Can we have a little data, please?

Asking reasonable questions around the gender treatment of young people

I spent my entire adult life in healthcare, as a Registered Nurse. I’m a bit of a science nerd. I found the study of the human body, breathtaking in it’s complexity, to be a never ending wonder. As a NICU nurse with a career spanning 28 years, I watched the science evolve and change over time. We were endlessly curious and relentlessly careful about the care we gave to our patients. Projects such as the Vermont Oxford Network collate data from all over the world, comparing and contrasting outcomes and searching for the very best pathways to provide healthy outcomes. Studies are done, constantly. They are carefully controlled and if you don’t use proper methodology, it’s the end of your research career. No one wants to use biased or unreliable data.

Which brings me to my point today. We are in a brave new world of designer bodies. We have convinced the youth of today that they can be anything they want to be, that sex isn’t real, and that if their bodies aren’t pleasing to them, we can remodel the body to suit, as if it were a kitchen remodel. Don’t like having breasts? Masculinizing chest surgery is the thing for you. At taxpayer expense, even.

Where is the data on all of this? Surely, we aren’t providing drastic life altering medical care to people without studying the results? Unfortunately, I think that we are doing exactly that, and there will be much pain created as a result. Let’s examine a few popularly quoted “statistics”. Ask yourself, is this really adequate information?

Just a few months ago, we were still hearing that there are 50-60 pediatric gender clinics in the US. Thanks to the work of the GenderMapper project, we now know that there are at least 300. Why was no one interested in this information? And why are so many medical practitioners eager to take on this new specialty? This figure does not include Planned Parenthood, which is now the leading provider of wrong-sex hormones in the US.

When we talk about detransition, we are told that only 1% of people who transition become unhappy enough with the results to transition back again into their natal sex. And yet, the internet is becoming chock-full of these young people, with their stories of permanent changes done to their bodies that they now deeply regret. Why does no one want to hear these young people? Why the rush to discount their powerful and very tragic stories? Many studies of long term results, that are used to tout how successful these treatments are, have lost 30-40 percent of their cohort to follow up. In any other area of medicine that would mean an immediate tossing out of such a poorly done “study”. What happened to the other 40 percent? It’s highly possible that a large number of them are either doing so poorly that they can’t respond, or they have detransitioned. Most detransitioners never return to the clinic to let the doctors know that they have decided to reverse course. When they do, they are dismissed and disregarded.

The data used to arrive at this 1 percent figure is very old. It reflects data used from a time when almost all of the people who transitioned were older men, who medically or surgically transitioned only after years of therapy and living full time as the opposite sex. That’s a whole different world from what we have now, where the numbers, which have skyrocketed, reflect a profound shift to younger females who are transitioning to male. Therapy and time is no longer required, as treatments are given on request under the new informed consent model. We need data here, and we need it yesterday.

And speaking of those skyrocketing numbers, please tell us how many kids are identifying as transgender these days, and how do we know this? The figures vary so widely, and it looks from here like it’s mostly just a wild guess. The most frequently quoted number is 2% of all American high school and middle school students. But where did that statistic come from? A recent study found that 1 in 10 young people were identifying as trans. So is it 1 percent? 2 percent? 10 percent? It might even be more, according to several anecdotal stories I have been sent from teachers. Please, lets have some data.

And then there’s the dreaded 41% number. That’s the projected suicide rate that’s used as a club to beat anyone who dares to question the wisdom of this brave new world. Parents are especially subjected to this one. “would you rather have a live son or a dead daughter?” they are asked. But where did this statistic come from? And what exactly does it mean? We are told that it means that if we don’t obey and get our kids the medical treatments they want, they will kill themselves.

In reality, this is the shadiest “science” ever. This number was arrived at through a survey, taken by convenience sample through soliciting in transgender advocacy groups. The subjects were asked one question. Just one. Have you ever considered suicide? 41 percent said yes. But notice what they weren’t asked.

The survey didn’t ask if there were other mental health issues present that might also contribute to suicidal ideation. There were zero follow up questions. Were these respondents actually likely to follow through on these feelings? We don’t know, because they weren’t asked. They also weren’t asked why they felt this way. They weren’t asked if they felt this way before they transitioned, or after. Maybe they are feeling suicidal because they deeply regret their transition. We don’t know. But we are told, over and over again, that young people are going to kill themselves if they don’t get binders, pronouns, puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. If we don’t stop calling them their birth names, they are going to kill themselves. I don’t quite see the correlating data here. Suicide is serious. Let’s get some actual data here, and stop making false assumptions.

What are the long term risks and benefits to giving a female body Testosterone at 10-40 times the normal amount? What are the long term results of elective hysterectomy and oophorectomy at 20 years of age? Can we get some data here? When pressed, the best the gender optimists can say is, “This isn’t fully understood yet”. Are you kidding me? You are going to give out testosterone like candy, to thousands of college age and younger girls, and you can’t even tell us what the long term effects are going to be?

New designer surgical options are arriving on the scenes at a dizzying rate. Nullification surgery is basically the removal of all genitals, rendering the recipient a smooth, genderless, sexless body. Uterine transplants, penile transplants, phallus preserving vaginoplasty, and any variation of the above are being developed. I think it’s safe to say that at least a portion of these patients will go on to find that they are profoundly disappointed and regretful. But the surgeons will still have their money, and no one wants to listen to those whiny detransitioners anyway, so who cares? Onward!

Pediatric gender clinics are seeing kids as young as three. While no medical intervention is done until the onset of puberty, these kids and their parents are given psychiatric care which cements this ideation in the mind of the parent and the child. Virtually all of these tots will go on to puberty blockade, which we now know, thanks to the recently released study from the Tavistock clinic, is a virtual guarantee of progression to wrong sex hormones, and incidentally lifelong sterility. Is this a good idea, putting preschoolers on a path like this? I’m not sorry, I’m going to question the wisdom of this, and so should everyone else.

Which brings me to the matter of the “experts”. Why is the American Academy of Pediatrics not asking for this data? Why does the Endocrine Society not seem to care that there is such a scarcity of information? I would ask the American Psychological Association, don’t you think we are moving a little too quickly here?

Absent the answers to these questions, I think it’s reasonable to say that we are currently looking at the biggest medical scandal in the history of the world, and almost everyone is looking away.

Asking these questions will quickly get you branded as a hater, a bigot, even a nazi. These questions are getting people fired, vilified, canceled, and banned from social media platforms. I’m sorry, these are reasonable questions about draconian and serious medical procedures being done to children. If asking them is a crime, I’m not sure what kind of a civilization we are living in anymore. It’s almost like we don’t want the answers. It’s almost like we don’t actually care about the kids.