This EO is a devastating blow against surgical and chemical mutilation of children and young adults. Hopefully, it will end the funding thru Medicare/Medicaid of these "treatments". It will also end the support in NIH of research into trans. The research is shit anyway.
Trump promised and delivered. Now, we need to expand these EOs to vulnerable adults. Our Executive decision-making abilities are not fully operational until about 26 or 27 years old. For some neurodiverse individuals, it can take another 10 to 15% more time. We need a mechanism to protect them, too, from the severe and detrimental consequences of gender ideology.
It is a relief to see our government embrace objective reality and finally stand on the side of parents!!
The problem is that some children who think they are trans grow up to realize that they are not exactly that, while other children who think they are trans really are. The children in this second group really benefit from earlier intervention with puberty blockers and hormones as they do not have to "undo" as much. The devil is in telling the difference.
No one is really trans. It's a mental illness, which should be treated as such.
A trans child is like a vegan cat. We all know who is really calling the shots. - Blaire White
I will add that if you give these confused kids time, they will grow up to be perfectly fine gays and lesbians. Poor Jazz Jennings is a perfect example of what happens when a mother with Munchhausen by Proxy Syndrome decides her child's sex.
I will add here that there are people who convince themselves that one of their arms or legs doesn't belong on their body and therefore needs to go. In some cases, they can find a doctor to amputate the limb. I think you would agree that this thinking is clearly the result of mental illness.
So how is wanting to amputate your genitals any different?
Relatively few trans people take hormones. Even fewer have surgery.
Also, male-to-female reassignment surgery does not involve amputation. Rather one is turned "outside-in". One can simulate most of the transformations involved in male-to-female reassignment in an instantly reversible way using a simple device called a fufu clip.
Viewing trans as a mental illness is like viewing gay as a mental illness. An obsolete concept.
I've reported extensively on this issue in Iowa and I assure you no minors have ever gotten bottom surgery here. Top surgery has very rarely been done on minors either.
What is your take on the analysis behind the Do No Harm database released late last year that identified at least 5,000 gender-affirming surgeries on minors between 2019 and 2023 using US claims data?
"Not amputation, rather turned outside in"????? What the hell happens to all the flesh inside the skin of the penis? It gets chucked in the bin that's what.
And to claim male to female "reassignment" can be easily done with a Fufu clip?
You have zero idea what a woman is.
Your comments are precisely why the western world needed Donald Trump, for goodness sake. Please, just give it up now.
Gay people have always existed and there is nothing "mental" about being attracted to a person of the same sex. However, claiming that your body is "wrong" when, in fact, there is nothing wrong with it, save for your PERCEPTION of it, indicates an incapacity to adjust to reality. People who have a distorted perception of reality have always been considered mentally ill in all societies. It's a mental illness.
I prefer to create my own frame that "agree" with someone else's. I said very clearly what I believe (see above). People (of all kinds) exist. Some of these people started to call themselves "trans"--mostly in Anglophone countries. What they mean by this label is different according to the interpretation. Since we all have different interpretations of reality, some people (like myself) have a different view about what "trans" means. For me it means people alienated from nature, including the nature of their own body. I would say that in many societies, including in all societies of the past, "trans people" did not exist--and this is provable because there are no documents of anyone saying that they were born in the wrong body prior to the 20th century. Even today, most people in my country of birth, Romania, have no idea what "trans" is, so, as far as they are concerned, these people don't exist. Most concepts that start "existing" at a certain point, and which didn't "exist" before, indicate that they are recent social constructs.
It is a mental illness. Most of these people do not look healthy either physically or mentally.
As for the surgery, yes it does involve amputation of healthy breasts and male organs. In FtM transition, they will carve out a huge chunk of flesh from your arm or thigh to create a Frankensteinish penis which will never work as it should.
Poor Jazz Jennings has faced endless problems because his evil mother decided when he was three years old that it was time to change his sex. When the day came to invert his penis into a vagina, they discovered it was simply too small to be of use. I am unsure of what the solution was. Frequently, the surgeon will decide to use colon tissue to craft a fake vagina in these situations..
It's just a horror show all around.
You can find pictures online of people with Grand Canyons in the forearms or thighs. Those depressions will never fill out.
My wife and I have a very good friend who is transgender for decades. I grew up in San Francisco, we lived for years in Manhattan, and now Miami Beach, we come across many adult transgender people who just want to live their lives quietly, out of the spotlight. That is not the issue. I am talking about the contagion that has affected children, those who are incapable of giving informed consent about permanent alterations to their bodies.
It is the issue, Gerald! What you celebrate will deny basic care and treatment to people like your friend.
I also know adults who have been transgender for decades. Many of them were suicidal as adolescents or young adults because they couldn't get the support they needed.
Very few trans kids are getting surgery. What you celebrate leads to discrimination against trans kids across the board, even if they just want to socially transition with no medical treatment.
Studies have shown that actual suicides are more prevalent 3-5 years after transition.
Many issues cause suicidal ideation and it is very easy to say you were suicidal in the past. It's also very easy to say you thought you were a different sex in childhood....rewriting history is a theme with many family members and friends saying they didn't see any evidence of gender distress in the claimants. Stories of rewriting history have been documented. Trans activists online coach people to claim this too.
Trans identifying people were the first to be thrown under the gender ideology bus. But the other groups dragged under are gay and autistic children....this is the problem and this is the issue. No, we don't want to see children go without treatment they need. But young people need support with the distress of mental and emotional issues, and the very real stress of puberty. 60-80% will desist and realise they're gay or be diagnosed autistic if given genuine support from non affirming adults. Children do not need to be groomed online by activists and rushed through medical intervention by greedy and ignorant doctors.
I'm sorry to seem dismissive, but you appear to be wilfully ignorant. The research and stats are there. You can't see the forrest for the trees.
You are deluding yourself behind the veil of virtue signalling. What distorted media? The ones that made Imane Kahlif look like a man? Reduxx that report the statistics regarding Trans sexual violence against others (including other trans)? They facts and stats about rape in women's prisons? The fiasco about trans 'women' counselling rape victims? The investigations into the huge surge in children seeking puberty blockers... only in the West, predpredominantly white and middle class? All the documented sports awards and cash prizes men have stolen from women?
