Letter Sent to the Health Minister in Australia
To Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt and Prime Minister Scott Morrison,
We are writing this letter to you as members and supporters of an LGB organization, based in the United States, called Gender Health Query. We formed this organization in response to an increase in youth who say social and/or medical transition for the treatment of gender dysphoria was a mistake. And for the growing numbers of LGB people who are concerned about this.
We support the free expression, and protection from bullying, of all gender non-conforming children. Some dysphoric youth will maintain a trans identity into adulthood, and they need acceptance and support to live their happiest lives. There is data that supports the benefits of early social and medical transition. WPATH (AusPATH) presents the public with all of this data (the affirmative model), and we address it on our website. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians has recently updated their treatment guidelines which advocates affirmation and easy access to medical transition to reflect WPATH’s positions.
Unfortunately, some amount of collateral damage is certain to happen with more youth transitioning at younger ages.
Why?:
1) Young people who started transitioning in their teens or early adulthood already are being harmed. While previous studies on adults who transitioned under a gatekeeping model show low regret rates, more young people are expressing regret. We don’t know the numbers because attempts to study them, or other youth who may be harmed, are actively censored. This has happened at Bath Spa University, Brown University, the Philly Trans Health conference, and at WPATH itself. In reaction to the apathy about detransition, a young female, who had started transitionin her teens, created her own survey of detransitioned women. She received 203 responses. The age range of the onset their dysphoria ranged from childhood to early adulthood. Some transitioned before they were cognitively mature enough to understand themselves fully. The human brain does not reach full maturity until age 25.
Below is a post from a therapist on the WPATH Facebook page:
A therapist who works with detransitioned people:
An article about the harms of transition to this young person:
https://4thwavenow.com/2016/04/27/shrinking-to-survive-a-former-trans-man-reports-on-life-inside-queer-youth-culture/
2) All research on childhood gender dysphoria shows that some youth diagnosed under DSM criteria (diagnostic manual) will outgrow gender dysphoria ("desistance"). These youths are likely to grow up to be gay or lesbian, not trans. This explains why some gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are extremely alarmed at the shift to enforce the concept of social transition in small children and medical transition immediately at the start of puberty. Some activists are arguing social and medicaltransition is a human right. The right to proper mental health support and time to mature naturally, without being drastically altered by the medical profession, is also a human right. Many of the regretters mentioned above appear to be lesbian or bisexual females. Pediatric transition is a homosexual/bisexual human rights issue until it is proven these mistakes on borderline dysphoric LGB youth are very rare.
There are more but here are four main studies highlighting the realities of desistance from gender dysphoria:
Drummond et al (2008)
Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis (2008)
Singh (2012)
Steensma et al (2013)
This is a chart from Dr. Ken Zucker averaging the desistance results from these studies. WPATH pulled his presentation of this material due to trans activist pressure. You can see that DSM positive youth desisted at a rate of 67%, a majority.
3) Early medical treatment has severe health consequences even if the youth is certain to maintain a trans identity into adulthood. These include sterility, loss of sexual function, possible cognitive impacts, possible bizarre side-effects reported by womenput on Lupron for precocious puberty, mitochondrial damage, and an increase in circulatory health risks. This is why GHQ is trans inclusive. There are trans people who are voicing opposition to pediatric transition.
4) There is a dramatic increase in female teenagers and young adults identifying as trans. Some have serious comorbid conditions. Affirming them could have devastating consequences in their futures. There are large increases of females amputating their breasts for an array of “non-binary” identities. There isn’t enough research on this cohort to justify unquestionedenthusiastic medical transition. They may have body dysmorphic disorder, some new disassociation problem, or have borderlinepersonality disorder (a condition known for identity instability). There is a long history of socially contagious mental health conditions and psychic epidemics, and the vast majority of them involve female teenagers and young adults. It would be irresponsible and unethical to refuse to consider that may bewhat is happening with some of these young females. We don’t expect this to come from WPATH, which is a major reason our organization was formed.
There are female teens and young adults going on rounds of testosterone while at the same time, female to male trans people are getting pregnant and having babies. No one knows the effects on babies of a female taking massive doses of testosterone. Steroids are known to cause birth defects even years after they are stopped. This is just one example of apathy about long-term safety found in trans medical practices.
