Trans; The New Conversion Therapy for Homosexuals:
How the ‘Gender ideology’ movement supports the medicalisation of LGB and gender-nonconforming youth.
By Frederick Schminke, reread and revised by Holly Golightly, and Matisse Lelièvre.
Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals may have made great strides towards equality in recent decades, but a cunning new threat has emerged from within the newly christened “LGBTQ+ movement” itself… and it’s riding on the edge of a scalpel’s blade.
There is an understandable lack of knowledge about the subtleties of one of the fastest growing medical scandals of our time. One that has at its heart the idea that a person can change their sex, through pursuing medical transition: a highly customizable, patient-directed, à la carte path, which ranges from blocking children’s natural puberty, to taking hormones of the opposite-sex, and perhaps most definitively, sex-reassignment surgery.
Many well-meaning, progressive-minded individuals would be forgiven for going along with all this, without grasping the full extent of what is truly happening, because the trans-rights narrative has indeed come to dominate all layers of society: from the media airwaves to the ivory tower, on up to the halls of power – the office of Rachel Levine, for example, the Assistant Secretary for Health at the Biden White House.
There has been a very lively debate, however, simmering just off on the sidelines, for some time now. The conversation resurfaces periodically, as it did in 2021, on the day before international women’s day when “Save a trans person, kill a Terf” was scrawled at the base of the statue of Marianne in Paris’s place de la République, or when it blazed across Twitter as a witch-hunt of J.K. Rowling. This ideologically charged conversation has, in fact, been raging on the left between Queer activists, and radical feminists since the aptly named “Sex Wars” of the 1980’s. The queer side would march triumphantly onwards to victory, signalling the death-knell for second-wave feminism, and it’s replacement by an altogether de-fanged, third-wave feminism. Pornography would be seen as liberating, prostitution would be reframed as “sex-work”, and cross-dressers would be crowned at the top of the intersectional feminist’s pyramid for the most-oppressed. Henceforth feminists who dared question the Orwellian newspeak of gender ideology would be excoriated as “TERF’s” or “Trans exclusionary radical feminists”, a term widely considered a slur by those on its receiving end, due to it often being accompanied with threats of violence, or rape.
Perhaps the most tragic casualty of this reversal, however, are the children being put on a path of medical transition, a disproportionate number of whom, if left well-enough alone, would simply have grown up into healthy Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual adults.
The children being medically transitioned, are being given drugs to block puberty, the idea is to give them time to think about their “gender identity”, before deciding whether to go on to cross-sex hormones, the hormones of the opposite sex. The class of drugs in question are Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues which work by blocking the production of sex hormones: testosterone or oestrogen. Despite being billed as “safe and reversible” their use can lead to lower bone mass, and have deleterious effects on cognition, with one study showing that after “22 months of pubertal suppression, operational memory dropped 9 points.” Supporters argue that puberty blockers prevent a child from going through a psychologically difficult “wrong gender” puberty and can decrease the risk of suicidality.
Common sense, however, tells us that giving powerful drugs to children is a bad idea. After all, who doesn’t experience psychological duress during puberty? Puberty is a time of our development during which we face a host of hormonal ups and downs, emotional turbulence, and the anxious pangs of coming of age.
The tragic finality of this current puberty-blocker crisis, however, has already unrolled in plain sight to the American public via the television show “I am Jazz”. The whole country watched the medical transition of a young man, Jazz, and his journey to ‘become’ a woman. On the show viewers were able to follow his experiences with the final stage of his transition: surgical sex change.
The surgeon who accompanied Jazz in his transition, Dr. Marcie Bowers, is one of the pre-eminent surgeons working in what is referred to as “transgender health care”. Bowers is now the head of WPATH, The World Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare and works with both female genital mutilation survivors and, without a twinge of irony, men who pursue sex-change operations. The main procedure in question being vaginoplasty, whether it be by the ‘standard’ penile-inversion technique, or a graft using a part of the sigmoid colon. This latter option may be in store for the patients who were put on puberty blockers as boys, because pubertal suppression could leave them with not enough “material” to do a standard penile inversion.