Your stance makes you a misogynist.
Why are you even here, commenting on Gerald's substack, if you so broadly dispute facts?
I'm willing to wager I've known and worked with these 'real' trans people you suggest we meet. Not all of us live under a rock. Not all of us need to virtue signal that we are compassionate but still recognise mammalian sex binary.
I don't need to know a murderer to understand why murder is a problem. I don't need to know a trannie to know that they are sick deluded psychotics. The ones I do know are pathetic losers who have serious mental issues.
It's disheartening to see how many people feel no empathy for transgender people.
I live in Iowa where our governor and Republican majority will probably remove gender identity from our state's civil rights act soon. That will mean people can be fired, evicted, denied medical care, or refused service in public spaces, solely because they are transgender.
Much of the "concern" for transgender people is driven by hatred and bigotry. It leads to discrimination against people just for existing.
"Much of the "concern" for transgender people is driven by hatred and bigotry. It leads to discrimination against people just for existing."
No doubt this is unfortunately true for some portion of the people you've encountered opposing gender affirming care. I really wish it weren't, and I can't speak for them or their motives.
However, I come at this from the standpoint of the traditional left-leaning Democratic voter who has come to the conclusion in good faith that this kind of care is not supported by good evidence and should not be available to minors, and that biological sex is real and unchangeable and matters in many situations. There are a growing number of us, afraid to speak publicly, but we talk to each other. Many of us, myself included, have come to this conclusion after doing months or even years of our own research into the primary sources behind this; the journal articles, the depositions, the legal documents, the testimonies, the online spaces. And unfortunately we've seen how the traditional media has badly misled us on this issue.
You clearly care a lot about this issue, as do I. If you're not familiar with this perspective I highly recommend the writing of Lisa Selin-Davis and Ben Appel, who I think do a beautiful job articulating it. Even if you disagree with them, they reflect one part of the diversity of opinions on this, and a growing one at that.
Nothing is better for building an audience these days than bashing trans people. I will never join with people who want to enshrine discrimination and drive trans people to suicide.
Your massive ignorance on this topis is astonishing. Trans are no more suicidal than are any other group of psychotic delusional persons. And the point of maximum suicide is 7-10 years AFTER any kind of therapy, when the realization sinks in that they have massively and permanently damaged their bodies for the rest of their life. I'd be depressed too.
I don't know how you have come to the conclusion that they are "bashing trans people" without reading what they've written. Assuming you don't, all I can tell you is that you are fundamentally misunderstanding the people and the perspective they articulate that I described in my comment. Whether you choose to continue on with an incomplete understanding of the perspectives on this issue is certainly your choice, though not one I understand.
Not accusing them directly. But this whole moral panic has become an industry to drive some very ugly political goals. To cite just one example none of the politicians pushing for this stuff have ever cared about girls or women’s sports in other contexts. Some well meaning people are building huge audiences from people just looking for more reasons to hate and bully a tiny minority. I will never join your crusade. This is a massively exaggerated supposed problem for kids and the crusade is doing real harm to vulnerable people.
What is it about young girls that makes you want to mutilate them by removing their breasts? That is completely disgusting. You need to rethink your hatred for girls.
"To cite just one example none of the politicians pushing for this stuff have ever cared about girls or women’s sports in other contexts."
Generally I do agree with this (it's also true for a lot of partisan right-wing media figures, which I have no time for) and share your criticism. It's absolutely possible that someone can happen to come to the same position I do in bad faith.
I'll leave it at this: You worry about harm to vulnerable people. There is also quantifiable, verifiable harm coming to vulnerable people from the other side of this that is mostly ignored by traditional media but is there to be seen for anyone who cares to look (even discounting partisan right-wing media). Much more harm than people who support gender affirming care seem aware of or willing to recognize. I've put a lot of time listening to the voices of trans-people, their families, and the doctors who provide the care. At least be open to the possibility that the reality of this is more complicated than you seem to think it is.
Jackson, you seem like a well-meaning person. For every adolescent who has received gender-affirming surgery (it's a minuscule number), there must be 100 underage girls forced to carry pregnancies to term, often after being raped or abused. Their number increases every day as a huge segment of the U.S. population lives in abortion ban states like mine, which have already banned gender-affirming care for minors.
Being forced to carry a pregnancy to term is permanently life-altering and in many cases life-ruining for young adolescents. The people using anti-trans animus for political gain CELEBRATE forcing young girls to carry pregnancies to term. 90 percent of this has nothing to do with "protecting" girls or women.
There are no "trans people". There is no "natural class" of trans people. Trans is a decision that people make to act in a certain way. Since trans is not a natural class, it does not have any protection in civil rights. SCOTUS has extended certain job protections, but the TN case just argued (which will support the ability of the state of TN to restrict medical treatments), both sides agreed that there is natural class of trans. Thus, your entire argument is fallacious.
Gerald, do you acknowledge that transgender people exist, or not?
To my knowledge, no European country has imposed a blanket ban on all gender affirming care for minors.
The transgender people I know realized at a very young age that their gender identity did not match their sex assigned at birth. Is it your position that these people are all just deluded? Or they should suffer until they are 18 to protect other teens from receiving these medications?
“(ii) within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) shall publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion.
(b) The Secretary of HHS, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, shall use all available methods to increase the quality of data to guide practices for improving the health of minors with gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion, or who otherwise seek chemical or surgical mutilation.”
You make this policy sound so reasonable while other commenters in your thread say all trans people are psychotic. The hateful rhetoric about trans people causes real harm. I wish you showed more empathy for the people who need this treatment and will not be able to receive it now.
No child, regardless of emotional or psychological distress caused by his or her body, can benefit from having their natural development “blocked” by dangerous chemicals or, in the case of girls, having their healthy breasts removed. The countries that pioneered these treatments for young people—Holland, the UK, and Scandinavian countries—have all walked back on these procedures based on a lack of evidence that they help. It shows no empathy to tell a distressed girl that the solution to her psychological or emotional problems is a radical mastectomy.
