Another Nail In The Coffin Of Trans-ing Kids Ideology

The U.S. HHS has released a major new report urging exploratory therapy for youth with gender dysphoria rather than the chemicalisation and surgical intervention approach.

In October last year, there was a story in the New York Times – and credit to the NYT for even publishing it.

U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says

An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.

I’ve never heard that argument before when it comes to research. Usually researchers want the browny points for publishing relevant material.

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, …

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health.

Now remember, trans allies ask parents of transgender identifying youth the shocking question, “Would you rather have a living son than a dead daughter?” Or vice versa.

It’s a mantra that is repeated by media and politicians - “gender affirmative care saves lives.” If you don’t transition the young person, they will suffer untold mental harm.

And if you care for young people, you will comply.

So this study was out to prove that mantra right. Nek minnit…..

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said,

Whoops. But then came the ideology

…most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

This is where the bubble is burst. The argument is always that young people HAVE to change their gender otherwise they’re going to suffer mentally and have suicidal tendencies etc.

But NOW we’re being told that actually they’re “already doing well”.

So they don’t need the treatment, then?

And if they have the treatment, it doesn’t actually improve their mental state anyway.

Now you can probably see why they didn’t want to publish this study. It continued

That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.

One of the few rigorous studies, which was completed in Sweden, followed a transgender group of adults from 1973-2003. Yes – 30 years. This study found:

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care [restore the natural balance within the body-mind system to resolve physical and mental stress) after sex reassignment for this patient group.

In other words, the surgery didn’t solve the mental health issues. No surprise.

A more recent study which I’ve already told you about is from the beginning of last year from Finland. Now remember that the mainstream media were silent on this research – their silence was deafening – because they don’t want to tell you about these types of studies. It goes against the mainstream narrative. But this Finnish study found that the suicide risk in a large group of adolescents was predicted by the psychiatric problems that often accompany gender distress, not by the gender distress itself.

Let me repeat that - the suicide risk in a large group of adolescents was predicted by the psychiatric problems that often accompany gender distress, not by the gender distress itself.

Just as the Swedish study had found. The Finnish study said:

The researchers say in their BMJ Mental Health paper; “It is of utmost importance to identify and appropriately treat mental disorders in adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria to prevent suicide; in addition, health policies need to ensure that accurate information is provided to professionals along these lines,”

And they studied more than 2,000 gender-referred teens between 1996 and 2019 – 23 years – AND a control group (which many of the pro-trans studies don’t have.)

In other words, the main predictor of mortality in this population is psychiatric morbidity, and medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk. That’s the words of the researchers.

Now, the argument which groups wanting to protect children from trans ideology and confusion, chemicalisation and castration have made (and I’ve made it also) is that if you let the child go through the natural process of puberty (rather than interrupt it with puberty blockers), puberty confirms a child’s maleness or femaleness, and they grow up and they grow out of the confusion.

A landmark study from the Netherlands (who of course started the Dutch Protocol of doing the steps of transitioning – puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, surgery) published in May last year (and also conveniently ignored by the media) found that the majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are fully grown adults.

Researchers in the Netherlands from the University of Groningen tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender. Results showed at the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed 'gender non-contentedness' to varying degrees.

But by age 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they 'often' or 'sometimes' were discontent with their gender.

The really disturbing thing for kiwi parents is that if you follow the credible research (not the dodgy Counting Ourselves surveys done by activists in NZ), and if you focus on counselling and affirming a gender-confused child’s biological sex, and if you tell them to wait and to go through puberty i.e. affirm their biology - under the Conversion Therapy Law passed by most of our Parliament a couple of years ago, a parent or a professional or a pastor or a counsellor could be committing a crime and could go to jail for up to FIVE years.

That’s how disturbing the law is and the debate has become.

But studies show up to 93% of children who begin on puberty blockers will go on to receive cross-sex hormone injections. So puberty blockers don’t pause – they predict, and that’s contrary to what you’ll hear trans activists say.

So the research was clearly going against the narrative that kids should be chemicalised, castrated and confused.

NZ has been prescribing puberty blockers – and at a rate 10x higher per head of population than the UK where puberty blockers have recently been stopped,

because of what’s known as the 4-year long CASS Review which concluded that:

Puberty blockers should no longer be prescribed to children except in the context of research due to these powerful drugs’ effects on brain development and bone health

Cross-sex hormones — estrogen and testosterone — should be prescribed to trans-identifying 16 and 17-year-olds only with an “extremely cautious” approach, and there should be a “clear clinical rationale” for not waiting until the teen is 18

The CASS report also destroyed the suicide trope – better a live son than a dead daughter – which is used to manipulate parents

· Young people facing gender-related distress had no significantly different levels of suicide risk to other young people with similar levels of complex presentations.

· No evidence that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk.

The façade of the justification for transing our children is crumbling before our eyes – and not soon enough.

Then at the end of last year, the Ministry of Health published its review of puberty blockers.

The Evidence Review found a lack of good quality evidence for the effectiveness or safety of puberty blocking treatment in young people with gender dysphoria. We do not have good evidence to say that the medicines used improve the longer-term outcomes for young people with gender-related health needs – nor that the potential longer-term risks are low.

Wow – that is damning.

That should be the end of it. When would you prescribe something that lacks good quality evidence, and has no evidence that improves outcomes or how bad the risks are.

Yes you wouldn’t.

And any parent who has a doctor who wants to prescribe them for their child should be shouting – hell no!

But the Ministry doesn’t quite have that intellectual prowess – and I suspect is really struggling with making the admission it made today. So they’re wanting more advice and input. I suspect to try and justify the unjustifiable.

Last week was yet another nail in the coffin….

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (similar to the Ministry of Health here in NZ) released a significant report urging exploratory therapy for youth with gender dysphoria rather than the chemicalisation and surgical intervention approach.