Bowers made headlines after blowing the whistle on another disturbing facet of “transgender healthcare”, that children who have had their puberty blocked before Tanner stage II, may go on to never be able to have an orgasm. When interviewed by Abigail Shrier, Bower’s stated, “If you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then your puberty's blocked, it's very difficult to achieve that afterwards,” and went on to say, “I consider that a big problem. It's kind of an overlooked problem that in our ‘informed consent’ of children undergoing puberty blockers, we’ve in some respects overlooked that a little bit.”
Bowers would later walk back his statements, publishing an apology on his website addressed to his peers in the “trans healthcare” field: “wrong time, wrong venue”. He would go on to publish an opinion piece in the New York Times, making the case for puberty blockers and asking why legislators are attempting to make medical decisions in place of doctors, patients, and their families. Reuters reports a later interview with Dr. Bowers where he expressed that ongoing research on the topic has lessened his worries and that “it seems not only probable but likely there is retention of orgasmic function.” It is unsure how much of Bower’s backpedalling is true, but in any case, the damage is already done, and continues unabated.
These experiments, as they must be called, have resulted in an appalling tragedy for Briana, a young gay man who was put on puberty blockers at the age of thirteen and now faces a lifetime with permanent loss of all sexual function. Briana was interviewed by Buck Angel and is now speaking out publicly against puberty blockers. Briana writes:
“This is my biggest sexual fear. Not only the lack of sex that will permeate my entire dating landscape, but the fear that it will alienate me from the entire human landscape of love, sex, and intimacy. I do not possess sexual organs nor sex drive, however my need and desire for love, romance, and intimacy is still alive and well. Unfortunately, every attempt to discover a potential relationship comes to an immediate halt due to my status as a sexless, transgender person.”
The question that must be asked is how many more stories like Briana’s will occur before these experiments are ended? What will it take to end this era of experimentation on gender-non-conforming boys and girls?
Another male detransitioner named Kobe had a similar trajectory: trans-identification at eleven, puberty blockers at thirteen, oestrogen at sixteen, and surgical castration at nineteen. He is now on lifelong testosterone replacement therapy, which has helped him feel alive again. There is also the case of a death of an 18-year trans-identified male who died due to complications from his vaginoplasty procedure.
The pioneer studies which started this current phase of experimentation, began in the Netherlands, where “Dutch researchers began to medically transition gender dysphoric adolescents in the late 1980s and early 1990s “… using hormones and surgery to gender transition children and young adults.” The medical practice of prescribing puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones, and finally surgery would come to be known as the Dutch Protocol. In a 2008 study, it was found that most gender-dysphoric children outgrow their gender-dysphoria after puberty, and that half the boys who desisted from transition were homosexual or bisexual, and nearly all male and female children in the persistence group were homosexual or bisexual. Fast forward to now, as European countries are beginning to backtrack on puberty blockers, clinicians in the United States are busy rolling them out, and in perhaps typical brash American fashion, slamming the pedal to the metal.
The number of gender clinics has ballooned in every state across the country. The growing number of gender clinics has been tracked by a watchdog organization called The Global Gender Mapping Project, who claims the number has gone from a handful ten years ago, to now 400, and still counting. Reuters working with a Health technology company called Komodo Health Inc analysed the data on youth being diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The number of new diagnoses in 2021 was 42,167, nearly triple the 15,172 diagnoses in 2017. According to Reuters: “Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021.”
Reuters found 776 adolescent girls aged 13 to 17 underwent double-mastectomy between 2019 – 2021. Adolescent girls are asking for donations to fund their procedures on crowdfunding sites like Go Fund Me. The numbers of detranstioners may also be increasing as evidenced by the detrans subreddit which now has 52,000 members.
Psychologist Tamara Peitzke blew the whistle on the institutional pressures facing therapists, where they are pressured to not push back against the trans-identification of their patients. Her testimony shows the force by which mental health professionals are pressured to unquestioningly affirm their patients down the path of medical transition.
It is in response to this very recent and drastic expansion of “gender affirming care”, that activists have begun to rally in opposition to puberty blockers. The LGB Alliance was founded in 2019 in opposition to what they see as a worrisome medical transition of LGB youth. Right out of the gates they had to fend off a legal onslaught from Mermaids, a charity for transgender youth, who sought in vain, to have LGB Alliance’s charity status removed.