The fact that it's now known that the human brain hasn't fully matured until someone is in his mid to late twenties makes medicine's acceptance of children's claims to being in sexually errant bodies seem far more irresponsible than might have been so twenty five years ago. ( It also, to me, makes strong arguments for raising the voting age and the age at which one can buy alcohol legally. )
I compare it with the moral indefensibility of abortion on demand after the invention of ultrasound, but then, doctors and nurses who took care of women who had miscarried shouldn't have ever been silent about the "blob of tissue" lie.
I don't think trans people are psychotic. It seems to me that the conviction that one has been born in the wrong body is akin to obsessive - compulsive disorder. That does mean that it is a form of OCD which has not been recognized by medicine yet, but as a laymen, it seems to me that it is worth the considering.
OCD is not a psychosis.
But just because the conviction reminds me of OCD doesn't mean it is that. It may be that it is its own, unbranded psychiatric illness. Often in medicine, a disease is not understood to be a disease until it has been given a name. And even then, it's having been given a name can be disastrous for its sufferers' prospects of getting the treatment they need if the label was hastily conjured up. The disease known as "chronic fatigue syndrome" is a classic example.
There is a book I recommend to the curious, "Head Games," by Michael Paul Mason. In that book, Mason writes about all sorts of strange brain maladies which have affected people. Maybe the conviction that one is in the wrong gender category is such a malady. The late neurologist, Oliver Sacks, wrote several books about unusual brain illnesses, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" being the best known.
I wonder if the rise in transgender claims has any subterranean connection to the rise in autism? That is a thought which just occurred to me.
One thing is certain: you can't escape your DNA anymore than you can escape your fingerprints.
I'm writing this on a phone which, because I paid more than $19.99 for it, was an example of crime which the DOJ needs to pay attention to: I can't go back and edit. In my first paragraph, I intended to write, "That does not mean."
My needing to be extra careful with this phone is a drag, man. It limits my ability to throw out impulsive and poorly thought out remarks, thereby undermining the very idea of a Substack comments section.
It's a mental illness. It's usually one of a cluster of mental illnesses the person has been diagnosed with. Many girls who wish to transition are autistic.
So if you believe that mental illness can be cured with surgical destruction of the reproductive organs, do you also believe that a cancer can be cured with psychotherapy?
Trump has been saying he's ending all of this care for minors. You really think they will allow any youth with gender dysphoria to be treated? He's very clear that he wants it all banned.
Chris Jorgensen went to Scandinavia in 1952 and came back as Christine in 1952. On YouTube there used to be newsreel footage of Jorgensen’s return, at Idlewild Airport in New York City. If you can, watch it. The LGBTQ+ Gospel is that America in the 1950s was only slightly less repressive than Nazi Germany, but the reporters treated Jorgensen with nothing but respect. There would be a lot more inherent jeering in the way reporters treated The Beatles twelve years later, on February 7th, 1964, when they landed at the same airport with a new name ( JFK ). It's interesting to study all the photos you can find of the reporters and the cops as they behold The Beatles: a lot of them clearly think The Beatles are ridiculous and probably gay.
I remember Christine Jorgensen being interviewed by Art Linkletter, of all people. If that name means nothing to you because you may be too young, Art Linkletter was that weird thing, a television personality. He appears to have been a truly kind man, respectful of all, and was a good interviewer with a fine sense of humor. He was the epitome of wholesomeness to the America of the 1950s and 1960s, and that he would have Christine Jorgensen as a guest tells you a lot about what America was really like sixty years ago.
It may be true that obviously gay people didn't do too well in most small towns and had to decamp to big cities, but even that isn't necessarily the case. Florence King's hilarious, scabrous “Southern Ladies and Gentlemen” goes into the matter. And as I say to people when the talk turns to things like this, what, you think we Southern lads in the 1960s didn't know that Mr Jones, the teacher, and Dave, the neighborhood florist, were gay? ( Here's how a truly civilized society functions: single women in the neighborhood used to ooohhh and aaahhh about what a handsome fellow Dave was, and he was, but I am sure they all knew he was gay. They were trying to provide cover. ) Do you think the old boys whose wives went to “the beauty parlor” didn't realize the male hairdressers were “like that”?
Transgenderism is different. Of course, they have rights, just as the homeless have rights. But the homeless are sick in varying ways, and most should be in hospitals of various kinds. And inasmuch as genes are sovereign in the matter of sexual identify, I can't see people who are convinced they're in mismatched bodies as anything other than ill. Are you sure that in ten years, transgenderism won't be seen as a form of obsessive compulsive disorder?
Laura: "Gerald, do you acknowledge that transgender people exist, or not?"
No one is "denying that transgender people exist". Only their claims that they can change or have changed sex. A rather large number of transpeople -- along with various hangers-on, grifters, scientific illiterates, quack doctors, and political opportunists -- have been claiming exactly that:
That EO merely validates the general consensus that sex and gender are two entirely different kettles of fish. "sex" generally refers ONLY to specific reproductive abilities -- the EO explicitly says "produces large reproductive cells" and "produces small reproductive cells" as the defining criteria for females and males, respectively. "gender", on the other hand, refers only to various "sexually dimorphic" personality traits, behaviours, roles, and stereotypes.
For example, see this editorial in the British Medical Journal:
BMJ: "Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. ...."
That some dysphoric child has some "gender non-conforming traits" -- masculine girls or feminine boys -- is no reason whatsoever to try tricking them into thinking they were "born in the wrong body". And that the only course of action is to mangle their genitalia into some ersatz Frankensteinian replica of those of the other sex. Crime and medical scandal of the century to be doing so.
Correct. There is no doubt that "gender dysphoria" exists, although it has been ginned up to be a massive problem instead of a momentary self-alienation. The issue is "delusion or reality". It's a delusion.
Nobody is assigned their sex at birth. Sex is observed and recorded. As I explained in my above comment, this belief about being in the wrong body is a mental illness.