With quite a bit of media coverage, including Time Magazine

ABC News

And even the rabid left wing The Guardian

Of course the NZ mainstream media went deathly silent – even after we sent out a Media Release alerting them to the report. As you will see this report goes completely against their favoured narrative.

The report says that many of these children and adolescents have co-occurring psychiatric or neurodevelopmental conditions, rendering them especially vulnerable, and is published against the backdrop of growing international concern about pediatric medical transition. They say:

Health authorities have also recognized the exceptional nature of this area of medicine. That exceptionalism is due to a convergence of factors. One is that the diagnosis of gender dysphoria is based entirely on subjective self-reports and behavioral observations, without any objective physical, imaging, or laboratory markers. The diagnosis centers on attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that are known to fluctuate during adolescence. .. Medical professionals have no way to know which patients may continue to experience gender dysphoria and which will come to terms with their bodies.

The report clearly outlines the risks of significant harm:

Nevertheless, the “gender-affirming” model of care includes irreversible endocrine and surgical interventions on minors with no physical pathology. These interventions carry risk of significant harms including infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret. Meanwhile, systematic reviews of the evidence have revealed deep uncertainty about the purported benefits of these interventions.

That’s quite a list, isn’t it.

The report also says:

The “gender-affirming” model of care, as practiced in U.S. clinics, is characterized by a child-led process in which comprehensive mental health assessments are often minimized or omitted, and the patient’s “embodiment goals” serve as the primary guide for treatment decisions. In some of the nation’s 15 leading pediatric gender clinics, assessments are conducted in a single session lasting two hours.

The report rightly criticises the “gender-affirming” model of care recommended by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) – a group which has been totally and utterly discredited after the WPATH Files which exposed WPATH as just pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments on children

But WPATH is also the basis of NZ’s model via the activist group PATHA (Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa),

The HHS report says:

… In the U.S., the most influential clinical guidelines for the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria are published by WPATH and the Endocrine Society. A recent systematic review of international guideline quality did not recommend either guideline for clinical use after determining they “lack developmental rigour and transparency.”

Finally the report also calls out the harmful resistance to psychotherapy, including the mischaracterisation of such approaches as “conversion therapy” which actually affirms children in their biological body.

The rise in youth gender dysphoria and the corresponding demand for medical interventions have occurred against the backdrop of a broader mental health crisis affecting adolescents… There is a dearth of research on psychotherapeutic approaches to managing gender dysphoria in children and adolescents. This is due in part to the mischaracterization of such approaches as “conversion therapy.”

A more robust evidence base supports psychotherapeutic approaches to managing common comorbid mental health conditions. Psychotherapy is a noninvasive alternative to endocrine and surgical interventions for the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria. Systematic reviews of evidence have found no evidence of adverse effects of psychotherapy in this context.

Now remember – psychotherapy, dealing with the root causes of mental health issues, affirming children in their biological sex, protecting them from unnecessary chemicalisation and castration of health body parts – those are illegal because they are considered conversion therapy by our Parliament, via the deeply flawed and deeply dangerous “conversion therapy” law.

A professional counsellor or medical professional or pastor or youthworker could get up to 5 years in prison, even a parent could get imprisoned for affirming their son as a boy, or their daughter as a girl.

Simply for protecting children from this ideology. It’s the only way they can stop this gender ideology being exposed for the demonic enemy that it is. By ramming it down and making any challenge to it illegal.

If you don’t believe me, check our Fact Sheet which outlines the law in details.

Of course if you see any opposition to this latest report from the HHS, it will be something like this one

Trump HHS posts ‘so-called report’ pushing conversion therapy for trans kids

If the NZ media get around to reporting this report, that will be the narrative.

It’s a form of “jamming”.

Giving psychotherapy for vulnerable children a negative label – “conversion therapy”.

But as I said, psychotherapy which affirms the delusion that you can change your sex and you should get your genitals mutilated is all good. Apparently.

This report which the media hates – and the NZ media won’t even report - marks a sea change from the Biden administration, which full-throatedly endorsed “gender-affirming care.”

Dr. Rachel Levine, a man who identifies as a woman and who served as assistant secretary of health in former President Joe Biden’s HHS, tried to enlist children’s doctors and nurses in the transgender activist movement.

VIDEO

On Sept. 22, 2022, he spoke to doctors at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Pediatrics, urging them to become “ambassadors” for what he described as “gender-affirming care.”

Here’s the bottom line.

“Gender affirming care” or “Affirming” is code for persuading young people that they were ‘born in the wrong body’ and that it will be beneficial for them to cut off their breasts or penises, bind their chest, take cross sex hormones, block the natural progression of puberty, and potentially destroy their fertility.

The alternative is ‘watchful waiting’, which is accompanied by counselling and support, and is based on research which shows that the overwhelming majority of children grow out of their gender dysphoria after puberty. It helps the young person feel comfortable in their natal sex and deals with the comorbid psychiatric disorders that may exist and which are contributing to the gender dysphoria.

While gender and sexuality is supposedly ‘fluid’, activists want the law to stipulate that it can only go in the direction they approve.

Healing the mind rather than chemicalising, cutting and confusing the body is a far better option.

It’s the option that the adults in the room would choose.

It’s the option that parents would choose – if they had all the facts.

We’ve pushed them this far.

Don’t stop. The ship is turning. We can see that.

This affects every young person who is struggling with their identity and may believe they’re the opposite sex.

We should have absolute confidence that children will be protected from a flawed and destructive ideology that has harmed so many young people already.

It’s up to you and I to call it out.

It’s another nail in the coffin of the ideology of transing our kids with chemicals and castration.

It’s an ideology that should rest in hell – far away from our vulnerable young people.