The Department of Health and Human Services recently released a report documenting “serious concerns about medical interventions, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, that attempt to transition children and adolescents away from their sex.” The report confirms what many professionals who work with gender-confused youth, including myself, have been saying for years: A fast-tracked, affirmation-only approach to gender dysphoria harms far more than it helps.
That’s why I find it so concerning that the American Academy of Pediatrics has chosen to ignore HHS’s findings, which are backed by a 100-plus page bibliography of evidence and will undergo a full peer review in the coming days, and instead continue promoting medical interventions that lack the same scientific backing.
AAP President Susan Kressly claimed in a statement that the HHS report “misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care.” But the only ones misrepresenting the reality of so-called “gender-affirming care” are Kressly, the organization she leads, and other medical groups that continue to push medicalization.
In fact, the growing consensus among researchers and medical professionals in much of the rest of the Western world is that “gender-affirming care” has been a disaster. The Cass report, released in the United Kingdom last year, found after three years of research that the evidence used to back medical and chemical interventions in children was “remarkably weak” and more often than not “exaggerated or misrepresented” by gender ideologues such as Kressly.
Perhaps that’s why Kressly and the AAP weren’t consulted by HHS regarding the agency’s own review. Kressly complains about this fact in her statement, but the reason organizations such as her own have been sidelined is obvious: They’ve proven repeatedly that they will choose an ideological agenda over the scientific rigor they’re supposed to uphold.
I experienced this myself while working as a licensed clinical social worker for Multicare in Washington state. One of my clients at the time was a young child who came to me identifying as an animal. As I revealed in an interview with IW Features, when I raised concerns about how to approach this situation with my colleagues at Multicare, my boss, the company’s risk management team, and even the CEO dismissed my hesitations and tried to silence and shame me. My refusal to affirm this identity even led to a state investigation.
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Now, working as a private therapist, I still see many young clients who are deeply grieved by the weight of gender dysphoria. But I’ve also seen many of these young adults come to peace with the bodies in which they were born. This has not been the result of my coercing or guiding them or them trying to appease their parents or peers. Rather, many young people just need time to navigate what can be a challenging time in their lives, as well as permission to change their minds over and over again until they figure it out.
By pushing an affirmation-only approach, organizations such as the AAP are denying vulnerable youth that time and freedom and are instead sending them down an irreversible path from which they may never physically or mentally recover. It is well past time for the scientific community to leave the AAP and its ideology behind.
Tamara Pietzke is a licensed independent clinical social worker; member of Therapy First, a clinician-led network advocating evidence-based mental healthcare; and a healthcare industry whistleblower regarding “gender-affirming care.”