Most kids who have gender dysphoria when they are very young grow out of it and no one knows how to determine which ones will not grow out of it or have it resolve with therapy. None of the MDs offering these interventions to young people have shown that they can predict who will be likely both 1) not to grow out of it and 2) to benefit from the medical interventions. They haven't checked. No one even knows how many do well if given the US on demand model, again, they haven't checked. Chen et al 2023 hid many of its results for hormones and was too short term, and Olson-Kennedy hid the puberty blocker results, and all the systematic reviews of the evidence say they just can't predict likely outcomes...
The Dutch have outcomes for people who met their criteria, who had this very young, but their long term outcomes aren't coming out very fast.
They did put out a paper saying that (I think! it was a difficult read) that it was maybe too linear to expect a patient was doing poorly, got treated, and then did well...which is sort of what I thought a medical treatment did, though. https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-024-01143-8
Sex is not “assigned” at birth. That is, on its face, a bizarre and untrue proposition. Sex is observed at birth, and in most cases can be observed in utero. Use of the term “sex assigned at birth” is an indication that someone has signed on to a whole host of cult-like beliefs that leads one to such absurd conclusions like there is such a thing as a “trans child” and/or that people can be born into “the wrong body.”
Actually no he has made some abominable decisions and his fitness to lead makes his predecessor look like god. Check out my post on the Jan 6th pardons.
Look at the murders Biden pardoned. Guy that killed 2 FBI agents, the pair that murdered a cop, and the Bridgeport guy that assassinated an 8yr old boy. Biden got played into pardoning over 8000 people. Instead of accountability, democrats are blaming activists for misrepresenting the prisoners to them.
Agree that Biden had many faults. Presidents have been egotistical and somewhat corrupt politicians forever. But trump is several orders of magnitude worse. In so many ways.
This thing you guys have about Trump reminds me of a common misery: the ostracized kid. No other kid is ever likely to be able to say exactly what it is that makes the ostracized kid so awful, it's just that everyone knows he is, and if you don't, well, just what is it about you?
Miranda Devine's book, "The Big Guy," about what she calls "the Biden crime family" hasn't been challenged, let alone in court. If I were the paterfamilias of something labeled "the Lime crime family" in a bestseller, and had Biden's money, I sure as Hell would not let such a thing go without a defamation suit.
How is Trump, the ostracized kid as you folks are so sure he is, "several orders of magnitude worse" than being the Godfather?
He's really batting 1.000 at this point. Win after win after win. The planes are filling with illegals scum, unemployed lawyers are streaming out of Washington, and it's only Day 10.
In an interview a psychiatrist was asked if Trump were a malignant narcissist.
"Not a chance," he replied. "He's a narcissist of comical excessiveness, but there is no way he's a malignant narcissist. You don't see love for someone who is a malignant narcissist on the faces of his children. You do see it in the countenances of Trump's children.''
My own two cents is that you also see it on Melania's face.
I have a cousin who is a malignant narcissist. Like all such people, he's marvelous at first sight, but beginning in 2014, his getting caught in a political scandal was the flesh wound which became necrotic, eventually costing him his business. Here's one thing I know he did for sport:
There is another cousin in the family who survived a mass murder when he was seven and has been disabled ever since, severely disabled. My aunt and uncle were not wealthy, but another aunt, widowed and childless, was going to leave her estate to our cousin, so despite the estate's modestness, we knew our cousin would be provided for. After her death, we learned that he had been disinherited by our aunt. From what the lawyer was able to tell us, we learned that our evil scum cousin had gone behind our backs to this aunt, whom he never shown the slightest interest in, to defame our cousin out of her will. He's a sadist. ( Our cousin is being well provided for. )
That is how malignant narcissist scum behave, and there have never been any such stories about Trump.
Our scummy cousin had been a successful fortune hunter. I was curious whether his wife might have a Facebook page, so I looked. She does. Her personal photo is a photo of a particularly hopeless looking emu behind a wire mesh fence.
You haven't seen the photos I've seen. She is one regal, self possessed woman, that's true, but I have seen affection and admiration in her countenance, and definitely in the countenances of his children. Go back and watch the swearing - in. Look at Tiffany Trump.
That's what's wrong with our politics: “subhuman turd.” And pro Trumpists have their corresponding feelings for anti Trumpists. Somebody once explained The Spanish Civil War by saying, “It came down to the fact that we just couldn't stand each other anymore.” Do you want that to happen to the United States? I don't.
Of course not. But trump is igniting and fomenting that division when he should be doing the exact opposite. I’m sorry but he has not a single redeeming feature and is by far the worst and most damaging president ever. America has no chance to heal while he is around.
Common sense. That’s all common sense
This EO is a devastating blow against surgical and chemical mutilation of children and young adults. Hopefully, it will end the funding thru Medicare/Medicaid of these "treatments". It will also end the support in NIH of research into trans. The research is shit anyway.
It is a hugely important order.
Buried in it as well is the order banning female genital mutilation or fgm, something which has been in the UK for a number of years.
Let's hope this EO is truly the beginning of the end of this whole medicalized 'gender affirming care' in the US.
Trump promised and delivered. Now, we need to expand these EOs to vulnerable adults. Our Executive decision-making abilities are not fully operational until about 26 or 27 years old. For some neurodiverse individuals, it can take another 10 to 15% more time. We need a mechanism to protect them, too, from the severe and detrimental consequences of gender ideology.
It is a relief to see our government embrace objective reality and finally stand on the side of parents!!
The problem is that some children who think they are trans grow up to realize that they are not exactly that, while other children who think they are trans really are. The children in this second group really benefit from earlier intervention with puberty blockers and hormones as they do not have to "undo" as much. The devil is in telling the difference.
No one is really trans. It's a mental illness, which should be treated as such.
A trans child is like a vegan cat. We all know who is really calling the shots. - Blaire White
I will add that if you give these confused kids time, they will grow up to be perfectly fine gays and lesbians. Poor Jazz Jennings is a perfect example of what happens when a mother with Munchhausen by Proxy Syndrome decides her child's sex.
I will add here that there are people who convince themselves that one of their arms or legs doesn't belong on their body and therefore needs to go. In some cases, they can find a doctor to amputate the limb. I think you would agree that this thinking is clearly the result of mental illness.
So how is wanting to amputate your genitals any different?
