The WHO Backs Off From Affirming Youth Transition
The WHO Backs Off From Affirming Youth Transition
America is in the midst of a doctor-led panic spurred on by the fear that gender-questioning kids who demand “affirming” medical treatments will kill themselves if not indulged.
Interrupting the natural progression toward adulthood, full transitioning represents an intrusion only possible with the collusion of doctors. The American Academy of Pediatrics, AAP, created this medical stir in 2018 when their board sanctioned the fast-tracking of medical treatments for any child expressing gender dysphoria, a code red triggering immediate affirmation. Recently they restated the policy while promising a review that might placate those new on the scene, but many recognize this as kicking a bin down the road to be recycled out of sight.
Although a major rethink has occurred at the global level, the American medical establishment is re-digging a safeguarding hole, still romanced by the promises of “gender-affirming care” or GAC.
The latest GAC debunk, however, comes from the World Health Organization WHO’s removal of youth from forthcoming guidance on transition. According to their January 15th statement, their trans and diverse guidelines will not include minors because "the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents." With even the WHO backing away from the crisis propaganda of “lifesaving affirmation,” the AAP may reconsider its affirm-or-die posturing.
Panic To Affirm: How Dissociation Led To Unnatural Demand
Long lines at gender clinics give the impression transitioning is the only sensitive action. Pull back the lens, however, and the role of increased online-spurred transitioning makes it clear that doctors are actually perpetuating a sociogenic illness. Framed as a suicide hazard, transitioning intent evokes a kind of stunned fear. Providing a critique of the assumption that sex-reassignment treatment prevents suicide, Jane Ridley reports “many doctors are so scared of the label “transphobe” that they automatically present skeptical parents with a doomsday scenario: “Would you rather have a dead son or a living daughter?” or vice versa.” Why such urgency?
The timing of the AAP statement coincides with the well-known spread of mental health ticks on social media, and-- for girls-- unbearable isolation and stress from lockdown. The social dynamic online is competitive, involving watching influencers and feeling both envy and negative self-judgment. What it means to transition-- targeting the breasts as a distinct sex trait marker--together with computer-related dissociation is the demand to be affirmed under threat of suicide.
Don’t Try To Talk Her Down From The Ledge Or She’ll Kill Herself
Binding, or the compression of breast tissue by DIY means such as wrapping or commercial corseting, is done to limit psychological discomfort by being “read as” male. For gender nonconforming girls, and what self-respecting girl does not reject feminine stereotypes, this suggests a desire to escape being seen as or having to experience being female-bodied.
The AAP knows it’s mostly girls who socialize online. Wisely, they warn of mental health dangers there, and they report girls as young as 11 are on social media constantly. There’s no question trans influencers are having a deep influence on impressionable girls.
In particular, the prevalence of binding injuries among females questioning their identity (97% according to Sarah M. Peitzmeier’s study) suggests the strength of dissociation among girls experiencing gender dysphoria, squeezing breast tissue into a binder. Cohesive friend groups experiencing anxiety begin to define their discomfort as self-hatred and the desire to “unsex themselves.” Their somatic symptoms evolve in sync from socializing online with like-minded peers.
How can medical professionals primed to affirm discern whether kids are not channeling their social anxiety? In an era of distress exacerbated by excessive time online, clinical psychologist, Erica Anderson argues the affirm –or- die propaganda represents “emotional blackmail.” The AAP calls efforts to discern “outdated” and by implication, prejudiced. If this was accurate, however, the number of de-transitioners would not be growing. A double mastectomy would be no more regrettable than tumor removal.
And, the American Academy of Pediatrics in particular would not be facing litigation by Isabelle Ayala’s lawyers. Ayalla was fast-tracked on hormones at 14, despite numerous red flags of co-existing conditions. Spectacularly, her doctor was James Rafferty, chair of an important American Academy of Pediatrics committee, who authored the GAC policy. Proving that medical professionals can fall prey to Internet-inspired tactics, the esteemed doctor swallowed the suicide gambit Ayalla had learned online. The fact that a pediatrician from a highly- esteemed doctor group was taken hostage by a slick social media trick resembles a fight or flight panicked response.
American Medical Organization Embraces Gender Scare Alarmism
Rafferty apparently felt compelled to green-light Ayalla for puberty blockers as a panicky means of suicide prevention. With only medical tools in its doctor’s bag, GAC skips differential evaluation, and since all Rafferty had was a hammer, all Ayalla’s comorbidities became nails. Contrary to the much-touted life-saving benefits of GAC, however, Ayala’s mental health deteriorated while under Rafferty’s AAP-backed GAC, and “Less than a year into treatment, Ayala… actually did attempt suicide.” In a charged transition or death mindset, legitimate cautions are abandoned for outsized fear of delay.
Clear lines are drawn, and framing a patient’s dysphoria within the affirm–or–suicide construct is misleading and harmful. Yet doctors repeatedly corner parents with the suicide panic.
In very cogent terms, David Minor, a therapist who has worked extensively with gender dysphoria, explains why this suicide panic is damaging: “The conflation of parental support and gender affirmation is further entrenched by well-meaning but misguided school counselors, doctors, teachers, and psychologists…. They help solidify the parents’ non-affirming position as horrible and unloving.” The suicide trope, Minor notes, can lead to family estrangement as well as patient helplessness.
Global Pullback On Gender-Affirming Care
Finnish born Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, chief adolescent psychiatrist, calls out the AAP for its hostility to reasonable restrictions for children. She further comments: “gender clinicians routinely warn American parents that there is an enormously elevated risk of suicide if they stand in the way of their child’s transition.”
The gender care scare, with its rush to affirm for fear of suicide, is an unfounded panic for trans-identified youth. If the premise of GAC was correct, suicides should be increasing, Psychiatrist Miriam Grossman points out, where transition was recently restricted, including in the UK, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, France, Poland, and the Netherlands.
Timing is notable. “Even more eyebrow-raising was the AAP’s admission that their sudden itch to conduct their GAC review stems from the dozens of ‘restrictions’ and ‘bans on gender-affirming care recently enacted in some 20 states.’” And this week the WHO just declared the evidence base is too weak and low quality to include youth in its upcoming “gender-affirming” healthcare guidelines. This decision may spur the AAP to take stock.
Meanwhile, kids migrate from online influencer circles where transitioning heats up to exam rooms expecting to be “transitioned.” And although there is mounting evidence globally that affirmation is neither medically necessary nor life-saving, it remains far easier in America to get affirmed for transitioning and prescribed immediately for GAC drugs and surgeries than psychotherapy.
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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If you are having trouble believing that it's really a doctor-led panic, watch this school board member who apparently is also a medical provider try to panic the rest of her board in real time with false information. This is how they do it:
https://twitter.com/RamonaBessinger/status/1751005197793464718
Affirming care is a great business model. Close to 100% medical enrollment with affirming care model and consent as soon as puberty commences. Enrollment drops to 20% if the age of consent is 16, less than 20% if age of consent is 18. What's not to like about this from the perspective of a doctor and hospital management?
However, there is harm to patients. Of course patients aren't informed. They don't get informed consent. Can they truly give informed consent for sex change before they are old enough to give consent to sex? Puberty blockers prevent maturation of the brain, sexual organs, fertility, bones. the lungs, cardiovascular system. The patients will very likely become sterile and unable to enjory sex for the remainder of their existence.
The Obama administration promoted the idea that a woman is a social construct and not a biological entity. This effectively cancels women's rights to have woman's spaces, women's prisons, women's locker rooms, the right to choose a female care giver if possible.