I’m a psych nurse at a Yale hospital. Staff frequently discuss transgender issues and maybe 2 out of the 30 staff (nurses, therapists, social workers) support transgender care. None of us will publicly share our concerns out of fear of retribution.
If you were receiving medical care at a hospital, would you want the nurse to judge you and how you live your life? Or would you want the nurse to mind their own business?
You’re joking, right? If you’re my patient, you came to the hospital for being suicidal, homicidal, or gravely disabled. You can’t legally be discharged until evaluation (judging) by a psychiatrist. What’s crazy is the sexually abused, bipolar, autistic, schizophrenic, borderline, drug-addicted, homeless patients getting services to transition while being actively psychotic, delusional, or hallucinating. In those cases, we do “mind our business” because our concerns are not welcome. Of course, complaints to HR about race, sexuality, and the patriarchy are always investigated.
You seem to assume most trans people aren't really trans and have other mental health conditions. Maybe that's because of the population you work with every day. I would suggest you get to know some trans people outside of your work but clearly you are not open-minded so there would be no point.
Clearly not open-minded? I’m a board-certified psych nurse with a decade of experience in this field. I’m up to date on the latest research and there’s no evidence any interventions for transgender care are beneficial. I wouldn’t continue reading research if I wasn’t open-minded. Most trans people do have other psych issues, actually most have multiple comorbidities. The problem with gender affirming care is they don’t even ask why you feel your transgender because they’re afraid it’s potentially gaslighting or might cause anxiety. It’s like telling a doctor my arm is broken, but not getting an x-ray because I might get offended.
I have known many trans people who are happy after transition. They would strongly object to your claim that transgender care isn't beneficial. It can be life-saving.
It's astonishing to me that so many are eager to punch down on a tiny minority group. There is no compassion at all for those who are suffering because of the anti-trans panic.
Most breast surgeries on adolescents are done on cisgender girls. But amazingly, the "protect the kids" brigade has no issue with teenage girls trying to make their breasts larger.
The entire point Laura, is that we don't believe it is Care. We don't believe they are Patients. And we certainly don't believe that surgery is the answer. The person you initially responded to does not need your judgement either.
Gender dysphoria is real and demonizing trans people doesn't help anyone--except maybe for those who gain views and subscribers.
Here's a real, live trans woman in Iowa. She was raised attending a conservative Christian school but knew she wasn't a boy as early as age 9. No one indoctrinated her to be trans. She didn't receive any gender-affirming care. On the contrary, she received lots of conservative Christian indoctrination. It didn't change the reality that she is trans. She didn't come out until her 20s because of the tremendous stigma against trans people. Of course you don't care about that stigma--you only want validation for people who despise trans people or deny their existence.
I don’t think most people have an issue with people in their 20s coming out. Just stop confusing every child in school to try and find the one trans child who might actually be trans. Studies have shown the vast majority accept their gender later on.
By the way that woman I profiled almost ended her own life before she came out. The concern trolls who supposedly care about trans kids don't acknowledge that their bans are actually driving more kids to suicide.
You should get out of your bubble and talk to some trans people and people with trans kids. No, most of them don't "accept their gender" later on. No, no one is trying to confuse kids in school and encourage them to change their gender.
Many trans kids don't make it to their 20s. You are saying they should live through years of misery until you decide it's ok for them to get medical care. That's not how things should work. The majority should not get veto power over medical care for a minority of less than 1 percent, just because of animus toward trans people.
Go read Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters OR go read Time to Think by Hannah Barnes about Travistock in the UK. Will (should) open your eyes. I recommend the second one if you’re only going to read one.
It's very hard to understand why you and some others are so obsessed with this one issue. Two dozen states have already BANNED gender-affirming care for minors completely. It's caused real hardship including suicides.
Iowa and many other states have passed other laws discriminating against transgender people as well, yet the government using levers of power to harm a historically disfavored minority group is of no concern to you. You post again and again about this as if transgendered people were some all-powerful force in the country, and not a tiny fraction of the population fighting to be treated like human beings.
Have you seen the numbers of girls who have begun identifying as trans or non-binary? Something strange is going on and these kiddos should not be transitioning medically before their brains are fully developed enough to understand the consequences. Therapy first should be the model.