Typos fixed
Relatively few trans people take hormones. Even fewer have surgery.
Also, male-to-female reassignment surgery does not involve amputation. Rather one is turned "outside-in". One can simulate most of the transformations involved in male-to-female reassignment in an instantly reversible way using a simple device called a fufu clip.
Viewing trans as a mental illness is like viewing gay as a mental illness. An obsolete concept.
From my NY Post OpEd about the WPATH scandal: “The child insisted on a vaginoplasty, a surgery that removes the penis, testicles and scrotum and repositions tissue to create a nonfunctioning pseudo-vagina. It requires a lifetime of dilation. Was he too young at 14?” https://nypost.com/2024/03/04/opinion/secret-files-show-how-international-group-pushes-shocking-experimental-gender-surgery-for-minors/
I've reported extensively on this issue in Iowa and I assure you no minors have ever gotten bottom surgery here. Top surgery has very rarely been done on minors either.
What is your take on the analysis behind the Do No Harm database released late last year that identified at least 5,000 gender-affirming surgeries on minors between 2019 and 2023 using US claims data?
https://stoptheharmdatabase.com/method/
You really are struggling aren't you?
"Not amputation, rather turned outside in"????? What the hell happens to all the flesh inside the skin of the penis? It gets chucked in the bin that's what.
And to claim male to female "reassignment" can be easily done with a Fufu clip?
You have zero idea what a woman is.
Your comments are precisely why the western world needed Donald Trump, for goodness sake. Please, just give it up now.
Gay people have always existed and there is nothing "mental" about being attracted to a person of the same sex. However, claiming that your body is "wrong" when, in fact, there is nothing wrong with it, save for your PERCEPTION of it, indicates an incapacity to adjust to reality. People who have a distorted perception of reality have always been considered mentally ill in all societies. It's a mental illness.
Transing away the gay
Do you agree that trans people don't really exist?
I prefer to create my own frame that "agree" with someone else's. I said very clearly what I believe (see above). People (of all kinds) exist. Some of these people started to call themselves "trans"--mostly in Anglophone countries. What they mean by this label is different according to the interpretation. Since we all have different interpretations of reality, some people (like myself) have a different view about what "trans" means. For me it means people alienated from nature, including the nature of their own body. I would say that in many societies, including in all societies of the past, "trans people" did not exist--and this is provable because there are no documents of anyone saying that they were born in the wrong body prior to the 20th century. Even today, most people in my country of birth, Romania, have no idea what "trans" is, so, as far as they are concerned, these people don't exist. Most concepts that start "existing" at a certain point, and which didn't "exist" before, indicate that they are recent social constructs.
It is a mental illness. Most of these people do not look healthy either physically or mentally.
As for the surgery, yes it does involve amputation of healthy breasts and male organs. In FtM transition, they will carve out a huge chunk of flesh from your arm or thigh to create a Frankensteinish penis which will never work as it should.
Poor Jazz Jennings has faced endless problems because his evil mother decided when he was three years old that it was time to change his sex. When the day came to invert his penis into a vagina, they discovered it was simply too small to be of use. I am unsure of what the solution was. Frequently, the surgeon will decide to use colon tissue to craft a fake vagina in these situations..
It's just a horror show all around.
You can find pictures online of people with Grand Canyons in the forearms or thighs. Those depressions will never fill out.
>Relatively few trans people take hormones. Even fewer have surgery.
This simply is not true and it doesn't even make any sense.
How can someone be transgender if they never had hormone therapy or surgery?
Sorry but that is absolute garbage.
You cannot possibly, in your wildest delusions, compare thinking you are 'born in the wrong body' to being attracted to the same sex.
Attaching the T to LGB was the first of the many conniving strategies of the cult of trans ideology.
I do encourage everyone here to actually get to know a transgender person. Don't rely on the distorted media images you may have seen.
My wife and I have a very good friend who is transgender for decades. I grew up in San Francisco, we lived for years in Manhattan, and now Miami Beach, we come across many adult transgender people who just want to live their lives quietly, out of the spotlight. That is not the issue. I am talking about the contagion that has affected children, those who are incapable of giving informed consent about permanent alterations to their bodies.
It is the issue, Gerald! What you celebrate will deny basic care and treatment to people like your friend.
I also know adults who have been transgender for decades. Many of them were suicidal as adolescents or young adults because they couldn't get the support they needed.
Very few trans kids are getting surgery. What you celebrate leads to discrimination against trans kids across the board, even if they just want to socially transition with no medical treatment.
You've been looking at different stats than us.
Studies have shown that actual suicides are more prevalent 3-5 years after transition.
Many issues cause suicidal ideation and it is very easy to say you were suicidal in the past. It's also very easy to say you thought you were a different sex in childhood....rewriting history is a theme with many family members and friends saying they didn't see any evidence of gender distress in the claimants. Stories of rewriting history have been documented. Trans activists online coach people to claim this too.
Trans identifying people were the first to be thrown under the gender ideology bus. But the other groups dragged under are gay and autistic children....this is the problem and this is the issue. No, we don't want to see children go without treatment they need. But young people need support with the distress of mental and emotional issues, and the very real stress of puberty. 60-80% will desist and realise they're gay or be diagnosed autistic if given genuine support from non affirming adults. Children do not need to be groomed online by activists and rushed through medical intervention by greedy and ignorant doctors.
I'm sorry to seem dismissive, but you appear to be wilfully ignorant. The research and stats are there. You can't see the forrest for the trees.
More on Jazz
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GmpgCCBkzZ4
A look at the horror story that is Jazz Jennings' life.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rgAHhJFJojY
You are deluding yourself behind the veil of virtue signalling. What distorted media? The ones that made Imane Kahlif look like a man? Reduxx that report the statistics regarding Trans sexual violence against others (including other trans)? They facts and stats about rape in women's prisons? The fiasco about trans 'women' counselling rape victims? The investigations into the huge surge in children seeking puberty blockers... only in the West, predpredominantly white and middle class? All the documented sports awards and cash prizes men have stolen from women?
Your stance makes you a misogynist.
