphoric youth, and the low-quality of evidence we have about interventions like puberty blockers. Reuters conducted an extraordinary series of articles, that should have helped the big ship of the media turn toward truth. I assumed that was your cue to follow in their footsteps, to paint a more complex picture, to platform those getting hurt as well as helped.

You didn’t follow.

Myself, I’ve sat with those stories for several years now. Stories of families investigated by CPS for not transitioning their kids. Stories of children removed from families by the state, given hormones, who later committed suicide. Stories of children with complex mental health problems which were ignored because medical professionals could only see gender. Stories of gay, autistic and depressed teens seeking refuge in trans identities but ending up deeply hurt. Stories of liberals dismissed as right-wing when they object.

Only when we know the whole story can we figure out how to fairly, safely, efficaciously work on an issue. Only then can we truly create room and respect for gender diversity.

I carry these stories with me every day. I have not done as well by these families as I’d hoped, but I’ll never give up trying. It’s my ethical duty to do so, to try to tell the whole story, to properly inform the public. But I can no longer in good conscience contribute monetarily to the radio station that has been a huge part of my life for thirty years, because you’re not properly informing the public. The way you’ve reported is unethical. I can’t support it.

I really hope you turn it around. I’d be happy to pledge again someday if you do.

Sincerely,

Lisa Selin Davis

PS: Now that we’re a WFMU family exclusively, I’d also like to suggest that you listen to their pledge drives, which are actually fun and not awkward.