Thank you for your comment here. As a parent on the frontlines, I can confirm this is what is happening. I am the mother of an autistic girl who was taught at school at age 11 that kids who "feel different" and "don't like toys typical for their gender" might be trans. My daughter, along with 3 other girls in her cohort, came home saying they were trans, and talking about getting surgeries and what their surgery scars would look like. I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat who was very socially involved in the San Francisco queer community starting in the 90s. Because I have known and supported trans people for 30 years, it was easy for me to see clearly that the sharp rise in the percentages of kids claiming a trans identity in recent years is not because they're actually trans. They are autistic, gay, or otherwise vulnerable, and are being handed an answer to explain their feelings, among other things. My daughter is out of the woods and doing great. She's mad as hell about what's happened to her generation, and saddened that autistic and gay kids are being convinced to medically harm themselves. Her friends who claim a non-binary identity are sinking further into depression and obsessively talking more and more about surgeries, as well as about not measuring up and being "queer enough." My daughter has had to move on from these friendships because the mental health of those kids is deteriorating, with no end in sight. --Just realized I should clarify, lest anyone be confused: The kids I'm referring to are fully affirmed in their non-binary identities by their families, their schools, their therapists, our city, and our state.
You are very ignorant. Try talking to transgender people and parents of transgender kids. No one is getting medical treatment before therapy. Typically kids are in years of therapy/consultation before meds are prescribed.
You need to read a little more. There are many children on puberty blockers after just one or two visits with a therapist. Most serious complaints in this field come from the therapist themselves because they see how trans activist own the narrative.
I have talked to a bunch of these families in Iowa because I cover Iowa politics and have reported extensively on the anti-LGBTQ bills and laws Republicans have passed here (under the false pretenses of protecting children). None of these kids got puberty blockers after a handful of visits.
I get that conservatives love to push this narrative but it's not reality. I have talked to parents of trans kids and teens. Typically the kids have socially transitioned for years before any meds are prescribed.
So you believe they were born in the wrong body? Do you agree with blind gender affirming care? I’m sure all these confused kids actually believe they are trans. The parents are either complicit in ruining their children’s lives or they are ‘gentle parents’. Studies show they grow out of this. Why has the UK and other countries outlawed these practices on children? Some parents actually say ‘well, at least my child isn’t gay”. You won’t win this argument.
I can see Iowa physicians and therapists being a little more conservative in their treatment. I know Iowa. I also know in my current uber-progressive city a therapist who was told to sign off to medical treatment on multiple kids after only one or two visits. The fact remains there has been a significant increase in children identifying as trans in recent years and it makes zero sense.
On that point, you might have some interest in an old essay by Mark Twain:
MT: "Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party's approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals."
Exactly. It really shouldn't be too surprising that some children, and trans identifying children that are in the midst of a social contagion have parents that are virtue signalling too.
"... Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP) after Munchausen syndrome, is a mental health disorder in which a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in another person, typically their child, ...."
> "... a tiny fraction of the population fighting to be treated like human beings."
A rather "disingenuous" assertion, at best.
The issue is generally not one of denying transpeoples' rights "to be treated like human beings" -- what pretentious twaddle. The issue is more one of denying their claims to have changed sex, and their insistence to be treated as if they had done so.
Though that turns on what it takes to qualify as male and female in the first place. If we go with the Kindergarten Cop versions -- boys have penises and girls have vaginas -- then of course transwomen with their newly minted neovaginas can be said to have changed sex. "How dare you deny their rights to use the lady's loos, to qualify as lesbians!!11!!??" 🙄
But if we go with the standard biological definitions for the sexes, about which most people haven't a flaming clue, then those transwomen have turned themselves into sexless eunuchs. Seems like a high price to pay to "dish with the girls" which seems to have been Jenner's "reasons".
But if we go with those definitions then some third of us are sexless, and we don't ACQUIRE a sex until the onset of puberty, and can subsequently have our "sex category membership cards" "revoked" for one reason or another. Hardly "immutable 🙄".
If y'all want to change your genders then fine, go big, fill yer boots. But insisting or even suggesting that you've changed sex is to cross the Rubicon into crazy town.
Why are you so obsessed with this issue? No one cares what you think about any specific person. You don't get a vote on whether they are male or female.
This is a flat-out lie: "If y'all want to change your genders then fine, go big, fill yer boots." People like you want to ban gender affirming care for all transgender people (starting with kids but the agenda is clearly to put this care out of reach for adults as well). Don't pretend to be tolerant.
🙄 It's not a matter of "voting". It's a matter of how biology defines what it takes to qualify as male or female.
If people have functional ovaries then they're female, and if they have functional testicles then they're male. And if they have neither -- like Bruce Jenner and other transwomen who've cut their nuts off -- then they're sexless.