Why are you even here, commenting on Gerald's substack, if you so broadly dispute facts?
I'm willing to wager I've known and worked with these 'real' trans people you suggest we meet. Not all of us live under a rock. Not all of us need to virtue signal that we are compassionate but still recognise mammalian sex binary.
This is not even about transgender. It's about Sex. THAT is where you derail.
I don't need to know a murderer to understand why murder is a problem. I don't need to know a trannie to know that they are sick deluded psychotics. The ones I do know are pathetic losers who have serious mental issues.
There are no "true trans" children. That's just a big myth made up by the trannie pimps.
And their virtue signalling parents/teachers/therapists/surgeons
It's disheartening to see how many people feel no empathy for transgender people.
I live in Iowa where our governor and Republican majority will probably remove gender identity from our state's civil rights act soon. That will mean people can be fired, evicted, denied medical care, or refused service in public spaces, solely because they are transgender.
Much of the "concern" for transgender people is driven by hatred and bigotry. It leads to discrimination against people just for existing.
"Much of the "concern" for transgender people is driven by hatred and bigotry. It leads to discrimination against people just for existing."
No doubt this is unfortunately true for some portion of the people you've encountered opposing gender affirming care. I really wish it weren't, and I can't speak for them or their motives.
However, I come at this from the standpoint of the traditional left-leaning Democratic voter who has come to the conclusion in good faith that this kind of care is not supported by good evidence and should not be available to minors, and that biological sex is real and unchangeable and matters in many situations. There are a growing number of us, afraid to speak publicly, but we talk to each other. Many of us, myself included, have come to this conclusion after doing months or even years of our own research into the primary sources behind this; the journal articles, the depositions, the legal documents, the testimonies, the online spaces. And unfortunately we've seen how the traditional media has badly misled us on this issue.
You clearly care a lot about this issue, as do I. If you're not familiar with this perspective I highly recommend the writing of Lisa Selin-Davis and Ben Appel, who I think do a beautiful job articulating it. Even if you disagree with them, they reflect one part of the diversity of opinions on this, and a growing one at that.
Lisa's substack: https://www.broadview.news/
Ben's substack: https://benappel.substack.com/
Nothing is better for building an audience these days than bashing trans people. I will never join with people who want to enshrine discrimination and drive trans people to suicide.
Your massive ignorance on this topis is astonishing. Trans are no more suicidal than are any other group of psychotic delusional persons. And the point of maximum suicide is 7-10 years AFTER any kind of therapy, when the realization sinks in that they have massively and permanently damaged their bodies for the rest of their life. I'd be depressed too.
I don't know how you have come to the conclusion that they are "bashing trans people" without reading what they've written. Assuming you don't, all I can tell you is that you are fundamentally misunderstanding the people and the perspective they articulate that I described in my comment. Whether you choose to continue on with an incomplete understanding of the perspectives on this issue is certainly your choice, though not one I understand.
Not accusing them directly. But this whole moral panic has become an industry to drive some very ugly political goals. To cite just one example none of the politicians pushing for this stuff have ever cared about girls or women’s sports in other contexts. Some well meaning people are building huge audiences from people just looking for more reasons to hate and bully a tiny minority. I will never join your crusade. This is a massively exaggerated supposed problem for kids and the crusade is doing real harm to vulnerable people.
What is it about young girls that makes you want to mutilate them by removing their breasts? That is completely disgusting. You need to rethink your hatred for girls.
"To cite just one example none of the politicians pushing for this stuff have ever cared about girls or women’s sports in other contexts."
Generally I do agree with this (it's also true for a lot of partisan right-wing media figures, which I have no time for) and share your criticism. It's absolutely possible that someone can happen to come to the same position I do in bad faith.
I'll leave it at this: You worry about harm to vulnerable people. There is also quantifiable, verifiable harm coming to vulnerable people from the other side of this that is mostly ignored by traditional media but is there to be seen for anyone who cares to look (even discounting partisan right-wing media). Much more harm than people who support gender affirming care seem aware of or willing to recognize. I've put a lot of time listening to the voices of trans-people, their families, and the doctors who provide the care. At least be open to the possibility that the reality of this is more complicated than you seem to think it is.
Jackson, you seem like a well-meaning person. For every adolescent who has received gender-affirming surgery (it's a minuscule number), there must be 100 underage girls forced to carry pregnancies to term, often after being raped or abused. Their number increases every day as a huge segment of the U.S. population lives in abortion ban states like mine, which have already banned gender-affirming care for minors.
Being forced to carry a pregnancy to term is permanently life-altering and in many cases life-ruining for young adolescents. The people using anti-trans animus for political gain CELEBRATE forcing young girls to carry pregnancies to term. 90 percent of this has nothing to do with "protecting" girls or women.
There are no "trans people". There is no "natural class" of trans people. Trans is a decision that people make to act in a certain way. Since trans is not a natural class, it does not have any protection in civil rights. SCOTUS has extended certain job protections, but the TN case just argued (which will support the ability of the state of TN to restrict medical treatments), both sides agreed that there is natural class of trans. Thus, your entire argument is fallacious.
Detrans Awareness Day Panel Discussion With Detransitioners For 'No Way Back 'Documentary
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LyJGijjI2JU
A look at the horror story that is Jazz Jennings' life.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rgAHhJFJojY
His parents should be tried for mutilation and jailed for many many years.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GmpgCCBkzZ4
I can't wait for the report!!
Considering that it's Trump's HHS that will write it, it will be a devastating denouncement of the entire corrupt and filthy enterprise.
Gerald, do you acknowledge that transgender people exist, or not?
To my knowledge, no European country has imposed a blanket ban on all gender affirming care for minors.
The transgender people I know realized at a very young age that their gender identity did not match their sex assigned at birth. Is it your position that these people are all just deluded? Or they should suffer until they are 18 to protect other teens from receiving these medications?
It is not a blanket ban. Section 3
“(ii) within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) shall publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion.
(b) The Secretary of HHS, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, shall use all available methods to increase the quality of data to guide practices for improving the health of minors with gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion, or who otherwise seek chemical or surgical mutilation.”
