- Legacy media outlets published several articles this week criticizing sex change treatments for transgender children.
- One transgender individual told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the media is opening up to critical perspectives because reporters are discovering that transgender medicine is experimental.
- A New York Times columnist predicted that in the near future, both liberals and conservatives would view child sex change procedures as a politically-motivated medical scandal.
Mainstream media outlets are publishing articles challenging the “gender-affirming” method of medical treatment for transgender children, which emphasizes speedy biomedical intervention over psychotherapy.
“As more reporters investigate the motives of legislators, I’m sure they’re discovering that pediatric transition is experimental medicine and that some regulatory framework is needed when children are involved,” Corinna Cohn, who identifies as a transgender woman and wrote a Washington Post op-ed expressing regret over receiving a sex change surgery at 19, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times each published articles Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday respectively on the sudden, sharp uptick in transgenderism in young people and the speed with which medical practitioners give them irreversible treatments such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries.
Cohn pointed to increased exposure to the issue of childhood transitions and conservative efforts to regulate the procedures to account for the media opening up to more critical perspectives on sex change procedures.
“Professionals who set the standards of care for pediatric transition are becoming more cautious due to a lack of evidence in the efficacy of the treatments,” Cohn told the DCNF. “For example, the Swedish Karolinska Hospital which pioneered pediatric gender transition has decided to discontinue prescribing hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones as a standard practice.”
Cohn wrote that medically transitioning did not resolve the issues that motivated the decision in the first place: anxiety and confusion about experiencing same-sex attraction.
“Surgery unshackled me from my body’s urges, but the destruction of my gonads introduced a different type of bondage,” Cohn wrote. “From the day of my surgery, I became a medical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life.”
Cohn regretted losing the ability to have children and losing sexual function before having ever had sex. Cohn was also concerned about youths undergoing medical procedures without having the chance to grow into their natural bodies and explore their identities through the process of growing up.
“I shudder to think of how distorting today’s social media is for confused teenagers. I’m also alarmed by how readily authority figures facilitate transition,” Cohn wrote.
BREAKING: SB 184 passes with a 66-28-1 vote. This legislation bans gender-affirming care for transgender youth aged 18 and under. It also requires school administrators to forcibly out trans students.
It will now go to Governor Kay Ivey for a signature. If signed, we will sue. pic.twitter.com/ObZoW2oCfx
— ACLU of Alabama (@ACLUAlabama) April 7, 2022
Another transgender individual agreed with Cohn that teen social pressure plays a role in prompting childhood transitions. Erica Anderson, a transgender psychologist who claims to have helped hundreds of youths transition, told the LA Times in a Tuesday article that the surge in transgenderism among young people was related to its trendiness and that young people were being rushed through sex change treatments without undergoing therapy.
“This has gone too far. It’s going to get worse. I don’t want any part of it,” Anderson told the LA Times about the practice of “transitioning” gender-confused youths. (RELATED: Alabama Passes Bill Banning Child Sex Change Treatments, Jailing Doctors Who Transition Kids)
Anderson also pushed back on the idea that soaring rates of transgenderism among young people are strictly the result of more widespread acceptance in the Tuesday article.
“To flatly say there couldn’t be any social influence in formation of gender identity flies in the face of reality,” Anderson told the LA Times. “Teenagers influence each other.”
“Medical providers as well as LGBTQIA+ activists and allies have decried this policy as not just transphobic but damaging to the well-being and safety of trans and nonbinary young people.”https://t.co/iNtYLlyLoS
— The Trevor Project (@TrevorProject) March 2, 2022
Conservative columnist Ross Douthat pointed out that some liberals stifle debate about the treatments by claiming that critical discussion of the issue puts transgender youths at an increased risk of suicide in a New York Times opinion piece Wednesday.
“Within not too short a span of time, not only conservatives but most liberals will recognize that we have been running an experiment on trans-identifying youth without good or certain evidence, inspired by ideological motives rather than scientific rigor, in a way that future generations will regard as a grave medical-political scandal,” Douthat wrote.
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