This guy is a complete hack. He writes extremely biased articles on transgenders that essentially say "kids can't be trans, fuck anyone who says they can be, gender affirming care isn't medically necessary despite the fact that it reduces suicide by a huge amount in teenagers and adults alike." This guy is so full of misinformation that it's genuinely insane. I'm extremely disappointed that adults here don't have the critical thinking skills to question any of what this hack says.
When you've written nearly a dozen books, have a law degree and have been an investigative journalist for 40 years and are regularly invited onto major news programs for your take on things, I'll listen to you too.
But while you continue to spout lies "reduces suicide by a huge amount" (the opposite is the truth) I'm just gonna chuck you in the trans activist liars bin.
Cowardly behavior is what has led to where we are now. If you won’t use your name behind your opinion then your opinion isn’t your own. It’s actually the opinion of the mob.
I’m a psych nurse at a Yale hospital. Staff frequently discuss transgender issues and maybe 2 out of the 30 staff (nurses, therapists, social workers) support transgender care. None of us will publicly share our concerns out of fear of retribution.
Thanks so much for your comment here. I appreciate hearing from those who work in the medical field.
I hope you never have any contact with transgender patients because the last thing they need is judgment from people like you.
I hate that this is your reality
If you were receiving medical care at a hospital, would you want the nurse to judge you and how you live your life? Or would you want the nurse to mind their own business?
You’re joking, right? If you’re my patient, you came to the hospital for being suicidal, homicidal, or gravely disabled. You can’t legally be discharged until evaluation (judging) by a psychiatrist. What’s crazy is the sexually abused, bipolar, autistic, schizophrenic, borderline, drug-addicted, homeless patients getting services to transition while being actively psychotic, delusional, or hallucinating. In those cases, we do “mind our business” because our concerns are not welcome. Of course, complaints to HR about race, sexuality, and the patriarchy are always investigated.
You seem to assume most trans people aren't really trans and have other mental health conditions. Maybe that's because of the population you work with every day. I would suggest you get to know some trans people outside of your work but clearly you are not open-minded so there would be no point.
Clearly not open-minded? I’m a board-certified psych nurse with a decade of experience in this field. I’m up to date on the latest research and there’s no evidence any interventions for transgender care are beneficial. I wouldn’t continue reading research if I wasn’t open-minded. Most trans people do have other psych issues, actually most have multiple comorbidities. The problem with gender affirming care is they don’t even ask why you feel your transgender because they’re afraid it’s potentially gaslighting or might cause anxiety. It’s like telling a doctor my arm is broken, but not getting an x-ray because I might get offended.
I have known many trans people who are happy after transition. They would strongly object to your claim that transgender care isn't beneficial. It can be life-saving.
It's astonishing to me that so many are eager to punch down on a tiny minority group. There is no compassion at all for those who are suffering because of the anti-trans panic.
Removing a young persons breast is not medically necessary. It’s done for psychological reasons only.
Most breast surgeries on adolescents are done on cisgender girls. But amazingly, the "protect the kids" brigade has no issue with teenage girls trying to make their breasts larger.
It’s called cosmetic surgery and it’s not being labeled as anything more. As you have said multiple times in this thread, it isn’t ’saving lives’.
"Psychological reasons" are medically necessary.
Physical changes for psychological reasons are garbage medicine. Maybe a good lobotomy will help.
The entire point Laura, is that we don't believe it is Care. We don't believe they are Patients. And we certainly don't believe that surgery is the answer. The person you initially responded to does not need your judgement either.
I wouldn't be pushing myself into the women's wards when the men are not wanted there
Often hospital is full of elderly people and the elderly seenm the only ones with any critical thinking abilities
Thank you, Gerald and Trisha, for lending your names and support to DIAG. I look forward to the public conversation July 8 on X.
Thank you and I agree with you and your friend. And am so grateful to di-ag as well!
YUP
Gender dysphoria is real and demonizing trans people doesn't help anyone--except maybe for those who gain views and subscribers.
Here's a real, live trans woman in Iowa. She was raised attending a conservative Christian school but knew she wasn't a boy as early as age 9. No one indoctrinated her to be trans. She didn't receive any gender-affirming care. On the contrary, she received lots of conservative Christian indoctrination. It didn't change the reality that she is trans. She didn't come out until her 20s because of the tremendous stigma against trans people. Of course you don't care about that stigma--you only want validation for people who despise trans people or deny their existence.
https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2024/06/08/meet-aime-wichtendahl-who-could-be-iowas-first-trans-legislator/
I don’t think most people have an issue with people in their 20s coming out. Just stop confusing every child in school to try and find the one trans child who might actually be trans. Studies have shown the vast majority accept their gender later on.