You make this policy sound so reasonable while other commenters in your thread say all trans people are psychotic. The hateful rhetoric about trans people causes real harm. I wish you showed more empathy for the people who need this treatment and will not be able to receive it now.
No child, regardless of emotional or psychological distress caused by his or her body, can benefit from having their natural development “blocked” by dangerous chemicals or, in the case of girls, having their healthy breasts removed. The countries that pioneered these treatments for young people—Holland, the UK, and Scandinavian countries—have all walked back on these procedures based on a lack of evidence that they help. It shows no empathy to tell a distressed girl that the solution to her psychological or emotional problems is a radical mastectomy.
The fact that it's now known that the human brain hasn't fully matured until someone is in his mid to late twenties makes medicine's acceptance of children's claims to being in sexually errant bodies seem far more irresponsible than might have been so twenty five years ago. ( It also, to me, makes strong arguments for raising the voting age and the age at which one can buy alcohol legally. )
I compare it with the moral indefensibility of abortion on demand after the invention of ultrasound, but then, doctors and nurses who took care of women who had miscarried shouldn't have ever been silent about the "blob of tissue" lie.
I don't think trans people are psychotic. It seems to me that the conviction that one has been born in the wrong body is akin to obsessive - compulsive disorder. That does mean that it is a form of OCD which has not been recognized by medicine yet, but as a laymen, it seems to me that it is worth the considering.
OCD is not a psychosis.
But just because the conviction reminds me of OCD doesn't mean it is that. It may be that it is its own, unbranded psychiatric illness. Often in medicine, a disease is not understood to be a disease until it has been given a name. And even then, it's having been given a name can be disastrous for its sufferers' prospects of getting the treatment they need if the label was hastily conjured up. The disease known as "chronic fatigue syndrome" is a classic example.
There is a book I recommend to the curious, "Head Games," by Michael Paul Mason. In that book, Mason writes about all sorts of strange brain maladies which have affected people. Maybe the conviction that one is in the wrong gender category is such a malady. The late neurologist, Oliver Sacks, wrote several books about unusual brain illnesses, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" being the best known.
I wonder if the rise in transgender claims has any subterranean connection to the rise in autism? That is a thought which just occurred to me.
One thing is certain: you can't escape your DNA anymore than you can escape your fingerprints.
I'm writing this on a phone which, because I paid more than $19.99 for it, was an example of crime which the DOJ needs to pay attention to: I can't go back and edit. In my first paragraph, I intended to write, "That does not mean."
My needing to be extra careful with this phone is a drag, man. It limits my ability to throw out impulsive and poorly thought out remarks, thereby undermining the very idea of a Substack comments section.
It's a mental illness. It's usually one of a cluster of mental illnesses the person has been diagnosed with. Many girls who wish to transition are autistic.
So if you believe that mental illness can be cured with surgical destruction of the reproductive organs, do you also believe that a cancer can be cured with psychotherapy?
Trump has been saying he's ending all of this care for minors. You really think they will allow any youth with gender dysphoria to be treated? He's very clear that he wants it all banned.
I'm curious, Laura, do you know what the state of public opinion about this is?
I don't support trampling on people's rights even if it's popular to do it.
A lot of people support the government crushing a disliked minority. Interracial marriage and interfaith marriage used to be very unpopular.
Trans people exist and they have rights and the government should not prohibit their medical care.
Chris Jorgensen went to Scandinavia in 1952 and came back as Christine in 1952. On YouTube there used to be newsreel footage of Jorgensen’s return, at Idlewild Airport in New York City. If you can, watch it. The LGBTQ+ Gospel is that America in the 1950s was only slightly less repressive than Nazi Germany, but the reporters treated Jorgensen with nothing but respect. There would be a lot more inherent jeering in the way reporters treated The Beatles twelve years later, on February 7th, 1964, when they landed at the same airport with a new name ( JFK ). It's interesting to study all the photos you can find of the reporters and the cops as they behold The Beatles: a lot of them clearly think The Beatles are ridiculous and probably gay.
I remember Christine Jorgensen being interviewed by Art Linkletter, of all people. If that name means nothing to you because you may be too young, Art Linkletter was that weird thing, a television personality. He appears to have been a truly kind man, respectful of all, and was a good interviewer with a fine sense of humor. He was the epitome of wholesomeness to the America of the 1950s and 1960s, and that he would have Christine Jorgensen as a guest tells you a lot about what America was really like sixty years ago.
It may be true that obviously gay people didn't do too well in most small towns and had to decamp to big cities, but even that isn't necessarily the case. Florence King's hilarious, scabrous “Southern Ladies and Gentlemen” goes into the matter. And as I say to people when the talk turns to things like this, what, you think we Southern lads in the 1960s didn't know that Mr Jones, the teacher, and Dave, the neighborhood florist, were gay? ( Here's how a truly civilized society functions: single women in the neighborhood used to ooohhh and aaahhh about what a handsome fellow Dave was, and he was, but I am sure they all knew he was gay. They were trying to provide cover. ) Do you think the old boys whose wives went to “the beauty parlor” didn't realize the male hairdressers were “like that”?
Transgenderism is different. Of course, they have rights, just as the homeless have rights. But the homeless are sick in varying ways, and most should be in hospitals of various kinds. And inasmuch as genes are sovereign in the matter of sexual identify, I can't see people who are convinced they're in mismatched bodies as anything other than ill. Are you sure that in ten years, transgenderism won't be seen as a form of obsessive compulsive disorder?
Laura: "Gerald, do you acknowledge that transgender people exist, or not?"
No one is "denying that transgender people exist". Only their claims that they can change or have changed sex. A rather large number of transpeople -- along with various hangers-on, grifters, scientific illiterates, quack doctors, and political opportunists -- have been claiming exactly that:
https://speakingplainly.substack.com/p/is-it-really-true-that-no-ones-denying
Laura: "The transgender people I know realized at a very young age that their gender identity did not match their sex assigned at birth."