Kelly Jay Keen in Glasgow, at a protest in Glasgow in February 2023, against the Gender Recognition act in Scotland. (Skully / Alamy Image Stock)
The political activism does not end there, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, donning the charming moniker of Posie Parker, has led a fervent campaign in defence of women’s spaces from being entered by “trans-women” or as she calls them: men. Whether it be women’s toilets and changing rooms, or women’s prisons and sports, Kellie-Jay is adamant: no men shall pass! Her organization, Standing For Women, has inspired gatherings the world over at ‘Let Women Speak’ events, where women take the microphone and voice freely their disagreement with gender-ideology and the transitioning of children. She has just announced the official foundation of a new political party in Britain: the Party of Women.
Her organizing has taken her as far afield as New Zealand, where her group of women’s rights campaigners found itself surrounded by a 2000 strong mob of trans-activists. A trans-rights activist doused her in tomato soup, and she was forced to flee as the crowd became violent. Kellie-Jay was afraid for her life: "I remember thinking that this was it. I was going to get crushed to death. They were going to surge forward and my life would be over." Her defence of children from medical transition is loud and proud, as she has belted out at many a rally the now catchy political slogan and call to action: “The house is on fire, and our children are inside it”.
And while this pushback against transgender medicine is making headway in Europe, in the United States, the issue has bogged down in the quagmire of partisan politics. The Republican Party is leading the charge in states across the country attempting to stop the medical transition of minors. In response to this, the Democrats, and the top LGBT charities have predictably dug in their heels. The Human Rights Campaign, citing these bills which they have deemed “anti-LGBTQ+”, have dramatically gone on to declare a national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans.
Why the major LGBT charities have chosen to close their ears to critique of the medical transition of children, is anyone guess, but it seems to be due at least in part to a longstanding trend of moving away from Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual rights campaigns to focus more squarely on Transgender issues. It wasn’t always the case that the T wielded so much influence. In fact, the Gay liberation movement refused for many years to allow the T to be tacked on to the acronym until around the time of the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation.
Of course, there is also the oft cited myth that Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick at Stonewall, while in reality he might not have even been trans-identified.
“Gay Liberation Front march on Times Square” photograph by Diana Davies, 1969. The New York Public Library, Digital Collections.
In the span of a few decades, the T has gone, from relatively marginal, to completely mainstream. This can be seen in the drastic increase in funding Transgender issues have received. According to the Funders for LGBTQ Issues, 2021 Resource Tracking Report, funding to transgender communities has increased from around 4 million dollars in 2012 to around 36 million in 2021. Clearly, major LGBTQ+ charities have sold out Lesbian, Gays, and Bisexuals in favor of the cash cow of transgender rights. Surgeries and pharmaceuticals are very lucrative, but this fact is obscured by rhetorical flourishes designed to constantly portray the T as perpetual victims, constantly under fire.
The original 1978 rainbow flag by Gilbert Baker
It is particularly maddening that the organizations which are purported to represent the interests of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals are standing firmly in favour of medical transition of children and adolescents, despite grassroots attempts to stop these practices. Far from homogenous in their view on these matters, some homosexuals and bisexuals have begun expressing their growing discontent with the direction of the movement by way of the social-media hashtag #LGBWithoutTheT. This may be the beginning of a long and messy divorce between the two sides of the LGBTQ+ acronym: the LGB being sexual-orientations, and the TQ+ pertaining to gender-identities.
It is time, for Gay men, Lesbians, and Bisexuals, to stand together against the homophobic practice of medical transition, coming top-down from LGBTQ+ charities themselves. It is time to say enough is enough, to the droves of young people pursuing self-harm, to the children being pushed down this pathway, and to the surgeons and clinicians standing by to deliver on their demands. It is time to finally reaffirm what the gay rights movement was always about: self-acceptance, no matter what body we’re born with.
About the Authors:
Frederick Schminke is an English teacher and American expatriate living in Paris, France. He is an activist with the LGB Alliance, and writes on Substack at @frederickschminke, his political cartoons are available on social media: linktr.ee/HereNotQueer. He can be reached by mail at: frederick.schminke@lgballiance.fr
This article has been proofread and edited by Holly Golightly, writer and translator who publishes under a pen name, and Matisse Lelièvre, whose writings are available on Substack: Fabrique cybern-ethique.