5) There is already historical precedence that “affirmative” medical transition environments harm young people. Three examples are provided below:
-“Thailand tightens sex change laws”
-“Russell Reid inquiry: key figures”
-“Doctor under fire for alleged errors prescribing sex-change hormones”
6) These protocols sterilize children, and many trans people have biological children or say they want them. The hormone blockers to cross-sex hormone protocol destroys genital development and the youth’s choices around castration and genital surgery or not to have bottom surgery at all. In our opinion, these two factors alone are enough to raise very serious ethical concerns and consider that this is medical malpractice. An eleven year oldcannot consent to protocols that may permanently eradicate sexual function and destroy their chance to have children. There is a precedent for future lawsuits from sterilized trans people. The Swedish government is paying out claims to transgender individuals who were sterilized as a result of a law that required sterilization as part of their transition. While a different scenario involving adults, the issue of fertility is important to adult trans people enough to bring lawsuits.
7) Pediatric transition supporters argue these youths have “innate” gender identities, and this may be true in many cases. However, we have a lot of information on our website that indicates gender dysphoria is increased by other mental health issues or environmental factors. These include family stability, anti-gay bullying, peer contagion, trauma, and parental attitudes. The western world is rapidly taking the most extreme approach to treating gender dysphoria in cognitively immature minors, i.e., hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery for people with complex issues. We have a lot of reasons to believe the new future is designed to maximize young medicalized persisters. And it will minimize the number of young people who resolve gender dysphoria, without blockers, hormones, and surgery, if given proper mental health support and time to mature.
8) While transition outcomes can appear positive in short-term studies, longer-range or registry studies call into question the overall long-term benefits to transition when one considers the ongoing high suicide rate, mental illness rate, and serious physical health problems. We review positiveand negative studies here.
9) While there are health consequences to medical transition that cognitively immature children, teens, and young adults can’t fully comprehend, there are also psychological consequences. People who support our organization think that gender ideology, promoted by affirmative model advocates and some WPATH members, is having negative impacts on the culture within and outside of the LGB population. Young people are being led to believe that medical transition is a magical panacea that will truly turn them into the opposite sex. Some see concepts of declared "biological sex," multiple gender identities, gender fluidity, and ritualized pronoun validation as liberating. We aren't seeing that. In many ways, young people appear to be angrier, sexually and gender-confused, and incapable of functioning without constant validation. Some believe they are owed emotional and physical access to other people based on their own ideologies about gender and sexual orientation. Mental health professionals are not preparing them for the real world where most people do not agree. More disturbingly, this gender and sexual confusion isputting young people at risk for sexual exploitation by older people and unhealthy sexual pressure from peers. The link provided is not the only story like it but reflects the pattern all of them have. You can read about some of the issues surrounding confused young people (and some older ones), being offered transitionas a miracle on the GHQ website.
Given these are minors who are not mentally fully developed, we believe that this is an unfolding inevitable human rights violation, an atrocity even, that will happen to some young people who would have naturally coped with their dysphoria before the rise of gender clinics. This issue needs much better research to determine the effects of this on would-be desisters and longer-term health outcomes. Affirmative model advocates argue transition as a minor is a human right. The right to grow up with proper mental health support and time to mature, without being unnecessarily medically defaced, is also a human right.
We understand suicide risk is a factor to consider in treating dysphoric youth. However, at times this risk is exaggerated and used to force people not to care about what could become of a youthif transitionis a mistake. They matter as well and should not just be considered morally acceptable collateral damage.
Our concerns are in-line with some UK gender clinicians, some of whom have quit due to ethical concerns, and fears they are perpetrating a form of gay and lesbian eugenics on some youth.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-feels-like-conversion-therapy-for-gay-children-say-clinicians-pvsckdvq2
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sfos0060/biggs_experimentpubertyblockers.pdf
We support the Australian scientists and doctors raising ethical concerns about pediatrictransition. We are asking you to please take these issues seriously. We are also asking you to involve impartial third parties to analyze and study gender dysphoria treatment. We believe WPATH is an advocacy organization and is not impartial. They will not be advocates for borderline dysphoric, likely pre-gay or lesbian youth, and/or autism spectrum youth, who need proper therapy and time to mature and resolve GD. We believe the new guidelines for treating gender dysphoria in minors, instituted by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, risk needlessly sterilizing and medically defacing minors by totally devaluing less invasive strategies. This area needs more research.
Thank you for your time,
We have a list of signatures from the LGBT supportive public who share our mission to ensure the psychology and medical professions are not going to overmedicalize more minors as increasing numbers of young people are expressing regret.