By the way that woman I profiled almost ended her own life before she came out. The concern trolls who supposedly care about trans kids don't acknowledge that their bans are actually driving more kids to suicide.
You should get out of your bubble and talk to some trans people and people with trans kids. No, most of them don't "accept their gender" later on. No, no one is trying to confuse kids in school and encourage them to change their gender.
Many trans kids don't make it to their 20s. You are saying they should live through years of misery until you decide it's ok for them to get medical care. That's not how things should work. The majority should not get veto power over medical care for a minority of less than 1 percent, just because of animus toward trans people.
I'd like to see the studies you're talking about, because there are many studies that prove the contrary.
Go read Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters OR go read Time to Think by Hannah Barnes about Travistock in the UK. Will (should) open your eyes. I recommend the second one if you’re only going to read one.
It's very hard to understand why you and some others are so obsessed with this one issue. Two dozen states have already BANNED gender-affirming care for minors completely. It's caused real hardship including suicides.
Iowa and many other states have passed other laws discriminating against transgender people as well, yet the government using levers of power to harm a historically disfavored minority group is of no concern to you. You post again and again about this as if transgendered people were some all-powerful force in the country, and not a tiny fraction of the population fighting to be treated like human beings.
Have you seen the numbers of girls who have begun identifying as trans or non-binary? Something strange is going on and these kiddos should not be transitioning medically before their brains are fully developed enough to understand the consequences. Therapy first should be the model.
Thank you for your comment here. As a parent on the frontlines, I can confirm this is what is happening. I am the mother of an autistic girl who was taught at school at age 11 that kids who "feel different" and "don't like toys typical for their gender" might be trans. My daughter, along with 3 other girls in her cohort, came home saying they were trans, and talking about getting surgeries and what their surgery scars would look like. I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat who was very socially involved in the San Francisco queer community starting in the 90s. Because I have known and supported trans people for 30 years, it was easy for me to see clearly that the sharp rise in the percentages of kids claiming a trans identity in recent years is not because they're actually trans. They are autistic, gay, or otherwise vulnerable, and are being handed an answer to explain their feelings, among other things. My daughter is out of the woods and doing great. She's mad as hell about what's happened to her generation, and saddened that autistic and gay kids are being convinced to medically harm themselves. Her friends who claim a non-binary identity are sinking further into depression and obsessively talking more and more about surgeries, as well as about not measuring up and being "queer enough." My daughter has had to move on from these friendships because the mental health of those kids is deteriorating, with no end in sight. --Just realized I should clarify, lest anyone be confused: The kids I'm referring to are fully affirmed in their non-binary identities by their families, their schools, their therapists, our city, and our state.
thanks for sharing your personal experience with your daughter
You are very ignorant. Try talking to transgender people and parents of transgender kids. No one is getting medical treatment before therapy. Typically kids are in years of therapy/consultation before meds are prescribed.
You need to read a little more. There are many children on puberty blockers after just one or two visits with a therapist. Most serious complaints in this field come from the therapist themselves because they see how trans activist own the narrative.
I have talked to a bunch of these families in Iowa because I cover Iowa politics and have reported extensively on the anti-LGBTQ bills and laws Republicans have passed here (under the false pretenses of protecting children). None of these kids got puberty blockers after a handful of visits.
I get that conservatives love to push this narrative but it's not reality. I have talked to parents of trans kids and teens. Typically the kids have socially transitioned for years before any meds are prescribed.
So you believe they were born in the wrong body? Do you agree with blind gender affirming care? I’m sure all these confused kids actually believe they are trans. The parents are either complicit in ruining their children’s lives or they are ‘gentle parents’. Studies show they grow out of this. Why has the UK and other countries outlawed these practices on children? Some parents actually say ‘well, at least my child isn’t gay”. You won’t win this argument.
I can see Iowa physicians and therapists being a little more conservative in their treatment. I know Iowa. I also know in my current uber-progressive city a therapist who was told to sign off to medical treatment on multiple kids after only one or two visits. The fact remains there has been a significant increase in children identifying as trans in recent years and it makes zero sense.
