Exposing the lie of ‘gender-affirming care’
Doreen Denny
Video Embed
Hershey’s Canada has received lots of attention over its decision to use their ad dollars on promoting an ideology rather than a product. Their new “International Women’s Day” campaign featured not a woman but a man who identifies as a woman.
Unfortunately, what didn’t receive that kind of attention is a recent statement by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, that the practice of so-called “gender-affirming care,” convincing impressionable teenagers that feeling like the opposite sex means you are the opposite sex, is extremely damaging. In a seven-part statement, AAPS exposes this heresy — “changing physical appearance does not change biological sex” — and takes direct aim at the medical industry promoting destructive “transgender” medical procedures on youth:
“There has been an explosive increase in persons who identify with the construct of gender different from sex, at an age where identity is easily malleable and brain development is not fully concluded.”
THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO ARGUE AGAINST TRANSGENDER IDEOLOGY
The position of this respected group of physicians and surgeons is a welcome and much-needed wake-up call. We’re learning firsthand that the safety and dignity of youth, especially girls, identifying as the opposite sex is not the priority of the Biden administration nor medical advocacy groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and Big Pharma.
All of them are complicit in the deception AAPS rejects, leading to radical, experimental treatments on children struggling with identity. A top official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advocates the use of sex change drugs and surgeries as “medically necessary, safe and effective for trans or non-binary youth.” Not to mention profitable.
Government-funded programs, including through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are underwriting this gender transition ideology. It is being peddled in schools and corporate America through diversity, equity, and inclusion hires, pride events, social media campaigns, drag queen shows, gender ideology curricula, secret gender support plans, and Gender Sexuality Alliance clubs.
The damage to today’s youth needs breakthroughs like the AAPS statement — and a brave whistleblower, Jamie Reed, who’s been on the front lines of case management in a trans-youth clinic. Her experience makes the case against the prevailing practice of so-called “gender-affirming care” that she declares “morally and medically appalling.”
Reed, a self-described “queer woman, and politically [to the] left of Bernie Sanders,” published an article in the Free Press with an explosive and detailed account of the practices of the Washington University Transgender Clinic at St. Louis Children’s Medical Hospital, titled “I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.”
Her concerns reveal the “lack of formal protocols for treatment” and the obvious social contagion at play when “clusters of girls would arrive from the same high school,” with doctors ignoring the girls’ underlying mental health conditions that included depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.
Reed’s experience with these teenage girls is backed up by a newly-released CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey showing that the mental health crisis among today’s youth is twice as high for teenage girls as for boys. The survey reports that in 2021, “almost 60% of female students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year and nearly 25% made a suicide plan.”
But gender clinics such as St. Louis Children’s Medical Hospital are recklessly ignoring the connection between this mental health crisis among teenage girls and the exponential demand for radical body rejection interventions, including testosterone injections and double mastectomies, prescribed in the name of “gender-affirming care.”
The gender clinic’s connection with St. Louis’s Parkway Schools is being exposed by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from Parents Defending Education. FOIAs reveal advice to keep breast binder use secret from parents and to “affirm and validate” a group of fifth-grade girls identifying as “transgender.” Such communication provides hard evidence of how gender clinics disregard the safety and dignity of young girls facing normal changes to their bodies and struggling with mental health issues.
Reed explains: “But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate,” – regurgitating the “company line” of today’s trans-captured medical practitioners who are fueling this idea that a person can rid themselves of their XY chromosomes or actually change their sex.
Reed uncovers how the pathway to medication for gender dysphoria is slick. All that’s needed is a note from the therapist: “To make it more efficient, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition.” And the next stop is “a single visit to an endocrinologist for testosterone.”
This brave woman goes on to document the horrific effects of testosterone on teenage girls, parental custody battles weaponized to side with those consenting to mutilating drugs, and the painful reality of a teenage de-transitioner who called and said, “I want my breasts back.”
The tipping point for going public came after seeing comments from HHS’s transgender assistant secretary for health, Dr. Rachel Levine, claiming: “clinics are proceeding carefully” and “no American children are receiving drugs or hormones for gender dysphoria who shouldn’t.”
Reed knew better. She’s had a front-row seat in the alarming escalation of trans-identified and medicalized youth. What she exposes is shocking. Even more alarming is the admission of the doctors and her final warning that America must pay close attention to this.
“The doctors I worked alongside at the transgender center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: ‘We are building the plane while we are flying it.’ No one should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft.”
We need every leader who claims to champion child welfare to stand up and say “no more.” Rather than highlighting it in your company’s ad campaign, it’s time to stop this exploitive, tragically damaging ideology that maims, mutilates, and manipulates America’s youth.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Doreen Denny is senior adviser at Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest women’s public policy organization.