The New York Times ran a piece Tuesday dismissing the stories of individuals who regret getting transgender treatments as children.
In a piece tiled “How a Few Stories of Regret Fuel the Push to Restrict Gender Transition Care,” the NYT treated detransitioners as a fringe group whose cases that should not be used to restrict sex changes for minors. “Republicans have amplified a group of activists who no longer identify as transgender, overriding objections from transgender people and medical experts,” the piece read. (RELATED: Watch “Damaged: The Transing of America’s Kids”)
Chloe Cole, a detransitioner, is suing Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and the Permanente Medical Group for preforming a variety of sex changes, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and a double mastectomy, on her as a child. The effects of such procedures are often not completely reversible and in some cases are irreversible.
Lawsuits such as Cole’s are likely to have a chilling effect on the efforts to provide sex changes to minors. Cole has campaigned across the country for legislation limiting children’s access to sex change operations. Much of the NYT article focuses on Cole’s influence on Republican efforts against transgender operations on minors.
In what other area of medicine are those hurt by it vilified by the press & the medical community? I’ve been pitching stories on detransition to @nytimes for 2 years. When finally they cover it, it’s to dismiss it as partisan, misinforming NYT readers. https://t.co/FOZ4Hv3Cx7
— Lisa Selin Davis (@LisaSelinDavis) May 16, 2023
“Here you have a few people that are willing to come out and speak their minds and give their thoughts about what they went through and they’re held up as just this rare group that’s arguing against the common wisdom,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chairman of Do No Harm, told the Daily Caller.
Goldfarb also noted that while the NYT article touted sex changes for minors as medically approved treatments for gender dysphoria, it made no mention of the myriad of European countries moving to limit sex changes and classify those offered to minors as “experimental.”
“So I think this this was a shameful paper because it shamed and it criticized these children. It really was a very dishonest, very dishonest article. It was hardly journalism. It was advocacy,” Goldfarb continued.
The Daily Caller interviewed several former transgender individuals for a recent documentary “Damaged: The Transing of America’s Kids,” including Cole, Cat Cattinson, and Walt Heyer.
Kara Dansky, a self-described feminist who campaigns for sex-based rights for women, blasted the NYT article on Twitter.
“You paint detransition as a rare occurrence. You couldn’t bother to mention that the detrans subreddit has >47K members as of today?” she wrote.
“It’s because outlets like yours refuse to have any honest conversations about any of this because doing so would undermine your narrative that this entire discussion is about the Big Bad Christian Right against a small marginalized population.”
Lisa Selin Davis, who has written for the New York Times, also criticized the outlet’s coverage of detransitioners.
“In what other area of medicine are those hurt by it vilified by the press & the medical community? I’ve been pitching stories on detransition to @nytimes for 2 years. When finally they cover it, it’s to dismiss it as partisan, misinforming NYT readers.”
At one point, the NYT referred to autogynephilia — a psychological phenomenon where men are aroused by the thought of themselves presenting as women — as a “fringe theory,” despite some experts identifying it as a driving behind male-to-female medical transitions.