She's worked with trans people for 30 years! You seem to have zero capacity to listen to anyone who doesn't agree with you entirely.
Lotta that goin' round these days ... 😉🙂
On that point, you might have some interest in an old essay by Mark Twain:
MT: "Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party's approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals."
https://www.paulgraham.com/cornpone.html
A "mush of mutilated morals" -- seems a fair assessment of many "debates" raging these days ...
Exactly. It really shouldn't be too surprising that some children, and trans identifying children that are in the midst of a social contagion have parents that are virtue signalling too.
"virtue signaling", indeed -- and worse. ICYMI:
"... Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP) after Munchausen syndrome, is a mental health disorder in which a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in another person, typically their child, ...."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on_another
Sadly, being a parent is no guarantee of being able to walk on water ... 😉🙂
Though most step up to the plate and take an honest swing at doing a proper job.
Therapy first IS the model. They're not freely giving out hormones. You and the person who wrote this article are hacks.
> "... a tiny fraction of the population fighting to be treated like human beings."
A rather "disingenuous" assertion, at best.
The issue is generally not one of denying transpeoples' rights "to be treated like human beings" -- what pretentious twaddle. The issue is more one of denying their claims to have changed sex, and their insistence to be treated as if they had done so.
Though that turns on what it takes to qualify as male and female in the first place. If we go with the Kindergarten Cop versions -- boys have penises and girls have vaginas -- then of course transwomen with their newly minted neovaginas can be said to have changed sex. "How dare you deny their rights to use the lady's loos, to qualify as lesbians!!11!!??" 🙄
But if we go with the standard biological definitions for the sexes, about which most people haven't a flaming clue, then those transwomen have turned themselves into sexless eunuchs. Seems like a high price to pay to "dish with the girls" which seems to have been Jenner's "reasons".
But if we go with those definitions then some third of us are sexless, and we don't ACQUIRE a sex until the onset of puberty, and can subsequently have our "sex category membership cards" "revoked" for one reason or another. Hardly "immutable 🙄".
See my open letter for details:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category
I'm not interested in your open letter or your ignorance about transgender people.
LoL. #NoDebate, amirite? 🙄 Has Bruce Jenner changed sex or not? Yes or no? Is he still male or is he now a sexless eunuch?
You might read these articles, although it is rather unlikely you will but others might:
"He’s not the messiah, he’s a transwoman; Transsexual Apostate is a disturbing book, written for disturbing times": https://thecritic.co.uk/hes-not-the-messiah-hes-a-transwoman/
And:
"I’m Trans, and I’m Not up for Debate": https://www.thecrimson.com/column/transcriptions/article/2024/1/25/diaz-trans-not-debate/
If y'all want to change your genders then fine, go big, fill yer boots. But insisting or even suggesting that you've changed sex is to cross the Rubicon into crazy town.
Why are you so obsessed with this issue? No one cares what you think about any specific person. You don't get a vote on whether they are male or female.
This is a flat-out lie: "If y'all want to change your genders then fine, go big, fill yer boots." People like you want to ban gender affirming care for all transgender people (starting with kids but the agenda is clearly to put this care out of reach for adults as well). Don't pretend to be tolerant.
🙄 It's not a matter of "voting". It's a matter of how biology defines what it takes to qualify as male or female.
If people have functional ovaries then they're female, and if they have functional testicles then they're male. And if they have neither -- like Bruce Jenner and other transwomen who've cut their nuts off -- then they're sexless.
No one cares what you think. You are ignorant of basic facts about trans people.
What about women who are infertile? Men who have amputated their testicles? Are those people not female or male?
This guy is a complete hack. He writes extremely biased articles on transgenders that essentially say "kids can't be trans, fuck anyone who says they can be, gender affirming care isn't medically necessary despite the fact that it reduces suicide by a huge amount in teenagers and adults alike." This guy is so full of misinformation that it's genuinely insane. I'm extremely disappointed that adults here don't have the critical thinking skills to question any of what this hack says.
When you've written nearly a dozen books, have a law degree and have been an investigative journalist for 40 years and are regularly invited onto major news programs for your take on things, I'll listen to you too.
But while you continue to spout lies "reduces suicide by a huge amount" (the opposite is the truth) I'm just gonna chuck you in the trans activist liars bin.
Should be an interesting discussion that might lead to a positive outcome or be negative & pointless. We’ll find out.
Cowardly behavior is what has led to where we are now. If you won’t use your name behind your opinion then your opinion isn’t your own. It’s actually the opinion of the mob.