You might try reading the Executive Order on "Defending Women [and kids] From Gender Ideology":
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/
That EO merely validates the general consensus that sex and gender are two entirely different kettles of fish. "sex" generally refers ONLY to specific reproductive abilities -- the EO explicitly says "produces large reproductive cells" and "produces small reproductive cells" as the defining criteria for females and males, respectively. "gender", on the other hand, refers only to various "sexually dimorphic" personality traits, behaviours, roles, and stereotypes.
For example, see this editorial in the British Medical Journal:
BMJ: "Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. ...."
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735
That some dysphoric child has some "gender non-conforming traits" -- masculine girls or feminine boys -- is no reason whatsoever to try tricking them into thinking they were "born in the wrong body". And that the only course of action is to mangle their genitalia into some ersatz Frankensteinian replica of those of the other sex. Crime and medical scandal of the century to be doing so.
Correct. There is no doubt that "gender dysphoria" exists, although it has been ginned up to be a massive problem instead of a momentary self-alienation. The issue is "delusion or reality". It's a delusion.
Nobody is assigned their sex at birth. Sex is observed and recorded. As I explained in my above comment, this belief about being in the wrong body is a mental illness.
Most kids who have gender dysphoria when they are very young grow out of it and no one knows how to determine which ones will not grow out of it or have it resolve with therapy. None of the MDs offering these interventions to young people have shown that they can predict who will be likely both 1) not to grow out of it and 2) to benefit from the medical interventions. They haven't checked. No one even knows how many do well if given the US on demand model, again, they haven't checked. Chen et al 2023 hid many of its results for hormones and was too short term, and Olson-Kennedy hid the puberty blocker results, and all the systematic reviews of the evidence say they just can't predict likely outcomes...
The Dutch have outcomes for people who met their criteria, who had this very young, but their long term outcomes aren't coming out very fast.
They did put out a paper saying that (I think! it was a difficult read) that it was maybe too linear to expect a patient was doing poorly, got treated, and then did well...which is sort of what I thought a medical treatment did, though. https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-024-01143-8
Sex is not “assigned” at birth. That is, on its face, a bizarre and untrue proposition. Sex is observed at birth, and in most cases can be observed in utero. Use of the term “sex assigned at birth” is an indication that someone has signed on to a whole host of cult-like beliefs that leads one to such absurd conclusions like there is such a thing as a “trans child” and/or that people can be born into “the wrong body.”
There are no "true trans" people. There are deluded psychotics who are pathetic losers in all cases.
Great job. I shared this on Threads.
He's doing at least one good thing....
https://timothywiney.substack.com/publish/posts
One of the very few things that trump actually got right.
Oh he's getting a lot of things right.
He's god-like compared to the potato he just replaced.
Actually no he has made some abominable decisions and his fitness to lead makes his predecessor look like god. Check out my post on the Jan 6th pardons.
Look at the murders Biden pardoned. Guy that killed 2 FBI agents, the pair that murdered a cop, and the Bridgeport guy that assassinated an 8yr old boy. Biden got played into pardoning over 8000 people. Instead of accountability, democrats are blaming activists for misrepresenting the prisoners to them.
Agree that Biden had many faults. Presidents have been egotistical and somewhat corrupt politicians forever. But trump is several orders of magnitude worse. In so many ways.
This thing you guys have about Trump reminds me of a common misery: the ostracized kid. No other kid is ever likely to be able to say exactly what it is that makes the ostracized kid so awful, it's just that everyone knows he is, and if you don't, well, just what is it about you?
Miranda Devine's book, "The Big Guy," about what she calls "the Biden crime family" hasn't been challenged, let alone in court. If I were the paterfamilias of something labeled "the Lime crime family" in a bestseller, and had Biden's money, I sure as Hell would not let such a thing go without a defamation suit.
How is Trump, the ostracized kid as you folks are so sure he is, "several orders of magnitude worse" than being the Godfather?
LOL Okay, whatever.
He's really batting 1.000 at this point. Win after win after win. The planes are filling with illegals scum, unemployed lawyers are streaming out of Washington, and it's only Day 10.
How much were you paid to say that? The guy is absolute scum of the earth and most people on the planet can see it.
In an interview a psychiatrist was asked if Trump were a malignant narcissist.
"Not a chance," he replied. "He's a narcissist of comical excessiveness, but there is no way he's a malignant narcissist. You don't see love for someone who is a malignant narcissist on the faces of his children. You do see it in the countenances of Trump's children.''
My own two cents is that you also see it on Melania's face.
I have a cousin who is a malignant narcissist. Like all such people, he's marvelous at first sight, but beginning in 2014, his getting caught in a political scandal was the flesh wound which became necrotic, eventually costing him his business. Here's one thing I know he did for sport:
There is another cousin in the family who survived a mass murder when he was seven and has been disabled ever since, severely disabled. My aunt and uncle were not wealthy, but another aunt, widowed and childless, was going to leave her estate to our cousin, so despite the estate's modestness, we knew our cousin would be provided for. After her death, we learned that he had been disinherited by our aunt. From what the lawyer was able to tell us, we learned that our evil scum cousin had gone behind our backs to this aunt, whom he never shown the slightest interest in, to defame our cousin out of her will. He's a sadist. ( Our cousin is being well provided for. )
That is how malignant narcissist scum behave, and there have never been any such stories about Trump.
Our scummy cousin had been a successful fortune hunter. I was curious whether his wife might have a Facebook page, so I looked. She does. Her personal photo is a photo of a particularly hopeless looking emu behind a wire mesh fence.
All I ever see on Melania’s face is disgust or contempt for the subhuman turd she regrettably married.
You haven't seen the photos I've seen. She is one regal, self possessed woman, that's true, but I have seen affection and admiration in her countenance, and definitely in the countenances of his children. Go back and watch the swearing - in. Look at Tiffany Trump.
That's what's wrong with our politics: “subhuman turd.” And pro Trumpists have their corresponding feelings for anti Trumpists. Somebody once explained The Spanish Civil War by saying, “It came down to the fact that we just couldn't stand each other anymore.” Do you want that to happen to the United States? I don't.
Of course not. But trump is igniting and fomenting that division when he should be doing the exact opposite. I’m sorry but he has not a single redeeming feature and is by far the worst and most damaging president ever. America has no chance to heal while he is around.